The rise of Éric Zemmour shows how far France has
shifted to the right
Didier
Fassin
The far-right media pundit is now a presidential
candidate – and his toxic ideas have ever more mainstream support
Wed 1 Dec
2021 12.35 GMT
On 17
November, the far-right journalist and polemicist Éric Zemmour went on trial in
Paris on charges of incitement to racial hatred. In September 2020, he had said
on the French news broadcaster CNews that unaccompanied foreign minors were
“thieves, they’re murderers, they’re rapists, that’s all they are. We must send
them back”. He did not appear at the trial and was represented by his lawyers,
who said the charges were unfounded. The verdict is expected to be delivered
next year.
Zemmour has
previously been convicted of incitement to racial hatred and religious hatred
and been tried and acquitted in several other cases. But the stakes are
different this time: the defendant is now a candidate for president of the
French republic. In early November, polls indicated that up to 17% of the
electorate would choose him for next president. This placed him behind only
Emmanuel Macron, suggesting that the second round of the election could be
between the two men. On 30 November, he officially announced his candidacy.
The rise of
Zemmour, 63, born to Algerian Jewish parents and raised in the banlieues of
Paris, is a media phenomenon in two ways. First, he has spent most of his
professional life working for newspapers and television, where he has been able
to exercise his vitriolic style and make reactionary arguments. Second, he has
benefited from extraordinary media coverage of his scandalous statements. Not
only was he on the cover of the conservative magazine Valeurs Actuelles five
times in the first nine months of 2021, but, according to the media observatory
Acrimed, he was mentioned 4,167 times in all French outlets in the month of
September alone: 139 times per day.
The
parallels with Donald Trump are clear, but there are important distinctions.
While Trump traded on vulgarity and was unconvincing when bragging about his
IQ, Zemmour is an intellectual who has studied at the elite university Sciences
Po, even if he failed the entrance exam to the National School of
Administration twice, and has authored several books, even if they comprise
somewhat repetitive essays. Zemmour’s rhetoric also seems to go beyond that of
Trump, although it is not known how far he would go in practice.
Indeed, he
has said that parents should only be allowed to give their children
“traditional” French names, approvingly referred to people comparing Nazism
with Islam, propagated the so-called “great replacement” theory and argued that
employers have a right to turn down black or Arab candidates. He believes that
political power should belong to men and that women’s role should be to have
and raise children. He has claimed to be on the side of General Bugeaud, who
massacred Muslims during the colonisation of Algeria, has contended that
Marshal Pétain saved Jews during the second world war, and would like the death
penalty to be reinstated. His overarching narrative is reversing France’s
supposed national decline, which featured again in the video announcing his
candidacy.
To
understand the rise of someone with such extremist views, it is important to
recognise the changing dynamics within the French right, as well as the way the
centre of political gravity in the country has moved rightwards. Zemmour’s rise
has coincided with a drop in support for Marine Le Pen of the Rassemblement
National – even if the sociological makeup of the two candidates’ supporters
differs, as women, young people and blue-collar workers are inclined toward Le
Pen, while men, older people and the upper middle class tend to favour Zemmour.
The failure
of Le Pen’s party at regional elections earlier this year seems to have marked
the beginning of its fall. “Everyone knows that she cannot win,” Zemmour said
in the following days, adding: “Even herself”. Paradoxically, through his
radically rightwing positions, Zemmour has helped to detoxify the Rassemblement
National, a goal Le Pen had set out to achieve ever since she became its
leader. Long considered beyond the pale in the political arena, she has now
gained respectability. Commenting on the low turnout in her own constituency at
the regional elections, Zemmour said that people no longer see much difference
between Le Pen and the president. “Marine Le Pen speaks like Emmanuel Macron,
Emmanuel Macron speaks like Marine Le Pen”, he said on CNews.
This
analysis may look biased, yet it holds a grain of truth: Macron’s interior
minister, Gérald Darmanin, in a debate with Le Pen in February 2021, argued
that she was “not tough enough” on Islam, adding that his government was more
consistent in the fight against immigration and defending secularism. In
response, Le Pen confirmed their ideological affinities, going as far as
admitting that she could have written much of his recent book, Le Séparatisme
Islamiste. Confused, the anchor who was conducting the discussion could only
say: “We have the impression that what you both say and think is the same.”
This mutual
understanding between someone whose surname is synonymous with the far right
and the most prominent figure of Macron’s “centrist” government is revealing.
On one hand, as she realised that her desire to leave the eurozone and appeal
to the left had destabilised her voting coalition, Le Pen has returned to
traditional conservative values. On the other, recognising that the left will
not get to the second round of the coming presidential elections and would always
prefer him to an explicitly rightwing candidate, Macron has increasingly sought
to please French conservatives. The brutal repression of the gilets jaunes
(yellow vests); the hardening of borders with Italy and Spain; and the
targeting of Muslims via an intolerant version of secularism were signs of this
evolution. So too a series of typically neoliberal measures abolishing the
solidarity tax on wealth, increasing the equivalent of national insurance,
liberalising the labour market and reducing unemployment benefits.
A great
shift to the right is currently under way in France. Together, the voting
intentions for Zemmour, Le Pen, Macron and whoever is the candidate for Les
Républicains equate to between 70% and 75% of the electorate. French public
discourse is increasingly characterised by Islamophobia, xenophobia and racist
and sexist ideas – what some call the “Zemmourisation of minds”. Arnaud
Montebourg, a former Socialist who is now a presidential candidate, even
proposed to block Western Union transfers to countries that “do not help” with
deportations – a policy that brought him sarcastic congratulations from
Zemmour, who observed that he must have been inspired by his YouTube channel.
Whether the
polemicist will become a serious contender is not yet known. Various signs
suggest that he may be at a turning point, with the simultaneous withdrawals
from his campaign of his main political champion, the former minister Philippe
de Villiers, and of his principal financial supporter, Charles Gave. But what is
certain is that his political rise has revealed the deeply worrying attraction,
for a significant number of voters, of an ideology whose sheer violence has no
equivalent in the past half-century.
Didier
Fassin is a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and
director of studies at the École des Hautes Études, Paris
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