On 6 October, an opinion poll made French politics jump. Eric Zemmour , the nationalist intellectual, advocate for the defense of the identity of his country, opponent of “declinism” and proud of his Jewish-Berber roots, born in Algeria, but French down to the innermost fibers of his soul, and with 17%, behind Emmanuel Macron and ahead of Marine Le Pen . A month ago he was not yet a “presidential”, today, a few days after the official announcement (still in doubt) and considered the most formidable opponent of the outgoing president in the race for the Elysée that will end in the spring of next year.
The surge in the polls unleashed the French press which launched itself at Zemmour with an unusual fury, accusing him of anti-Semitism (he is a Jew!), Of xenophobia, of colonialism, and of everything that can be understood in the universal accusation of “fascism “. An intolerant campaign that did not stop even in the face of Zemmour’s legitimate criticisms of “ethnic substitution”, the danger of the hegemony of Islamism in France, European cultural decadence, single thinking and “politically correct”.
Not a reasoned, albeit legitimately negative, evaluation of his ideas has manifested itself in recent weeks in French newspapers and on the many talk shows, but only an unanimous insult on the part of left-wing commentators and numerous moderates, even though Zemmour defines himself as a conservative and Gaullist. He is thrown violently into the wickedness of racism even though in his books and articles there is not even a hint of discrimination, but there is only the well-founded concern that Muslim religious fanaticism is dangerous, like the bloody facts. of the news attest.
The sixty-three-year-old intellectual, capable of enchanting young people and reviving a large part of the lepenist electorate, curiously looks more to the legislative elections to be held next June than to the presidential elections. And he shapes his organization not as an electoral committee, but in the form of an aggregation of subjects that could be useful to him in view of the presidential challenge.
The Association des Amis d’Eric Zemmour, which was established as a real political party, is actually taking action in order to offer a political perspective to the French by bringing together different but autonomous components in a large right, in order to contribute to the conquest of ‘National Assembly. The militants wear bright T-shirts with the words “Faites le Zemmour, pas la guerre”. And they propose to the right under construction the “three thirds” rule, that is to say the composition of the lists with a third coming from the Republicains, a third from the Rassemblement national of Le Pen and a third detached from the parties, in short, with a new profile.
And the strategy identified to overcome the divisions and put Macron in difficulty and out of the game the left which, in addition to the old communistJean-Luc Melenchon , has nothing else to field but the ecologists and small groups of Trotsky matrix. The socialists deserve a separate speech, having partially recovered from the debacle of four years ago, they propose the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo , who is betting everything on a vast project of “reconstruction” of the capital in view of the 2024 Olympics to hope to overcome the first round: this is an illusion, of course.
But the political effervescence does not stop at “everyone against Zemmour”. We equip ourselves to change structures that no longer respond to popular expectations.
Former Prime Minister Eduard Philippe, mayor of Le Havre, for example, has created a new party, Horizon, not hostile to Macron, but still not very close: it could gather the disappointed of En Marche! and bring them as a dowry to the president: a strategy not to be underestimated.
The post-Sarkozysti republicans who line up in the presidential elections Xavier Bertrand , winner of the primary, and most of all Marine Le Pen, whose popularity is waning, not having decided yet whether to take up old radical themes that are not very convincing in the face of refinement, see Zemmour as a dangerous competitor. cultural heritage of Zemmour, who enjoys the sympathy of the clan headed by Jean-Marie Le Pen and supported by his niece Marion, or cross the ford of moderatism with the almost certainty of becoming marginal.
“There is a French soul”, he claimed in September 2018, in an interview with Valeurs Actuelles Zemmour when he was only a polemicist and a proud historian in claiming his complex origins gathered in the no less complex identity of the country than as a “pied noir ”would have been his since 1962, after the Algerian war. And that soul, in recent years has expanded in books and public interventions to the point of summarizing in the theorization of a “French destiny” – the famous title of one of his volumes – the vision of a society that opposes decadence by recognizing and rediscovering the own roots. Roots, argues Zemmour, uprooted since 1789, by the Great Revolution inspiring all the subversive movements that culminated in 1968 when our era was drawn.
“France – writes Zemmour in his most evocative book, The French Suicide – is the sick man of Europe. Economists evaluate its loss of competitiveness. Essayists discuss his decline. Diplomats and the military quietly complain about its strategic downgrading. Psychologists are alarmed by his pessimism. Pollsters measure their desperation. Beautiful souls denounce its turning in on itself. Young graduates go into exile. The more Francophile foreigners are worried about the deterioration of his school, his culture, his language, his landscape, even his cuisine. France is scary. France is frightened. France is less and less pleasant; France no longer loves each other. Sweet France changes into bitter France; unhappy as God is in France
”.
The conclusion could not be more painful: “The French no longer recognize France”. But France, as the title of her most recent book states, “has not yet said its last word”. This is what Zemmour hopes, who is unlikely to cross the threshold of the Elysée. After all, his aim is another: to condition French politics through ideas by making use of a strong Rassemblement that directs the policy of a halved president such as Macron could be at the National Assembly.
However, if the French right managed to bring together its many souls, something epochal could happen. Macron when he entered the fray did not have a party, but strong powers that supported him by animating his movement.
Today, in France, at the end of a dull and contradictory presidency, the only recognized strong power is the people, made up mostly of young people and a bourgeoisie with no more points of reference. Those who believe that the health cordon deployed to block the way for the right-wing candidate still counts on the ballot. The communists, the ecologists, the socialists (reduced to a minimum) will not offer their electoral miseries to Macron. And then
then anything can happen. Without arousing surprise.
(Photo: Twitter @ZemmourEric)
