Credit Image: © Alexis Sciard/IP3 via ZUMA Press

Eric Zemmour will soon be a candidate for the April 2022 French presidential election. He isn’t an official candidate yet but there is no doubt that he will eventually declare. He is one of the most famous journalists in France, and is well known in Switzerland, Belgium, and other French-speaking countries. He has portrayed himself as a truth-teller in a news media dominated by timid, left-leaning journalists.

Mr. Zemmour wrote his first book on politics in 1986, and became a TV commentator in 1995. For 27 years, and despite several changes of TV programs (he has been fired over and over for his political views), he has been constantly in the mainstream media.

His positions are almost all controversial:

• He criticizes Islam, the Great Replacement, the colonization of France by foreigners, and has referred to non-white “scum.”
• He recognizes the existence of races (this is unusual in France).
• He speaks of French politicians of the last 40 years as “traitors.”
• He believes that Marshal Pétain (head of the Vichy regime under Nazi Germany) saved French Jews in exchange for handing over foreign Jews.
• He says there is a competition between Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews over who has been most persecuted and therefore worthier.
• He is the only European politician who has called the current pope “anti-white.”
• He argues that racial profiling is normal, and that if blacks are stopped twice as often as whites by the police, it is because they are twice likely to be criminals.

It has been a very long time since so much truth has been spoken in France. In fewer than 150 days, France could have an explicitly pro-white president, far different from Donald Trump. In a very large field of a dozen candidates, he has polled as high as second place, but has lately dropped back to third or perhaps fourth.

Activists from Generation Zemmour (GZ) put up campaign posters. (Credit Image: © Maxppp via ZUMA Press)

Who is Zemmour?

Eric Zemmour was born 64 years ago, in Montreuil just outside Paris, now a lawless area and an Afro-Islamic enclave. You can spend 20 minutes there in the middle of the day without seeing a single white person. Mr. Zemmour has therefore seen the great non-European replacement close up, from its beginnings in 1970.

His parents were Berber Jews from Algeria, who came to France during the Algerian War. He is grateful that because of French colonization, he was saved from having to spend his life in Algeria. Most people would not consider him white, but he once said that his mother had blue eyes and very fair skin. He has light-colored eyes and had curly hair before he went bald, and he has the typical look of someone from the mountains of Algeria. He defines himself above all as a Frenchman by spirit, or a Frenchman “of the branch,” a play on the words since the native French call themselves “French from the roots.”

Religiously, Mr. Zemmour is agnostic, a Jew who does not practice. He admits that he is not very sure what his religious beliefs are. His distant ancestors probably converted to Judaism, so he is therefore not necessarily a Jew in the ethnic sense.

Zemmour against the world

In his early career as a young political journalist, Eric Zemmour saw the submission to the Left of French right-wing politicians, even among those who became his friends and mentors. He, himself, refuses to submit to cultural and ideological dictatorship. He sometimes compares himself to Donald Trump, in that they are both dissident figures hated by the media. Nevertheless, he criticizes Mr. Trump for not reining in the power of big-tech social media companies, and for failing to stop their march towards global censorship. Comparing himself to Mr. Trump underscores his desire to win the presidency as an outsider and by challenging mainstream ideas.

Eric Zemmour (Credit Image: © Alexis Sciard/IP3 via ZUMA Press)

Mr. Zemmour realized early that his pro-French views made him an exception in French politics and journalism. This is a professional environment that is very hostile to his ideas, rejects him, and fights him relentlessly. French television has a morbid and self-defeating fascination with right-wing dissidents. The French media promote them in the vain hope that people will hate them more.

Citizenship

Mr. Zemmour’s background makes him a powerful advocate for assimilation — the idea that others can become French. French-style assimilation is his trademark, and he talks about it in almost every interview. One obsession for which he is famous is his demand that Muslims give their children French first names to prove their willingness to become like the natives. This is parallel to the Muslim demand that converts take a Muslim first name as a sign of their new identity. The general opinion, even on the Right, is that this is excessive and meaningless.

The racialist Right — practically non-existent in France — opposes this form of assimilation. However, Muslims would hate a requirement of this kind, and many would probably leave the country if it were applied. It is therefore a way to create maximum discomfort for our civilizational opponents.

Eric Zemmour fully understands Islamic conquest. A turning point for him was “the Creil headscarf affair” (Creil is a Paris suburbs) in 1989. Three Arab girls defied the rules of their high school by wearing prohibited headscarves. He understood that this was an outer sign of the huge simmering problem of Islamic conquest and that elected officials would back down.

Race

Mr. Zemmour considers himself white. In 2008, on Swiss television, he said to black leftist activist, Rockaya Diallo, “It’s obvious: I belong to the white race and you belong to the black race.” In France, such a statement from a public figure is unimaginable. Any person who made it today would be front-page news for two weeks, and would never live it down. This is because in France, race officially does not exist. Scientists take turns telling us this.

This assertion that he is white reflects his views of assimilation. In France, the Republican paradigm goes hand in hand with French-style universalism, which allows two conceptions of nationality: those who are French by blood and those who are “French by spirit,” who may be considered “French by adoption.” Mr. Zemmour regularly quotes the royalist historian Jacques Bainville, who said, “Better than a race, the French people are a nation.” By this standard he is French, according to the Republican conception. Nevertheless, Mr. Zemmour appears to know that large-scale assimilation is impossible.

Contradictions

In October 2018, Mr. Zemmour made a revealing statement in an interview with a French right-wing online newspaper. The journalist mentioned his demand that North African and black parents give their children European Christian names. She asked him whether this makes the African invasion more acceptable, by hiding it administratively. And does this not therefore make the Great Replacement even more dangerous and inevitable?

Mr. Zemmour replied:

You are right. I defend assimilation. But you are beginning with the next generation. You acknowledge that assimilation will not happen. You take an upcoming confrontation for granted. Therefore, we might as well know “who is who”. In reality . . . you may be right, and you have understood that I agree with you in reality.

Here is a video of his remarks — in French, of cousre, but with English subtitles.

It is not clear whether he is promoting assimilation or remigration — return to countries of origin — because assimilation is impossible. There seem to be two thoughts in his head, as is common in people confronted by a dilemma. He seems to be torn between the assimilation he hopes for, if time allowed, and the separation that is realistic within our current timeframe.

Eric Zemmour on stage with the title of his book behind him. (Credit Image: © Laurent Coust/SOPA Images via ZUMA Press Wire)

For all his lucidity, Eric Zemmour is not a racialist. He is an assimilationist, but he must painfully know in his heart that it probably won’t work. It is too late. In small numbers, it might have been possible, but the numbers are now too great.

However, if Mr. Zemmour is elected, there is no doubt that, unlike Donald Trump, he will consistently follow through on all the major points of his program. For a nation that is already deeply leftist, this is a shocking prospect. He would be a vital first step towards the salvation of France.