Will Eric Zemmour's politics Of Hate Bear Fruits?

It can no longer be called France if “demons from hell” get away hawking hate and division

- Anita Pratap

HE IS A HECTOR from hell, hounding his victims with hate-filled abuse. Immigration is his cause célèbre and he enjoys insulting Muslims, Arabs and Africans. Best-selling author and television commentator Eric Zemmour has become a household name. An aggressive nationalist, the far-right Zemmour, 63, is trying to become the next president of France. His campaign slogan is the famous Napoleon quote “Impossible is not French.”

People see Zemmour not as Napoleon’s avatar but as a French Trump. Both compulsively bait “minorities”. Both are rabble-rousing populists, anti-mainstream media, non-politicians who claim to be the “enemy of political correctness”. Like Trump, Zemmour hopes to catapult from small screen to big political stage, promising to lower taxes and to slash immigration. But there are differences. Zemmour is an orator with argumentative skills, while Trump’s polemics never went beyond name calling: “Crooked Hillary”, “Lying Ted”, “Sleepy Joe”.

Zemmour is compared with Brexiteers’ Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson for his Euro-scepticism. To keep migrants out, Zemmour wants to reimpose border controls within the EU.

Zemmour’s main grouse is the “demographic tsunami of Arabs, Africans and Muslims who are violent and incompatible with French society. France is not France because it is full of immigrants. French people have become foreigners in their own country.”