The publicist Eric Zemmour foreshadows the decline of France due to the influx of migrants, demands to ban foreign names, has no political experience, but is ready to compete in the elections for the current president.
Presidential elections are coming in France. Voting will take place in April 2022 and incumbent President Emmanuel Macron has an unexpected competitor – publicist Eric Zemmur is ready to support 17% of voters. This is more than the rating of all other candidates – except Macron.
Zemmur is called the French Trump and he likes such comparisons.
Non-systemic candidate
Like the American ex-president, the French author has no political experience, says outrageous things out loud and captivates a public disenchanted with professional politicians and parties.
And, like Trump, several women have publicly accused him of harassment. He is not going to apologize – as well as for his provocative remarks about Muslims and black French people, for which he has already been convicted twice.
Zemmour, 63, has been engaged in publicism for three decades, the general idea of which boils down to predicting the end of “French civilization”.
Published in 2014, the book French Suicide is the most famous of his works. In it, the author condemns the “halalization” and “feminization” of his country and calls for the return of the old values and hierarchies – family, work, nation, state and school.
As an ideal, Zemmur recalls the past without leftist ideas, equality and the fight against racism. A past in which “a young bus driver could run a lustful hand over a woman’s charming buttocks, and the woman did not complain of sexual harassment.”
Justification colaboratory assistants
A much more scandalous story in Zemmour’s life is an attempt to justify the collaborationist Vichy regime of Marshal Henri Petain, who collaborated with Nazi Germany during World War II.
Zemmour claims that the Vichy regime turned over Jews who were citizens of other countries to the Nazis in order to protect French Jews. This contradicts the facts – historians have found out that among the Jews they extradited were thousands of French. By the way, Zemmour himself comes from a family of immigrants, Algerian Jews, and calls himself “a Frenchman of Berber origin.”
Your channel
Nationwide fame Zemmur brought his own TV show on the CNews channel, which is often called the French Fox News. Created by conservative billionaire Vincent Bollore, it relies on author shows in which presenters express mainly right-wing and far-right ideas.
The Zemmur show aired on Saturday night and had good ratings. In it, he constantly returned to three themes: migration, Islam and French identity. The popularity of the show is evidenced by the fact that its guests – and Zemmur’s opponents in the discussion – over the past year have been seven ministers of the current government.
In September, the publicist had to close his show – the French regulator demanded that the channel consider him not a journalist, but a politician. Under French law, this would require giving similar airtime to other politicians, his opponents.
By that time, posters with the slogan “Zemmour – President” had already been pasted in Paris, and Zemmour’s electoral headquarters had already rented a room in the center of Paris with an area of almost 400 square meters. m.
Flash on the right
Marine Le Pen, traditionally considered the leader of the French far-right, in the October poll was ready to support only 15% of voters. Until recently, Le Pen seemed to be Macron’s main rival – she received 34% in the second round of the 2017 presidential election. But its position has weakened since then, and in local elections this summer, her party did not win a majority in any region, losing even its outpost, Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur.
And soon after the October poll, her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, expressed his readiness to support Zemmour. “Marin abandoned her fortified positions and Eric took over the land she had left,” said the founder of the main French far-right party, who had been expelled from her by his own daughter.
This is a reference to Marine Le Pen’s attempt to steer the party away from its neo-fascist and anti-Semitic roots to a more respectable and moderate ideology.
Zemmour, unlike Le Pen, is not trying to make his views acceptable to a moderate electorate. For example, he recently demanded a ban on foreign names such as Mohammed, Jordan or Kevin.
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