Éric Zemmour, the ultra whirlwind that shakes the French presidential elections

Although he has not yet officially announced his candidacy for the French presidential elections in April 2022, the far-right polemicist and essayist Éric Zemmour is on everyone’s lips. Grab newspaper headlines and magazine covers. They dedicate long television gatherings to him. Every sentence he utters is scrutinized, praised, or criticized by analysts and politicians. Six out of ten French people consider that the French press talks too much about him, according to a Harris Interactive poll for the magazine ‘Challenges’. However, citizens’ interest in the potential far-right candidate does not cease.

Zemmour, in the middle of a campaign to promote his latest book, ‘France Has Not Said Its Last Word’, skillfully manages the times and maintains the suspense around his candidacy. This former journalist for the conservative daily ‘Le Figaro’ is the author of essays such as ‘French suicide’ and ‘French destiny’ and until recently was a talkative on the CNews television network, the French Fox News. Some in this country wonder if Zemmour will become a new Donald Trump.

The essayist, who stands to the right of the ultra Marine Le Pen, rises like foam in the polls. It has gone from 5% in June to 17% of vote intention in October. In one week he has sold 80,000 copies of his book, which has been self-published, after his former publisher, Albin Michel, refused to continue publishing his works. The whirlwind Zemmour, who wants to be the candidate of “the patriotic right,” shakes up the presidential pre-campaign and makes his potential rivals on the right and the extreme right nervous. They fear that if he does show up, he could steal their job in the second round. In these elections, only the two most voted candidates go to the second round.

Next to Zemmour, Marine Le Pen seems moderate. The essayist, the son of a Jewish family from Algeria who emigrated to France when that country was still a colony, exudes hatred. He warns that France is in decline and that what is at stake is “France as we know it.” Zemmour defends the supremacist theory of the “great replacement”, a conspiracy theory that maintains that the white population is being replaced by immigrants. He assures that this theory “is not a myth or a plot, but a relentless process.”

The essayist exhibits unapologetic Islamophobia and xenophobia. He denounces the Islamization of Western countries, with France in the lead. He accuses Muslim immigrants of all the ills of the nation, of not integrating into French society and of trying to impose their customs and sharia. And of the unaccompanied migrant minors, he says that “almost all are thieves, murderers and rapists”, statements that are reminiscent of Trump when he spoke of Mexican immigrants.

He denounces that there are neighborhoods in France that the Police cannot enter because they are taken over by criminals, Islamists and drug traffickers. He regrets, in his latest book, that cities like Grenoble “are compared by their inhabitants to Chicago for crime, Algiers or Dakar for population.”

Zemmour proposes, among other things, “a systematic expulsion of foreigners criminally convicted (25% of those arrested), the loss of French nationality for binationals convicted of a crime or a succession of crimes, and the recovery in the hands of the Status of lawless areas ”. He also wants to force parents to give their children French and non-Qur’anic names.

Sabotaged by his father

Surveys should concern applicants. If today the first round of the presidential elections were held, Macron, with a voting intention of between 25 and 27%, according to the latest Ifop-Fiducial poll for ‘Le Figaro’ published this Saturday, would face in the second round Marine Le Pen (from 17 to 18.5%) or Zemmour himself, who is around 17% and in previous polls he has surpassed Le Pen.

Conservative Xavier Bertrand would have 15%. On the left Jean-Luc Melénchon, leader of La Francia Insumisa, falls from 11 to 8%; ecologist Yannick Jadot achieves 7%; and the socialist Anne Hidalgo, 5%. The Republicans, the conservative party of former President Nicolas Sarkozy, is embroiled in a fight of egos between rivals. They will not appoint a candidate until December, it may be too late to come back in the polls.

Marine Le Pen managed to get rid of the most ultra elements of the party, including her father, Jean-Marie, founder of the National Front. The formation was renamed: now it is called National Regrouping. And a process of ‘dediabolization’ of the party began to make it more presentable to the electorate with the aim of reaching the Elysee Palace. But what she did not expect was to be overtaken on the right. And that his own father sabotaged his candidacy by confessing that he would be willing to vote for Zemmour if he is the best-positioned far-right candidate in the polls. The only difference between Eric and me is that he is Jewish. It is difficult to describe him as a Nazi or a fascist. This gives him greater freedom ”, said Le Pen Sr. in an interview with the newspaper ‘Le Monde’.