His intention is clear to run for president, and he announced it more than once, leaving only his formal candidacy. This is what the French media carry news about the electoral race that Eric Zemmour, the most controversial French journalist, plans to run next April.

Eric Zemmour, the most extreme right-wing face of the media scene, counts on sympathizers of anti-immigrant and anti-Muslims to support him in his access to the Elysée throne. He is racist in the eyes of the French judiciary, who convicted him more than once with this accusation. He considers “the Nazi regime is better for him than Islam” and justifies the crimes of the French occupation in Algeria. He is also the inspiring writer for the French White Terror Cells.

Zemmour towards the Elysee

Eric Zemmour has not yet officially announced his candidacy, but he has openly revealed his intention to run in the French presidential elections next year. He said he wanted to “unite the right” under his campaign, even though those “are afraid of him running for elections.” While he talked about motives for this, it is to prevent the “big transformation” of France into an “Islamic state.”

“If we do not prevent it now (that is, the conversion), half of France will be 2050 Islamic, and 2100 completely Islamic,” Zemmour said Saturday, August 28, in an interview with the right-wing “Objectif France” movement. While presenting himself as the only person who can prevent this, as the only competitor who can stand up to the leader of the French far-right, Marine Le Pen, because “everyone knows that Le Pen will never win the French presidency,” Zemmour stressed.

On the other hand, is he able to win? According to opinion polls, Zemmour is still far behind Le Pen, but a recent poll indicated that 7% of the French intend to vote for him if he officially runs in the elections. It is ahead of what appeared from the opinions of last June, which set the supposed percentage of his votes at 5.5%.

A candidate who prefers Nazism and hates Islam

Do not leave Zymour’s wheaten skin in doubt about his Maghreb origins. He was born into an Algerian Jewish family. He is known for his fierce and open hostility to Islam and immigrants, as he previously stated that “the Nazi regime is better for him than Islam.” He is one of the promoters of the “Great Transformation” theory, which incites against Muslim and immigrant minorities in European countries by promoting the idea that “Muslims are conspiring to transform these countries into Islamic emirates.”

This racist speech for which he was convicted more than once, most recently in 2020, when the Paris court sentenced him to a fine of 10,000 euros on charges of inciting hatred and promoting racist speech, for what he claimed on TV that Muslims living in France “are not only terrorist criminals.” Those who carried out the 2015 attacks, it is the former colonizers who are now trying to colonize their colony.”

And before that in 2014, he was also convicted of the same charges and fined 3,000 euros for saying in a newspaper interview: “I think we are heading towards chaos. This situation, in which we witness the presence of a people within a people, that is, Muslims within the French people, must lead us to chaos and civil war… where Muslims in the suburb are organizing on their way to separation. A statement that was considered hate speech at the time, but it is an exact copy of what Macron said in October 2020 when he spoke about the existence of “Islamic isolationism.”

Zemmour’s speech is an inspiration for far-right groups, especially armed ones, as “the leaflets and slogans that were confiscated when the suspects were arrested (of belonging to white terror cells), most of them were inspired by the inciting speech of journalist Eric Zemour,” according to a previous investigation by Médiapart.

“We are in the midst of avenging the Algerian war,” Zemmour said in 2016 on LCI. The court says that this incitement finds great resonance among right-wing armed groups, and provokes criminal threats against the country’s Muslims. One of them, a few weeks ago, threatened to kill the leader of the “France Proud” movement, Jean-Luc Milanchamp, who responded at the time that “it is about a famous influencer within the far-right circles, and the journalist Eric Zemmour has previously stated that he is his friend.”

TRT Arabic