Zemmour’s xenophobia

The received opinion is that Islam and immigration are Éric Zemmour’s prime targets as his putative presidential campaign gathers pace. But he has a third mortal enemy, and that’s the Anglophone world. Éric doesn’t much like us. But then Éric doesn’t much like anyone who’s not, as his sort are wont to say, Français de souche.

Zemmour’s rabble-rousing is becoming tiresome. He is lashing out in all directions, his latest act of belligerence a swipe at Britain and America during a rally in Rouen on Friday. The English, he thundered, have been France’s ‘greatest enemies for a thousand years’ while D-Day ‘was an enterprise of liberation but also of occupation and colonisation by the Americans’.

In contrast, Zemmour has a soft spot for Russia and believes France should cultivate a far closer relationship with Moscow in order to counter the Anglo-American influence. In this he is not alone; a poll in 2018 reported that 27 per cent of French canvassed expressed a favourable opinion of Vladmir Putin, a figure that rose to 50 per cent among Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party.