Eric Zemmour
With an assault rifle and stinky finger into the election campaign: France’s Donald Trump wants to become president
This gesture caused outrage: Presidential candidate Eric Zemmour shows the finger
© Nicolas TUCAT / DPA
France will elect a new president next year. There is already one candidate – and it is controversial: Eric Zemmour. He fears an “exchange” of the European population by Muslims and wants to ban foreign first names. Many therefore compare him to Donald Trump.
The finger almost cost him his candidacy. When the right-wing extremist publicist Eric Zemmour recently said goodbye after a visit to Marseille, he had allowed himself to be carried away in the gross gesture that aroused more outrage in France than his two convictions for sedition.
But Zemmour decided to flee forward and announced his presidential candidacy for the April 2022 election by video message on Tuesday. “I’ve decided to take our fate in my hands,” said Zemmour in the video. “It is no longer time to reform France, but to save it.”
Many French people would “no longer recognize their country,” said the 63-year-old. In his video message he put himself in the limelight in front of a wall of books made of dark wood and antique-looking tomes. As things stand, Zemmour will run against incumbent Emmanuel Macron in April, who is currently 25 percent, but has not yet declared his candidacy.
Muslims are Eric Zemmour’s enemy
His real rival, however, is the right-wing populist politician Marine Le Pen, whom he temporarily overtook in the polls before he was officially a candidate. In the meantime, at around 15 percent, it is well behind Le Pen, who comes to 19 percent.
If the two finally agree that only one of them will start the race, things could be tight for Macron. The Green Yannick Jadot and the socialist Anne Hidalgo are bobbing about in the single-digit polls, the conservative Republicans want to choose their candidate on Saturday.
Zemmour has made a name for himself as a journalist, book author and talk show guest with provocative ideas. He has a predilection for verbally hitting Muslim immigrants and has had around 15 legal proceedings. Almost two weeks ago, the public prosecutor demanded a fine of 10,000 euros for denigrating underage migrants as “thieves, murderers and rapists” in a TV debate.
In October, while visiting a security trade fair, Zemmour pointed an assault rifle at the journalists accompanying him – “Just for fun,” as he said with a grin into the cameras.
“France’s Donald Trump” receives support from the right
He represents the myth of the “great exchange”, which is widespread in right-wing extremist circles, according to which the European population is supposedly replaced by Muslim migrants and their descendants. For Zemmour, the headscarf and Dschellaba are “uniforms of an occupying army”, and he wants to forbid foreign first names. Because of his statements, his attitudes and also his career, some compare Zemmour with the former US President Donald Trump.
Zemmour himself comes from a Jewish Algerian family who emigrated to France during the Algerian War. He grew up in the Parisian suburbs and in an immigrant district of the capital. He tried in vain twice to enter the ENA elite administration college, then he became a journalist.
The cheekier and more radical he appeared, the more successful he was. For a while, he was able to spread his contentious views every day on an hour-long debate program on the highly conservative CNews. He also received prominent support from Jean-Marie Le Pen, who is disappointed with his daughter’s milder course, and from Marion Maréchal, the rival niece of the presidential candidate.
“The change from polemicist to candidate did not work”
Zemmour is planning his first major election campaign event on Sunday in the Zenith concert hall in Paris. But the closer the deadline got, the more insecure the candidate seemed to become. During his visit to Marseille last week, he did not give a good picture – hostile to left-wing demonstrators, surrounded by security forces, supporters were hardly to be seen. The finger out of the car window, for which he later apologized half-heartedly, was the ugly end to an inglorious appearance.
Marine Le Pen stated dryly: “The change from a polemicist to a candidate did not work.” She called on Zemmour to join her and his constituencies.