Eric Zemmour’s meeting with the French was more than fleeting, Friday, November 26. Sixteen minutes, watch in hand in the alleys of the Panier district in Marseille. “You are not welcome”, launches an inhabitant. “Here we are Italiens, Corses, Algerians “, continues the latter. This is Eric Zemmour’s first real campaign trip on the ground. Until Saturday, he is in Marseille. A lightning passage and a complicated baptism of fire for the putative candidate for the presidential election of 2022.
The reception is freezing. About twenty demonstrators follow Éric Zemmour from street to street. The future candidate expected it. He also preferred to get off his train in Aix-en-Provence rather than in Marseille to avoid the welcoming committee. “They are irrecoverable”, he reacts.
As for the rare Marseillais crossed, one of them exclaims: “My name is Mohamed, I was born in Marseille. People like me, don’t you consider them to be French?”. Eric Zemmour goes his way, does not answer. No more than he will go elsewhere in the shops, which was however planned. Instead, he writes and gives a mini conference for his guide of the day, Jeanne Marti, ex-elected Rassemblement national marseillaise. “We talked to each other. We had things to say to each other. We wandered around and here we are. He didn’t meet any inhabitants”, she explains.
No meeting, no exchanges. The man from the TV shows is a bit against the job here. One of his relatives confided in fact, a little earlier in the day: “Doing the markets, walking around, that’s not him.” At the end of a visit to Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde, Eric Zemmour was content to evacuate. “It’s media circus. I know that since I was a political journalist. I followed Jacques Chirac, Philippe Séguin, François Mitterrand … I know exactly that it is directing. Everyone Everyone knows that we walk around and that we don’t really see people “, says the future candidate.
Yet this is the image that Eric Zemmour tried to produce: the politician meets the French. With one last disappointment: he had planned to speak from the square of the Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde basilica. The diocese banned it. Conclusion of a disappointing first day in Marseille for the future candidate.
Eric Zemmour’s first real campaign trip to Marseille – Report by Hadrien Bect
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