Zemmour’s campaign launch painted a dark vision of France

So it’s official: Eric Zemmour will stand as a candidate in next year’s French presidential election. It was hardly a shock when he launched his campaign this morning with a video that was the visual equivalent of a Michel Houellebecq novel. Nearly seven years ago, Houellebecq’s novel, Submission, depicted an incipient civil war in France as the 2022 election approached. Zemmour believes that fiction is now a reality. It seems that whether or not people agree, there is widespread interest in Zemmour’s message: in the three hours since he launched the video on YouTube, it’s been viewed 430,000 times. 

France is going to pot, was the gist of his ten minute address, and unless I’m elected president forget about a rosy future. To underline his message, Zemmour interspersed the video with clips of police stations being attacked by gangs of youths, nurses being set upon by thugs in hospitals and drug-dealers plying their trade on busy streets in broad daylight.