Rod Dreher demonstrates an unsurprising political naiveté regarding Erich Zemmour!
The Times has reported on Zemmour:
Wednesday December 01, 2021 by David Aaronovitch
Headline: French firebrand Éric Zemmour is a danger to Britain too
Sub-headline: British fans of the controversial presidential candidate think I want to ‘no-platform’ him but they’re wrong: I want to expose his apologist views
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/french-firebrand-eric-zemmour-is-a-danger-to-britain-too-z5g6np2dn
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December 1, 2021 by Charles Bremner
Headline: Éric Zemmour announces presidential run
Éric Zemmour, the radical right polemicist, has formally entered the presidential race, vowing to save France from destruction at the hands of Muslims, immigrants and criminals abetted by “the elites”.
Zemmour, 63, who has upset the political landscape with a three-month undeclared campaign, made his announcement in an apocalyptic ten-minute video that intercut clips of riots, Muslims and Africans with shots of France’s past glory. Sitting in a low-lit book-lined study, he read a sombre text before a 1940s-style microphone in what appeared to be an imitation of de Gaulle’s wartime broadcasts.
“I have decided to run in the election so that our children and grandchildren do not suffer barbarity, so that our girls won’t be veiled . . . so that they can inherit a France known to our ancestors,” he said. “It is no longer the time to reform France but to save it.
“Immigration is not the cause of all our problems but it aggravates them all,” Zemmour declared, although the long-serving television pundit mentioned little else. He returned repeatedly to his belief in the “great replacement”, a popular conspiracy theory that “the elites” are filling up the country with foreigners to push aside the white French population.
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https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/eric-zemmour-announces-presidential-run-jjm5mrbg3
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November 18, 2021 by Adam Sage
Headline: Royal Institution cancels Éric Zemmour event in London
Éric Zemmour, the far-right pundit expected to run for the French presidency, will arrive in London today in search of campaign funding amid deepening controversy over his divisive image.
Zemmour, 63, a political novice whose rise has drawn comparisons with Donald Trump, faced a setback in his attempt to use the two-day visit to gain an international stature when the Royal Institution cancelled a booking to hold a rally in its theatre tomorrow.
The institution, founded in the 18th century to promote science and research, made the cancellation after “following the normal process of due diligence”, which was taken in Paris as a reference to the protests that have greeted Zemmour’s appearances in provincial French towns and cities.
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https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/royal-institution-cancels-eric-zemmour-event-in-london-cmxb0769k
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November 21 2021 by Matthew Campbell
Headline: France’s far-right firebrand Eric Zemmour woos expat vote
Eric Zemmour, the divisive rising star of the French far right, has found a new political punch bag besides the socialists and Muslim immigrants he harangues in his screeds about the civilisational decline of “la belle France”. It is Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London.
The surprise populist contender for next year’s presidential election had barely sat down for an interview at the Hotel Café Royal in London yesterday before he let rip at the mayor for being “sectarian” and “totalitarian” — and trying to silence him.
That Khan is a target for this vitriol is not altogether surprising. Zemmour was convicted of inciting racial discrimination in 2011 and hatred of Muslims in 2018. But that hasn’t stopped him: a Paris court tried him in absentia last week for “inciting hatred” with a rant on his TV show in which he referred to immigrant youths as “thieves, murderers and rapists” who should be deported.
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https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/frances-far-right-firebrand-eric-zemmour-woos-expat-vote-lmgq57rhq
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In The Telegraph:
24 November 2021 by Anne-Elisabeth Moutet & Steven Edginton
Headline: Eric Zemmour: Macron’s nemesis taking France by storm
Sub-headline: As the French election heats up Éric Zemmour could do more than rock France; he could take down the EU
I find him courageous”. This was the take of one Parisian when asked what he thought of Éric Zemmour, the conservative polemicist with his eyes on the French Presidency. Zemmour’s marmite campaign has ruptured French politics and may have ended Marine Le Pen’s hopes of becoming President altogether. To find out who Éric Zemmour is, and whether he could win the French Presidency, watch the full film above.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/eric-zemmour-macrons-nemesis-taking-france-storm/
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27 November 2021 by Justin Stares
Headline: Eric Zemmour pictured giving the finger to member of public on promotional tour
Sub-headline: The Right-wing firebrand was captured in a car returning the offensive gesture received from an unknown woman
Eric Zemmour’s journey towards the French presidential elections took a lively turn on Saturday as the prospective candidate exchanged middle-finger salutes with a passerby.
Mr Zemmour, who was on a two-day visit to Marseille, was captured in a car by an Agence France Presse photographer while returning the offensive gesture received from an unknown woman. For good measure, he told the woman that his finger was designed to go “very deep”.
He later explained to his entourage that the salute “happened on its own”.
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https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2021/11/27/eric-zemmour-pictured-giving-finger-member-public-promotional/
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The Financial Times of November 19, 2021 by Victor Mallet and Leila Abbo
Headline: Eric Zemmour, the polemicist shaking up French politics
Sub -headline: His pessimistic vision and warnings about immigration are appealing to many centre-right voters
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While Trump wanted to “build the wall” to keep out immigrants from Latin America, Zemmour has suggested banning foreign first names such as Mohammed and Kevin. And while Trump wanted to “make America great again”, Zemmour warns of the decline of a Judeo-Christian nation under assault from immigration, feminism and liberalism; one of his books is called The Suicide of France.“He touches a pretty deep anguish,” says François-Xavier Bellamy, a member of the European Parliament for the conservative Les Républicains party. “It’s a pessimistic vision, declinist if you will, but not unfounded.”
In a country with the largest populations in western Europe of both Muslims and Jews, Zemmour’s inflammatory language and his talent for setting the agenda are regarded as extremely dangerous on the left and in the centre of French politics — particularly since he has won the support of supposedly centre-right voters long wary of Le Pen.
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https://www.ft.com/content/4ae73c59-92b6-40ac-b9f8-970fc01bbd2a
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From December 10, 2014 by Tony Todd:
Headline: French bestseller says Vichy regime ‘tried to save French Jews’
Sub-headline: A controversial French journalist and historian’s latest bestseller claims that the collaborationist wartime Vichy government's role in the Holocaust has been misunderstood, and that it “tried to save” French Jews from the Nazi death camps.
“The suicide of France: the 40 years that defeated France” is Eric Zemmour’s scathing attack on the failures of the country’s leadership and its elites since the end of the Gaullist era in 1969.
Alongside economic stagnation, immigration has killed France’s cultural identity, writes Zemmour, a popular if controversial figure whose outlook is seen as drifting ever closer to the far-right. In a review of his book this week, left-leaning daily Libération opens its article calling him “sexist, homophobic and Islamophobic”.
Perhaps most controversially, Zemmour states that the dark days of Vichy France during the Nazi occupation are both misunderstood and misrepresented, victim of an historical orthodoxy that views everything about the collaborationist regime in terms of “absolute evil”.
In particular, Zemmour challenges American historian Robert Paxton, whose 1972 book “Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order” opened French eyes to the realities of the Vichy regime and its complicity in the Nazi-led Holocaust.
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https://www.france24.com/en/20141012-french-bestseller-vichy-save-jews-zemmour
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As early as 2014, Zemmour was an apologist for Vichy, and Philippe Pétain. Mr. Dreher is an American Provincial, who reads Zemmour a-historically : outside of the political history of France. Robert Paxton’s history “Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order”, has, what might be considered a companion volume, in ‘Memory, the Holocaust, and French Justice: The Bousquet and Touvier Affairs’ edited by Richard Joseph Golsan and translated by Lucy Golsan. It is a valuable collection of essays, that explores aspects of Vichy from various authors.
Old Socialist