It was a virtual certainty, it is now official. After a false suspense of nearly four months, Eric Zemmour has finally announced his candidacy for the French presidential election of 2022.
The 63-year-old polemicist made his announcement Tuesday in a ten-minute YouTube video that seems to come straight out of the 1940s. Sitting between old books and period microphone (nod to the appeal of June 18 from General de Gaulle?), he delivered a message with a dramatic tone, against a backdrop of images of violence and disorder, punctuated by the 2e movement of the 7e Beethoven symphony.
A deliberately outdated staging, which best fits his nostalgic vision of a country that he considers in decline, even in “decadence”.
Invoking Joan of Arc, Notre-Dame, Concorde, Jean Gabin, Johnny Hallyday and other ultra-patriotic references, Zemmour explains that he is running for the Elysee to “save France”.
From whom? Enough to ? The answer is quite clear.
His speech, resolutely populist, attacks Muslims, his pet peeve, but also “elites, well-meaning”, professors, trade unionists, journalists and even supporters of “gender theory”, who propose a “Islamo-leftist” vision of the world.
Stirring up a “feeling of dispossession”, he castigates “the tyranny of minorities” and calls on “the majority” to regain control of the nation.
Identity nail
“Do you feel like a stranger in your own country? Are you exiled from within? »We can be reassured. Him president, “our daughters will not be veiled, our sons will not be subjected”, he says, expressly regretting a “third worldization” of the country, “aggravated by immigration”.
Nothing new for this media star famous in France. The former newspaper columnist Le Figaro and the CNews TV channel hit the same point of identity as in its books and its numerous media interventions.
However, the formalization of his candidacy comes at a strange moment.
After polls that placed him ahead of his main rival on the far right, Marine Le Pen, the star columnist had been in sharp decline for a few weeks. Not to mention his recent missteps, like that middle finger addressed to a passerby or his controversial appearance at the Bataclan for the 6the anniversary of the November 13 attacks.
PHOTO MICHEL EULER, ARCHIVES ASSOCIATED PRESS
Marine Le Pen, Eric Zemmour’s rival
But that may also be why he chose to make his announcement on Tuesday. “My hypothesis is that he needed a second wind,” suggests Olivier Ihl, professor of politics at the University of Grenoble. “He couldn’t move forward. He was looking for air and that’s what he went for, because his success relies only on media exposure. ”
No chance of winning?
Nothing says, now, that Eric Zemmour will be able to carry out his project to the end.
Noting that he has currently only collected half of the 500 signatures required, Olivier Ihl underlines that Zemmour has “for the moment only a media application, but not yet administrative”. His file must be completed a month and a half before the first round of the election, scheduled for April 10.
According to some, his chances of victory would also be quite zero.
Eric Zemmour is seducing for the moment a fringe of the electorate of the National Rally, disappointed by the refocusing of a Marine Le Pen who wants to be more frequent. But he will have to flesh out his political program if he wishes to cast a wider net on the right.
“Zemmour is the man of a single theme, immigration. It’s a big niche at the moment, but it’s still a niche. He can’t just stand on it. It will have to answer other questions, such as purchasing power and the debt linked to the health crisis, which worry the French, ”observes Bruno Cautrès, researcher at CEVIPOF.
He embodies a candidacy of rupture, but has no capacity to unite. However, to win in a ballot of this nature, it is necessary to be able to unite.
Olivier Ihl, professor at the University of Grenoble
There remains the effect of novelty. The freshness of the inexperienced candidate. Zemmour plays the anti-system politician card, speaking on behalf of the declassified and forgotten France.
This tactic could have smiled on Donald Trump in the United States or Beppe Grillo in Italy.
Shake up the political conversation
But François Jost compares Zemmour rather to the humorist Coluche, who had made a remarkable intrusion into the presidential campaign of 1981, with his anarchogauchist speech.
“These are two people that nothing brings together, but Coluche was also someone quite populist”, underlines the media specialist, professor at the Sorbonne. “For them, all politicians were rotten, liars. They say they are going to bring something new. ”
Coluche had withdrawn from the race, while he claimed 16% of the vote. But his lightning passage had “upset the political conversation”, recalls François Jost. Even if he does not win, Eric Zemmour can probably say the same.
The response, in any case, is getting organized. Audiovisual media and personalities on Tuesday blasted the use of their images in Zemmour’s video, some threatening the polemicist with legal action, while unions called for demonstrations to “silence” the one who will hold his first official political meeting on Sunday, in Zenith in Paris, where there is also a fear of mayhem.
This is promising.
With Agence France-Presse