TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 23 , 2021. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A
BY RICK NOACKnantes, france — Less than six
months before the French presi-
dential election, far-right provoc-
ateur Éric Zemmour has yet to
announce his candidacy. But the
possibility that he may run has
already upended the race, alarm-
ing moderate contenders and far-
right competitor Marine Le Pen
alike.
Zemmour is a political com-
mentator known for his treatises
on the decline of France. He has
contributed to the normalization
of views that used to be seen as
beyond the realm of decency. He
has also been convicted of provok-
ing racial hatred against Muslims
— and is on trial again this week
for describing unaccompanied
child migrants as “thieves,” “kill-
ers” and “rapists.”
In recent polls of voting inten-
tion, President Emmanuel Ma-
cron leads the race, but with only
about a quarter of the vote. Zem-
mour, meanwhile, has come close
to matching Le Pen’s support,
with numbers hovering in the
midteens. Analysts caution that
these early numbers can be vola-
tile. But if Zemmour maintains or
builds on his position, that could
give him a shot at reaching the
second round of the elections,
facing off against Macron.
For now, Zemmour is skipping
the hate-speech trial against him
and instead touring the country
with de facto campaign rallies,
framed as a promotion of his
latest book.
Arriving at an event in the
western city of Nantes, he was
cheered by about 1,700 people.
Some wore “Zemmour 2022” T-
shirts and jumped up from their
seats as he came into view.
“Daily life in Nantes has
changed,” he said, referring to
recent shootings in the city.
“No, we don’t want to live with
this,” he said, raising his voice and
drawing enthusiastic applause in
a city that in past elections has
been a bastion against the far
right.
While Zemmour took off his
slick suit jacket and nonchalantly
sat down on a bar stool onstage,
far-left protesters attempted to
storm the venue, pushing carts
from a nearby shopping center
into police cars, ripping Zem-
mour posters off walls and seek-
ing refuge behind a McDonald’s
playground after police officers
targeted them with tear gas.
Smoke hovered around the site.
Such physical and ideological
clashes could portend a tense pe-
riod in the country’s politics.
Zemmour’s opponents fear he
is using similar strategies — and
tapping into the same sentiments
— that helped Donald Trump win
the U.S. presidency. He feeds the
24/7 news cycle with a constant
stream of provocations: demand-
ing a ban on foreign-sounding
first names, complaining of an
“invasion” by migrants, blaming
“Islamic colonization” for crime
that makes life in some parts of
France “unlivable,” and demand-
ing that the country be returned
to its past glory. Recently, he
pointed a rifle at journalists at a
security fair and said, “The fun’s
over.”
But unlike Trump and Le Pen,
Zemmour also presents himself
as an intellectual. Speaking ele-
gantly, he quotes — and mis-
quotes — poets, scientists and
former leaders, weaving frag-
ments of history into his long
monologues that lay out a dark
and at times contradictory world-
view.
“It’s like Trump’s ‘Make Ameri-
ca Great Again,’ ” said Patrick
Weil, a French historian and critic
of Zemmour. “He’s manipulating
the French history.”
Weil cited Zemmour’s account
that the leader of the Nazi-era
Vichy regime protected French
Jews. And the 76,000 Jews de-
ported to concentration camps?
Those were foreign Jews who had
been living in France, sacrificed to
save the French ones, Zemmour
asserts.
It is true that Jews from else-
where in Europe had sought ref-
uge in France. But there is plenti-
ful evidence that the Vichy gov-
ernment made it a point to apply
antisemitic laws to all Jews re-
gardless of citizenship and will-
ingly collaborated in arrests and
deportations. Vichy leader
Philippe Pétain is not among
those recognized for saving Jews.
Le Pen’s party also has a historyof Holocaust revisionism, which
has made the party unsupport-
able for a segment of French vot-
ers. But in part because Zemmour
is himself Jewish — his parents
moved from Algeria to the Pari-
sian suburbs before the colony’s
war of independence — he has
succeeded in making once-fringe
opinions more accepted.
Zemmour did not respond to
an interview request.
When he last spoke with The
Washington Post, in 2018, he
warned of a coming “civil war”
between “those who do not wish
to abandon the identity of France,
which is to say its Christian, and
White, identity,” and those who
accept “the Islamization of
France.”
A historian Zemmour likes to
quote, Simon Epstein, recently
accused Zemmour of having a
“preference for excessive and
false” claims, adding that Zem-
mour had attributed conclusions
to him “that are his and not mine.”
Zemmour’s rise in the polls has
taken even some close observers
of French politics by surprise.
“A few months ago, one would
have hardly been able to imagine
that there might be a politicalspace for people who would be
even more radical than Le Pen,”
said Tristan Guerra, a researcher
at Sciences Po Grenoble.
Pierre Mathiot, director of the
Institute of Political Studies in
Lille, said Zemmour has gotten a
boost from Le Pen’s attempt to
rehabilitate her party, which has
disgruntled some of her core vot-
ers. Zemmour has benefited, too,
from “a real lack of leadership”
within the mainstream right.
Mathiot cautioned that Zem-
mour has struggled to build a
network of advisers and political
allies, which could curb his ambi-
tions.
Some competitors also hope he
will fade in the polls once he is
forced to put forward specific
electoral promises on a variety of
issues.
Legal scrutiny could pose fur-
ther problems; Zemmour’s lawyer
unsuccessfully tried to postpone
the hate-speech trial until after
the election.
But the booming applause at
Zemmour’s events is an indica-
tion that Trump-style discourse,
presented in an intellectual shell,
could still prove a powerful for-
mula in France.“Zemmour has political posi-
tions that are a lot more radical
than Le Pen’s, but at the same
time, he attracts a lot more sup-
port from the traditional right-
wing spectrum,” Mathiot said.
A recent analysis by the left-
leaning Jean-Jaurès Foundation
found that every fourth Zemmour
supporter who is likely to partici-
pate in next year’s elections once
voted for François Fillon, a more
mainstream presidential candi-
date and former French prime
minister. In a potential runoff
with Macron, Zemmour could
win as much as 45 percent of the
vote, according to some polls.
The noncandidate’s latest
book, titled “France Hasn’t Said
Its Last Word,” sold more than
160,000 copies in the first three
weeks after it was published. (By
comparison, former president
François Hollande’s book was
considered a success after selling
100,000 copies in three weeks in
2018.)
No other likely or confirmed
candidate had more interactions
on Facebook in October than
Zemmour, whose momentum is
aided by a small army of young
supporters, operating as “Généra-tion Z.”
“Our big advantage is that
we’ve understood how politics
functions on the Internet,” said
Matthieu Louves, 26, a pro-Zem-
mour activist who is still also
affiliated with the center-right
Republicans party.
Louves said he has long been
struck by Zemmour’s “ability to
put France’s problems into words,
without caring about left-wing
morality.”
Zemmour has suspended his
column in the right-leaning Le
Figaro newspaper. He also had to
give up a show on CNews — de-
scribed by some as France’s Fox
News — to comply with regula-
tions about media access for polit-
ical figures.
But like Trump, he has had an
outsize presence in political cov-
erage. In September, French
broadcasters mentioned him
more than twice as many times as
Le Pen.
There’s a sense that broadcast-
ers may be both feeding into and
thriving on the interest in Zem-
mour. In an open letter last
month, more than 150 French
journalists urged their colleagues
to stop being “complicit in ha-
tred.”
At the event in Nantes, people
appeared ready to discount the
things that might be deemed most
objectionable about Zemmour.
Cecile Herisse, a 76-year-old re-
tiree, said she likes Zemmour “a
lot,” even though she d isagreed
with one of his key proposals:
to halt legal migration to France.
Romain, 35, who spoke on the
condition that only his first name
be used, citing privacy reasons,
said he tends to align with the left
on social and economic issues,
but he could see voting for Zem-
mour to restrict immigration and
to limit the influence of “political
correctness” on French discourse.
Sitting on a bike outside the
venue, an 18-year-old who would
only give his first name, Thibauld,
said he had come to protest Zem-
mour’s presence but could under-
stand some of his appeal.
“We used to be very powerful,
and now it’s hard for people to
accept that we’re just another
small country,” he said.
“But France is a multicultural
country full of energy,” he said.
“That should be the guiding prin-
ciple.”
[email protected]Pundit draws comparisons to Trump as he upends French presidential race
Far-right commentator
could become Macron’s
most serious challengerVALERY HACHE/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
Éric Zemmour, center, speaks to reporters i n N ice last Thursday. He was on a tour to promote his new
book, “France Hasn’t Said Its Last Word,” holding events that serve as de facto campaign rallies.P0802 6x10.5C
wapo.st/impact