Here is Eric Zemmour again! After several weeks of discretion, he resumed speaking on BFMTV, Monday May 2, at the microphone of Bruce Toussaint. The opportunity to come back at length on his defeat, to explore the causes. But besides, was it really a defeat? “Will history prove me right even if the elections and the voters proved me wrong. I think that this election did not prove me completely wrong. That the French told me: ‘Your subject c is important it is important but in truth we will think about it later, it is their historical choice and you know the people are not necessarily right?
“People are not necessarily right”, “this election did not prove him wrong”, and even, “history will prove him right” : if some feared for the morale of Eric Zemmour, I think they can be reassured! On the merits, what he says is not without foundation: the heart of an election is not to know who is right and who is wrong. This, only a retrospective judgement, carried from the future to the past, can tell – and even then, at the cost of audacious historical conjectures. No, the heart of an election is to know who manages to convince, and who fails. From this point of view, Éric Zemmour’s remarks are not false. They are, however, a diversion.
Eric Zemmour then explains what prevented him from convincing. This is the heart of the interview. And it all starts with a question that has the merit of clarity: wouldn’t it be his brutal rhetoric that would be in question? “No, I think it’s Putin. On February 24, Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine and there, a totally unpredictable sequence takes place: some of my voters are rallying behind Emmanuel Macron. You said that I had been a victim of my excess and my radicalism. I think above all that I have been the victim of the incessant media bombardment and the incessant ideological bombardment.
“Vladimir Poutine” so, as well as a “incessant media bombardment” : these are the only factors that would explain his score. As for the two candidates present in the second round, Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron, to what do they owe their qualification? “The French working classes voted for Marine Le Pen thinking it was better because her father was already talking about immigration before her, because the name Le Pen means the fight against immigration, whatever Marine Le Pen says Pen Macron is in luck: the Covid and then Ukraine have allowed him not to campaign. Marine Le Pen took advantage of her name, and of her father’s work. Emmanuel Macron was lucky. This is how Eric Zemmour explains their qualification for the second round.
What is striking, when one listens to Éric Zemmour, is that with the notable exception of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, he attributes the successes of his adversaries on the one hand, and his own failures on the other, only to exogenous factors. His competitors never succeed because of their talents. He didn’t stumble through his fault. It’s all about context. This is obviously a convenient way to absolve oneself of all responsibility.
But it’s interesting, because it amounts to committing what historians consider to be a fundamental error in reasoning: what is called “pouring into historical teleology”. Teleology consists in re-reading the whole story starting from its end. This consists of considering that the context and the facts are such that they can only lead to the end that history has actually known. And in doing so, we hide the fact that the choices of actors and individuals have a weight, and that the course of events could have been different.
I will take just one example: Eric Zemmour has before him an important issue: the negotiation of a possible alliance in the legislative elections with the National Rally. In this interview, he regrets that Marine Le Pen does not open his arms to him. Maybe if he hadn’t insulted her at length, he wouldn’t be here!