In the meantime, pollsters even saw him in the possible runoff election with incumbent Emmanuel Macron. Now Zemmour has officially declared his candidacy – but his polls are falling. Voters seem tired of the gloomy rhetoric.
The video that Zemmour published on social networks on Tuesday almost looks like a caricature of his right-wing identity positions. “I have decided to take our fate into my own hands,” says the 63-year-old. “It is no longer time to reform France, but to save it.”
Zemmour is sitting solemnly in front of a dark bookcase and speaking into an old-fashioned microphone. The production reminded the French media of photos of Charles de Gaulle, who called for resistance in radio messages from his exile in London during the Nazi occupation.
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“We have to give power back to the people, bring them back from the minorities who oppress the majority,” said Zemmour. He is directed at “people who no longer recognize their cities” and warned against a “disgraceful worldization of our country”. This is followed by images of violence in the streets, drug dealers, women with headscarves – accompanied by deep string sounds from the second movement of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony.
Permanent presence in the media causes unrest in politics
Zemmour cannot rely on a party apparatus. Apart from shrill warnings of foreign infiltration, he lacks a recognizable program. But his permanent presence in the media caused unrest in French politics.
Not only does it compete with the right-wing populist Rassemblement National – formerly Front National – whose leader Marine Le Pen lost to Macron in the second round in the 2017 presidential election.
With his discourse, he also shaped the bourgeois-conservative camp, whose presidential aspirants have tried to outdo each other with tough positions on the topics of immigration, security and cultural identity in recent months.
It is probably no coincidence that Zemmour announced his candidacy on Tuesday. Because on Wednesday, the conservative party Les Républicains begins with the selection of its candidate for the presidential election.
During the online vote, which lasts several days, the former EU negotiator for Brexit, Michel Barnier, the President of the Paris capital region, Valérie Pécresse, and the President of the Hauts-de-France region in northern France, Xavier Bertrand, will compete against each other.
Macron and Le Pen are ahead in the polls
Zemmour’s presidential ambitions may be big, but his campaign is facing just as big problems: According to French media reports, he is having difficulty collecting the 500 signatures from elected officials to be admitted to the first round of elections on April 10, 2022.
In addition, pollsters now only see him with twelve to 15 percent of the vote – depending on who the conservatives choose as a candidate. At the top of the polls is Macron, followed by Le Pen. The most likely scenario right now is a re-run of the 2017 runoff.
Zemmour comes from a suburb of Paris and attended the elite University of Sciences Po in the capital. The son of Jewish-Algerian immigrants did not pass the entrance examination to the ENA administration college, the ticket for the very powerful positions in France’s state and economy. Instead, he worked as a journalist, first for daily newspapers, then for television.
As a guest on talk shows, he was responsible for the particularly provocative positions. He published his first successful book in 2006. In it he complained about the “emasculation” of society.
In the past few years, the right-wing conservative news broadcaster C-News has offered him a platform. His remarks repeatedly preoccupied the courts. In 2018, for example, Zemmour was fined for speaking of an “invasion” with a view to immigration from Islamic countries.
He is currently facing another hate speech charge. In his television program on C-News, he described migrant children who come to France without parents or adult companions as “thieves, murderers, rapists”. Zemmour stayed away from the start of the trial in mid-November.
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