From Palladium Magazine, February 2, 2022:
On the 5th of December, Éric Zemmour held his first official political rally. It was an intense affair, with 13,000 “Zemmouristes” assembled to listen to the newly minted candidate for the French presidency deliver a barnstorming speech in which he blasted the “eternal adolescent,” Emmanuel Macron. Despite some chaotic moments—several left-wing militants were punched by far-right opponents—the rally was a triumph for Zemmour, and it cemented his transformation from political commentator to presidential candidate. Zemmour is a descendant of ethnically Berber Jews from Algeria. Once, this would have made his new position as a leading politician on the French far-right unthinkable. Times have changed even in these political quarters.
Zemmour held his rally in the Parisian suburb of Villepinte, a favorite rendezvous point of all the historic figures of the right, from Jacques Chirac to Nicolas Sarkozy. But Zemmour, a former political journalist who knows both of those men personally, does not belong to what remains of the center-right Gaullist party, now known as Les Républicains. Instead, he blasts its leadership for betraying the French right. With a small cadre of dedicated supporters, Zemmour launched his own presidential campaign, riding high on the massive commercial success of his latest book, La France n’a pas dit son dernier mot (in English, France Has Not Said Its Final Word). Despite growth in his campaign’s numbers, Zemmour remains outflanked in the polls by French President Emmanuel Macron, the center-right Valérie Pécresse, and rival far-right leader Marine Le Pen. His rejection numbers are higher than any of these opponents.
And yet, amid this electoral jockeying, Zemmour’s views are not just popular among the population but increasingly reflect a turn within the French political establishment itself. This Zemmourization is most evident on the flashpoint issues Zemmour himself calls the “four I’s”: immigration, identity, insecurity, and Islam. France’s politicians, including its current government, are steering sharply to the right to adjust to this new political reality. While a Zemmour presidency still seems unlikely, his ideas will shape France’s politics for years to come.
The Cassandra of France’s Death
Zemmour believes France is on the verge of extinction. It is an existential dread that can be found in Michel Houellebecq’s novel Soumission, published in 2015 on the day of the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack. Set in the near future, an Islamist politician wins the presidential election, sparking a mass exodus of French Jews toward Israel. This fictional account already reflects a reality in France: the number of French Jews making aliyah to Israel has accelerated in the past two decades. Houellebecq’s main character, a white agnostic French man, comes to the realization that “there isn’t an Israel for people like me,” and ends up embracing the new Islamist order in France. It is a thought that haunts Zemmour, who argues that the 2022 presidential election is France’s last chance before demographic trends become overwhelming and any prospect of maintaining its republican political order disappears.
Zemmour endorses the concept of the “Great Replacement,” developed by the far-right intellectual Renaud Camus. It refers to the argument that political elites are using immigration to progressively substitute native Europeans with immigrants, especially those from the Middle East and Africa. Zemmour believes that France will face a civil war in the near future—or at the very least, some form of profound ethnic and religious partition—if the vast demographic change that has occurred over the past 50 years is not checked.
One of his most ardent beliefs is that Islam will never be compatible with French culture. Pointing to the rise of France’s Muslim population, which is believed to comprise between 6 and 10% of the country, Zemmour has argued for years that a clash of civilizations exists within France itself. He recently capitalized on a study by France Stratégie, an institution under the authority of the Prime Minister, that showed that the share of non-European immigrants and their children in French cities has been surging in the past decades. The proportion of non-European youths in the Parisian banlieues of Clichy-sous-Bois has risen to 84% and has become as high as 61% even in the relatively provincial city of Limoges.
The term “Great Replacement” taps into a larger cultural and physical insecurity in France. Since 2015, hundreds of public figures have been living under close police protection over their criticism of political Islam, a list that includes Instagram influencers, philosophers, Charlie Hebdo journalists, prominent ex-Muslims who have left their religion, and Zemmour himself. Over the past decade, those killed by Islamic fundamentalists include priests, journalists, and teachers. Tactics for these killings have included beheadings, mass shootings, and suicide bombers. The fear of a Lebanonization of France looms large and is no longer unique to the far-right.
The Zemmourization of Public Opinion
Zemmour’s own career is a marker of how open the French population has become toward narratives of societal crisis. While only 12-18% officially back him in the presidential race, both his books and his media presence enjoy a much wider audience. He has sold around 300,000 copies of his 2014 political tract Le Suicide français, and his latest book, published in 2021, has already sold over 200,000 copies. Unlike their equivalents in the U.S., the books French political leaders put out actually have a popular readership. In 2016, it was Macron himself who gave France one of that year’s best-sellers with his book Révolution, which sold around 200,000 copies—the same as Zemmour’s latest release. Zemmour has also built his brand as a public commentator on television: his talk show boosted ratings on the CNEWS network that hosted it, rising from 270,000 viewers in 2019 to 852,000 in 2021. Rival networks now invite Zemmour-adjacent commentators such as Le Figaro’s Eugénie Bastié or Valeurs Actuelles’s Geoffroy Lejeune.
Polls continually identify high levels of support for Zemmourian positions among the French populace. This includes topics like stopping immigration from Muslim-majority countries, perceived judicial lenience, and even support for the “Generals’ Letter” in which 20 retired generals and around 1000 members of the military declared that France faced a threat of civil war.
This convergence between Zemmourian ideas and French public opinion is not confined to the center-right. A recent Harris Interactive poll concluded that 67% of the general population are concerned to some degree about the idea of a “Great Replacement,” including 61% of supporters of La Republique en Marche (LREM), Macron’s political party. When asked whether they believed such a development would actually occur, 61% of the general population and 52% of LREM supporters responded that they did. The mainstream of French society—including the Macronist base—has shifted toward a consensus that, only a few years ago, was too radical even for Marine Le Pen to endorse publicly....
....MUCH MORE
Also at Palladium, December 14, 2018:
A Promenade with the Gilets Jaunes in Paris
Which reminds me, now that winter is here you may want to swap-out your vest for a Louis Vuitton puffy jacket:
Perhaps over a Louis Vuitton-canvas + leather bullet-resistant vest:
Possibly also of interest, January 1, 2024's:
French Politics From New Left Review
From the former editorial director of Le Monde diplomatique, Serge Halimi at New Left Review....
