France

The terrible twins of the French far right vilify each other in public. But they need one another.

PARIS — The proposal of far-right nuptials came unprompted, as Marine Le Pen was touring a fair in the town of Vesoul, near National Rally heartlands in eastern France.

“If you could marry Eric …” a supporter cheekily suggested.

Le Pen laughed, then grimaced at the idea of tying the knot with far-right TV pundit-turned-candidate Eric Zemmour.

The National Rally leader has little immediate appetite for such an arranged marriage, but it’s a political match that would trigger alarm among the other runners in April’s presidential election. Together, she and Zemmour would win a third of the electorate, according to POLITICO’s poll of polls.

If they don’t join forces, they could scupper each other’s hopes. In the French political system, the two candidates with the most votes in the first round of voting face off in a run-off. Both Zemmour and Le Pen run the risk of splitting the far-right vote and canceling each other out.

The individual who attacked Eric Zemmour is called Valentin Abdelmajid B., according to a source close to the candidate. Aged 27, he was born in Colombes. He was taken into police custody for willful violence with premeditation

He said he tripped… At the police station, the suspect reportedly first explained that he had tripped, then confronted with the videos, claimed that it was not him.

Aggression, Molotov cocktails, apology for terrorism: how Eric Zemmour’s opponents disrupted his first meeting

Sunday December 5 sounded like the first big meeting of Eric Zemmour’s presidential campaign. By launching his party “Reconquest”, the essayist, now a candidate since November 30, released his first proposals, such as the abolition of “land rights” . But his first meeting which was held in Villepinte (Seine-Saint-Denis) was punctuated by numerous violence, before and during his speech.

Before his entry on stage, outside, many far left activists and antifas had met in order to disrupt the event. Visibly present to fight, 39 people were arrested before the speech was delivered. Among them, eleven had “Molotov and acid cocktails” on them, a police source told Current Values . On social networks, calls to come “sabotage” the meeting had been launched. The day before, the socialist president of the General Council of Seine-Saint-Denis had already tried to ban the holding of the meeting.

Despite my many criticisms, large and small, of Zemmour, I would vote for him were I a French citizen.

What to make of Éric Zemmour, the just-declared candidate for president in France in 2022?

His last name in Arabic means, perhaps suitably for an intellectual, honking, as what ducks and car horns do. His parents fled Algeria and he openly identifies as a Jew but presents himself as the representative of traditional Catholic Deep France and the scourge of immigrants and Islam.

He adopts positions on Jewish issues so extreme that France’s Chief Rabbi Haim Korsia called him an antisemite. He’s been twice found guilty of hate speech and wears these condemnations proudly. His anti-feminist positions are antediluvian. He’s pro-Russian and anti-American.

French far-right pundit Eric Zemmour announced on Tuesday that he will run for president in next year’s election, staking his claim in a video peppered with anti-immigrant rhetoric and warnings France must be saved from decline.

Zemmour, 63, is the most stridently anti-Islam and anti-migrant of the challengers seeking to unseat President Emmanuel Macron in the April 2022 vote.

His formal entry into the race — anticipated for weeks — adds another element on the far-right to the campaign, alongside its traditional leader Marine Le Pen. But it remains to be seen if he will maintain the momentum of recent weeks.

He speaks in newspaper columns: press his opinion button and he’s off. His eloquence is almost hypnotic

Éric Zemmour looks down at a copy of The Spectator and cocks his eyebrows at the unflattering cartoon of him on the cover. He decides he doesn’t care. “It takes a lot to offend me, you know,” he says. He then leafs through the magazine making polite and appreciative noises. “Ah, Doooglas Murray!” he exclaims. “I like Doooglas Murray very much. We’ve exchanged ideas.”

Zemmour is in London as part of his still undeclared campaign to be the next president of France — to curry favor with and raise money from the many French voters who live in the capital. But the British Establishment has given him a cold reception. Mayor Sadiq Khan said he wasn’t welcome. The Royal Institution canceled his event. The UK government ordered Conservatives to call off meetings with him. That could be because Boris Johnson hopes to repair badly damaged relations with Emmanuel Macron, the man Zemmour wants to eject from the Élysée Palace. Or it could just be that Mr Z is considered so right wing as to be toxic.

The rumor that a Jew making racist and anti-Semitic remarks could be a candidate in France’s presidential election of spring 2022 has crossed the country’s borders. Worse, the rumor is that this supposedly racist, anti-Semitic Jew, Éric Zemmour, is buoyed by polls that forecast him as a very possible second-round candidate against France’s current President Emmanuel Macron.

Sacrebleu! How could such a thing have happened? Is Zemmour really a racist? Is he carried by a wave of the extreme right, as many on the left suggest? Is France on the verge of tipping over into fascism?