First let’s go back to 2017. I then subscribed de Volkskrant on the eve of the French presidential elections: “Should Macron reach the second round of elections with Marine Le Pen, he is almost certain of the overall victory because he can count on the support of the moderate left and right.” No sooner said than done. But I continued with a question, ‘How strong can a president be who is elected for what he is not? Doesn’t such a president only fuel polarization further?’
We are now five years later and the presidential elections are just around the corner. State of play: Emmanuel Macron is no longer a young, refreshing outsider, but the biggest and perhaps only real power factor in France today. There is indeed no shortage of polarization: the far-left has been trying for years to frame the social-liberal Macron as a ‘president of the rich’, while on the far-right he has received a remarkable new challenger alongside Marine Le Pen: Éric Zemmour.
Zemmour has been the polemical mouthpiece of far-right France since the early 1990s. Thanks to his many television appearances, where he throws his provocative statements into the world with a razor-sharp tongue, he has become an unprecedented phenomenon. Now that he’s run for the French presidency, moving from louse in the fur to claimant to the crown, it’s suddenly a lot harder to just switch to another TV channel when he starts raging. Suddenly it is important to know exactly what that man has to say and what inspires him.
Fortunately, you don’t have to watch television for that, because Zemmour is also a very prolific essayist and columnist. He was a political commentator for the big right-wing newspaper for a long time Le Figaro and has seventeen books to his name, including three novels and a large number of collections of collected columns. They are hammering largely on the same anvil. A trilogy of books with the adjective ‘français’ in the title is not coincidentally the most prominent: Melancolie française (2010), Le suicide français (2014), and especially destin francais (2018), a hefty essay perhaps best described as an ‘Alternative History of France’.
The well-known story of the extreme right
History, and especially the history of France, is Zemmour’s hobbyhorse, which he rides dexterously and eruditely. It’s the far-right’s well-known tale of the decline of French grandeur, illustrated by countless examples, with the author repeatedly attacking ‘established historiography’ – which he believes does nothing but falsify the truth. or obscure in the service of its ideological mission, which is to erase all traditional differences: between high and low, strong and weak, male and female and so on. ‘History is known to be written by the victors,’ says Zemmour, and that is his sombre message: the ‘universalists’ have won.
At least, won for the time being, because ‘France has not yet spoken its last word’, as the title of the book from September 2021 with which the polemicist (dressed on the cover in a moody blue presidential suit, against the background of a proudly waving French flag ) must have primed the minds for his upcoming presidential candidacy. His program is already more or less contained in the title: something that bears the name ‘France’ cannot be boxed and will be re-established under his inspired leadership. And instead of ‘a Republic without a people or nation, a Republic of principles and values without order or embodiment, without hierarchy or verticality’, it will finally regain an ‘ethnic, religious and cultural unity’ like the ‘resurrected Poland’. to be.
What would that look like in concrete terms? Perhaps as under the Ancien Régime: ‘People had the habit of accepting their social situation. They did not look up with regret and envy. They had it right in their little world. There was less confusion and tension. The Frenchman followed his friendly, sociable instincts that charmed so many foreign visitors. They all mention the national custom of singing happy, good-natured songs at the end of meals.’ But then, in 1789, the Revolution broke out: ‘In the name of liberty and equality, there is no longer any rank and no status. And therefore no honour.’ And Zemmour concludes: ‘Our society is nothing more than an assembly of equal, rival atoms.’
An echo of Houellebecq
Anyone who hears an echo of Houellebecq in it is not far off. The only, but life-size difference is that the author of Elementary Particles does not believe that the former ‘holistic society’ can ever be rediscovered – if it ever existed, ‘established historiography’ would add to it at lightning speed. But for Zemmour it is clear: all ‘foreign’ elements must be removed in order to allow France to be what it really is, in the precious essence that its history has bestowed on it. Namely a thoroughly Catholic nation, heir to the Roman Empire, which is not just in Europe, but is Europe: because of its location, because of its magnificent culture that sets a shining example for the entire continent and, above all, because of the pioneering role that she has long played in the fight against Europe’s eternal enemy, Islam.
‘When you change dominant religion, you change society. And therefore of land’, says Zemmour. It is not surprising that he named his political party Reconquête, after the famous Reconquista, the reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula from the Moors. “Medieval Europe understands that it is primarily Christian because it refuses to become Islamic,” he says. In fact, a similar mechanism plays a role within Christianity: it is precisely from its refusal to become Protestant that France has derived its stable identity over the centuries, according to Zemmour. It is not without reason that he presents the Catholic siege of the Protestant stronghold of La Rochelle in 1627-1628 (in which 22 thousand civilians died) as a great victory.
Reading Zemmour is an alienating experience. He writes well, formulates clearly, is intelligent and erudite, but his argument seems not so much to convince opponents as to make supporters cheer. The ‘established historiography’ has to suffer again and again, but at the same time it is of course a handy repoussoir, just like the ‘mainstream media’ are for Thierry Baudet and his associates: in the end it is not about historical truth, but about strengthening cohesion in our own community. ranks by creating and sustaining a powerful enemy image. The end justifies all means, in this case especially: falsification of history.
Debunking falsehoods
Under the title Zemmour contre l’histoire (‘Zemmour Against History’) an occasional collective of professional historians recently released a pamphlet debunking some of the blatant falsehoods and distortions of the brand-new presidential candidate, with the slogan: ‘Let the past lie to spread hatred in the present… and thereby create a horrific future.’ The powerlessness is unfortunately palpable: correcting facts and applying moral labels such as ‘racist’, ‘conspiratorialist’ and ‘misogynist’ is not very effective for someone who presents those labels as proof of his own right and who uses his own ‘alternative facts’. as a kind of shibboleth (see Donald Trump).
More effective, but much more time-consuming, it is not only to correct the facts and make a quick moral judgment, but also to show why Zemmour chooses these very facts and presents them this way. A good example of this approach is given by Laurent Joly in a recently published booklet on Zemmour’s treatment of the collaborationist Vichy reign of Marshal Pétain, La falsification de l’histoire – Éric Zemmour, l’extrême droite, Vichy et les juifs† Central to this is the claim by Zemmour (himself a Jew whose parents lost their French citizenship as a result of Pétain’s pro-German measures) that the Vichy regime helped deport the non-French Jews, but on the contrary protected the French Jews. .
The position of the established historiography is: first the non-French Jews were deported, later the deportation of French Jews also got underway, but it eventually came to a halt because the population and the French police did not cooperate. Even then, the persecution of the Jews was no longer a priority for the Germans: they were mainly concerned with the threatening invasion of the Allies in France. Zemmour’s claim that sacrificing the foreign Jews to save the French (who, he even says, thereby saving the remaining foreign Jews) was a strategy of Petain’s can easily be debunked. But the main question is: why is he even claiming this? And more generally, why is he so eager to revive the Vichy regime?
Vichy .’s example
Far-right politicians admire strong, authoritarian men like Petain was one and Putin is one, but that doesn’t explain it enough. A more logical explanation is that the Vichy regime, which, incidentally, practiced a real cult of personality with the old Marshal (whose image soon also adorned the French postage stamps instead of the ‘revolutionary’ Marianne), by means of a ‘National Revolution’ also of the leveling French Revolution of 1789. ‘Labour, family, homeland’ instead of ‘Liberty, equality, brotherhood’. Zemmour himself describes the Vichy reign as “the very last attempt to restore a hierarchical and terrestrial, corporatist and Catholic society”—earthly, because Protestantism chose the sea to swarm the world and its supposedly universal (moral and commercial) values.
Why is Zemmour a fan of Pétain and until recently also of Putin? Because such nationalist leaders think they can get the leveling genie of universal values back in the bottle. He describes with admiration how many nations (Poland, Hungary, Brazil, Russia, China) have struggled to regain their national pride and identity, while poor France is left behind. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has presented Zemmour and other far-right leaders with a major dilemma: on the one hand, it proves that newfound national pride and assertiveness are afraid of nothing, and on the other, the outrage of public opinion is too great to ignore.
All this will certainly help Emmanuel Macron, the president of the political center, in the upcoming elections. Still, it would be a big mistake to think that, thanks to Putin, France will be safe from nationalist, anti-European candidates like Zemmour for the foreseeable future. In 2027 Macron (because I’m guessing he will be re-elected) will no longer be allowed to participate, who will succeed him? Michel Houellebecq does with his new novel, Destroy, another prediction: it will be a weaker candidate put forward by Macron so that he himself can make another attempt in 2032 – à la Putin, so to speak. But Zemmour doesn’t appear in the entire book, and that’s not very reassuring.