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France

The Danger of Eric Zemmour

Photo: Archive

With less than 6 months to go before the French presidential election, the TV columnist and far-right author Eric Zemmour is soaring in the polls. How can we build a campaign to respond with a message of solidarity and a real perspective?

Monday, 25 October 2021 22:03 (UTC)
Stéphane Delcros
Linkse Socialistiche Partij / Parti Socialiste de Lutte
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With less than 6 months to go before the French presidential election, the TV columnist and far-right author Eric Zemmour is soaring in the polls, sometimes even reaching second place. How can we explain this rise of a notorious racist, sexist, homophobic and anti-worker figure? How can we build a campaign to respond with a message of solidarity and a real perspective?

A climate of division and brutal police violence against trade union and social movements, as well as against youth, especially those of immigrant origin has been evolving in France for years. State racism and permanent stigmatisation have increased, targeting people of immigrant background and Muslims.

The ‘separatism law’, the ‘global security law’, the spectacle of Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin overtaking Marine Le Pen on the right in a television debate, and the propagation of the expression ‘Islamo-Gauchism’ (Leftists supporting islam) by Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer are all examples of how Macron and his governments have constantly fuelled the division. When their anti-social policies are so unpopular, they need to use the weapon of division to prevent workers forming a single raised fist.

The rise of the TV columnist

Zemmour has been pouring out his reactionary views for years now in the mainstream media. Between his conviction for provoking racial discrimination in 2011 and his conviction for provoking hatred towards Muslims in 2018, his discourse has become even more radical and continues to do so. His confidence is inflated by the atmosphere of hatred and division fostered by the authorities.

His success is a further illustration of the abject failure of the “vote Macron to block the far right” strategy. It is also an expression of the failure of the left and the trade union movement to succeed in imposing its project on the agenda. Without a social response to match the stakes, Macron’s austerity and anti-worker policies have created a breeding ground of frustration and despair even more conducive to prejudice and division. For the most part, Zemmour’s popularity does not express strong support for his nauseating ideas. It comes from the atmosphere skillfully maintained by the top of society and from his ‘fresher’ ‘anti-system’ image, which is not derived from a party and the traditional political world.

Zemmour’s strength is not Zemmour

Zemmour is not self-made, he is a conscious construction by the establishment. The use of the far right to serve the immediate interests of the powers that be is an old habit in France. The rise of the National Front in the 1980s was encouraged by the Socialist Party’s Mitterrand to weaken the right, which he feared would return after he had betrayed the programme that had brought him to the presidency.

Macron has never made a secret of his strategy for a second term: to secure a base of at least 10% of voters (i.e. 20% in the ballot box, given the record-breaking abstention rate) and to attract the “lesser evil” vote against Marine Le Pen in the second round. But after a first mandate that marked a major turn towards authoritarianism and a serious accentuation of state racism, this strategy is more dangerous than ever. By weakening the momentum around Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National, Zemmour is doing Macron a valuable service. This explains in large part the media largesse towards him. But this is once again a dangerous development in itself.

Our side must wrest the microphone from the hands of the right and the far right

France Insoumise leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon was right to invite himself to a TV debate with Zemmour at the end of September. It’s been years since the right and the far right have had an open mic in all the media without meeting any real opposition. Many of us finally welcomed a different kind of discourse with this debate, where Mélenchon responded to the racist hate speech with the term “creolisation”, expressing a society where the mix of cultures and origins allows for the creation of greater collective wealth. For the broad strata that still resist the dominant divisive discourse, this kind of broad-based response to the far right is a welcome, if limited, relief.

Fighting the roots of division

To combat racism and hatred, highlighting the value and richness of multiculturalism however will not be enough. The answer to Zemmour and Co. is also and above all socio-economic, to attack and respond to the social despair that fuels it.

L’Avenir En Commun', the program of France Insoumise, whose update will be released in mid-November, is full of excellent demands capable of bringing people together around solidarity: an increase in the minimum wage (desired by 9 out of 10 French people); the re-establishment of the wealth tax abolished by Macron, the introduction of a tax on crisis profiteers, a major investment plan in public services (desired by 8 out of 10 French people); the return of retirement at 60 (desired by 7 out of 10 French people); etc.

But this program can only become a reality on two conditions: on the one hand, if the relationship of forces in the workplaces and on the streets is around the organised movement of workers. On the other hand, if there is an end to the dictatorship of the markets, which would also make it possible to obtain the financing of the necessary measures. The expropriation and nationalisation of key sectors of the economy (including finance in the first place, in particular to block the flight of big capital) would give rise to a planned approach to dealing with the many social and environmental problems. The “ecological planning” contained in the program of France Insoumise is in this respect a step in the right direction, although still timid.

Fighting for unity in the struggle

The last few years have not lacked mass movements in France. Since the huge trade union and social mobilisation against the Labour Law under Hollande in 2016, the country has seen the struggles of health care and public transport workers; those of the Gilets Jaunes; the mass struggle against pension reform (one of the most intense social conflicts since May 68); youth mobilisations against gender-based violence, against racism and police violence, against climate disruption, against the ‘global security’ law ...

Let’s take inspiration from these recent mass mobilisations — which bring us together instead of dividing us — and this time let’s organise our struggle more around audacious social demands that are not limited to what the narrow framework of capitalism and its logic of profits allows. This is how we can build confidence in revolutionary hope in the face of counter-revolutionary despair. Another type of society would then be offered to us as the fruit of our struggles: a democratic socialist society that would mobilise the technical capacities and current wealth for the fulfilment of all in respect of the environment.

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The Danger of Eric Zemmour (25 Oct 2021)

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