France | First noise, first worry for candidate Zemmour

(Paris) A video clip likely to generate complaints followed by a 20 hours that ends with insults: Eric Zemmour broke all the codes to announce his candidacy on Tuesday without succeeding, according to experts, to operate his transformation of polemicist to claimant to the supreme office.

“I am no longer the journalist, the writer. I am a candidate for the Presidency of the Republic. […] My transformation is done, “assured the far-right polemicist at 20 hours of TF1, at the end of a day marked by his declaration of candidacy, deemed” sinister “by the entire political class.

But this eventful entry into the countryside did not stop there. The interview with Gilles Bouleau ended with insults, the new candidate treating behind the scenes the star presenter of TF1 of “asshole” then castigating in front of the press an “interview of prosecutor”.

Raphaël Llorca, expert associated with the Jean-Jaurès Foundation, sees the interview on TF1 as “a real industrial accident” where Eric Zemmour “gave the feeling of undergoing the interview from start to finish, unable to regain control” .

“The exercise of interviewer is easier, it seems, than that of interviewed”, abounded in The Parisian, Marine Le Pen, estimating on LCI that he had built his campaign on a “multiplication of provocations” for which he now had to answer.

The candidate of the National Rally believes that the candidacy of Mr. Zemmour “has no more momentum, more dynamics” and “has become useless”, or on the contrary that it can prevent him from beating Emmanuelle Macron.

For his candidacy announcement at midday, Eric Zemmour had broken with all “traditional codes”, according to Raphaël Llorca, with a ten-minute video with dramatic and nostalgic accents.

National novel

Paced by the 7^e Beethoven’s symphony, the video features the polemicist who reads his text, behind a period microphone, mimicking the call of General de Gaulle on June 18, 1940, while scenes of violence and archives from “the country of Notre-Dame” parade. -Dame-de-Paris and the bell towers ”.

“Refusal of the camera-gaze, refusal of the logic of seduction, refusal of the promise: instead, it is a whole threatening imagination and an anxiety-provoking atmosphere that is developed, a thousand miles from the candidate-desire to which we are accustomed », Explains in Le Figaro M. Llorca.

But for Éric Zemmour, these images also serve to “stage the national novel by being inspired both by Cinéscénie du Puy du Fou and the visual codes of Netflix”, underlines in the same daily Jérôme Fourquet, director of Opinion of the ‘Ifop.

“It is a story more than a traditional political program”, which in the process makes you forget the middle finger in Marseille, notes in the JDD Isabelle Veyrat-Masson, research director at the CNRS and specialist in political communication.

In addition to the lack of proposals, the video gave the sign of a fragile organization around the candidate, already criticized internally, when several personalities and media, including AFP, blasted Tuesday the use – without their consent – of their images, some threatening the polemicist with legal action.

TF1, “tactical error”?

Eric Zemmour has “succeeded in his national novel”, but his “tactical error was to go on the set of TF1”, judge Philippe Moreau-Chevrolet, specialist in political communication with AFP.

“Going to TF1 and being offended to be treated badly, it is on the part of Eric Zemmour a misunderstanding of his status as a populist candidate-which cannot by definition be welcomed in this universe, that he Moreover, absolutely rejects it, ”explains Mr. Moreau-Chevrolet.

“It is not enough to declare yourself a candidate to be a serious candidate,” he adds.

It remains to be seen what image the French will retain, between that of “the narrator of a national novel remasteurized in Netflix fashion” or that “of a candidate in the presidential suit a little too tall for him”, according to Mr. Llorca.

“The 7.3 million viewers (of TF1) will judge. The 2.1 million who have also viewed the ad, ”said Eric Zemmour’s communicator, Olivier Ubeda, on Twitter on Wednesday.

“What matters is the direct link between us,” said Eric Zemmour to his social network subscribers.

While only 24% of French people consider that he has the necessary qualities to be president, according to Elabe, the Zemmour team is banking on the first meeting on Sunday in Paris to restart the machine.

The public meeting was moved from the Zénith to the Parc des Expositions de Villepinte, its team estimating that the number of registrants has reached 19,000 to date.