Zemmour, Eric

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      Marine Le Pen, Kicking Off Her Campaign, Tries to Embody Credibility

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      Ms. Le Pen has bet that sanitizing her far-right party’s image will finally bear fruit in the run-up to France’s presidential election in April.PARIS — Marine Le Pen has long used fiery rhetoric and hard-hitting proposals to fight her way to power in France. But for her third presidential bid, she has struck an unusual tone: serenity.On Saturday, Ms. Le Pen, a far-right leader, used social media to kick off the final stretch of her campaign with a 3.5-minute video speech intended to portray her as a credible and composed stateswoman. A large white scarf tied around her neck, she is pictured in the video strolling around the Louvre’s glass pyramid and speaking in a reassuring tone, her words accompanied by soft piano music.“Faced with the dangers that await us and the challenges that lie ahead,” Ms. Le Pen said, “I call on you to follow the path of reason and of the heart.”Her speech’s peaceful overtones were a direct response to the violent messaging put forth by Éric Zemmour, another far-right candidate, whose campaign launch video was riddled with clips of crumbling churches, burning cars and violent clashes with the police that projected an image of a chaotic France.Mr. Zemmour has said he is running for president to “save” his country, which he portrays as assailed by Islam, immigration and leftist identity politics. By contrast, Ms. Le Pen’s video showed her surrounded by smiling people as she toured France, visiting businesses and port cities.The stakes are high for Ms. Le Pen less than 100 days before the presidential election. After finishing in third place in the 2012 campaign and being defeated in the 2017 runoff by Emmanuel Macron, she hopes her third bid will be the winning one. To try to make that happen, she has bet on dropping the populist messaging that once characterized her, and has instead redoubled efforts to “un-demonize” her party, the National Rally, which has often been associated with flashes of antisemitism and xenophobia.But fierce competition among right-wing candidates has eroded Ms. Le Pen’s early lead in the polls and has led many to wonder if she will always remain a long shot.Ms. Le Pen’s video — set at the world-renowned Louvre museum, which was once the main residence of France’s kings — was also a way for her to revive a confrontation with Mr. Macron, who is widely expected to seek another term. In 2017, when he was president-elect, Mr. Macron delivered his victory speech in front of the same glass pyramid at the Louvre.“Macron is the opponent,” said Philippe Olivier, a close aide to Ms. Le Pen and a member of the European Parliament. “That’s what the symbolic act of being at the Louvre is about.”Until a few months ago, Ms. Le Pen was expected to be Mr. Macron’s main challenger, in a rematch of the 2017 vote. She has spent the past four years trying to foster her credibility and has worked to rebrand the National Rally’s extremist ideas as respectable.Éric Zemmour, at his first campaign rally, last month in Villepinte, near Paris.Christophe Petit Tesson/EPA, via ShutterstockEven as she has hewed to her party’s harsh nationalist, anti-immigrant vision, Ms. Le Pen has softened her longtime populist economic agenda by dropping a proposal to exit the eurozone and advocating more orthodox debt policies. She has also broadened her platform to include more day-to-day issues like energy prices, the theme of her campaign stop on Friday in Saint-Malo, in western France.But two dark-horse candidates have emerged and have made the prospect of reaching a runoff with Mr. Macron more uncertain: Mr. Zemmour, a polarizing far-right polemicist who has seen a meteoric rise in the polls, and Valérie Pécresse, a center-right politician whose hard-line messaging on national security and immigration issues step on some of Ms. Le Pen’s own favorite campaign themes.Recent polls show Ms. Le Pen and Ms. Pécresse running neck and neck in the first round of April’s election, with each expected to get about 17 percent of the vote. But that still puts them about 10 points behind the incumbent, Mr. Macron.The biggest threat to Ms. Le Pen’s ambitions is Mr. Zemmour. Studies have shown that his full-throated promotion of reactionary ideas has cost her many potential voters, and some have said that the two far-right candidates could sabotage each other’s chances.Learn More About France’s Presidential ElectionCard 1 of 6The campaign begins. More

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      Echoes of Trump at Zemmour’s Rally in France

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      Éric Zemmour, the polarizing far-right polemicist, launched his presidential campaign last week with a frenzied rally that was disrupted by a violent brawl.VILLEPINTE, France — The speech, riddled with attacks on the news media, elites and immigrants, with a fiery orator whipping up thousands of flag-waving supporters, was reminiscent of a Donald J. Trump campaign stop from years past.But the scene was in France, last weekend, where Éric Zemmour, the polarizing far-right polemicist who has scrambled French politics, launched his presidential campaign with a rally in front of thousands of ardent supporters.“On est chez nous!” — “This is our home!” — they chanted in a cavernous convention center filled with spotlights, speakers and giant screens in Villepinte, a suburb northeast of Paris.At one point during the rally, antiracism activists were attacked in the sort of brawl rarely seen at French political events. Earlier in the day, fans booed a television news crew, forcing it to be temporarily evacuated, and several journalists reported being insulted and beaten.The outcome of Mr. Zemmour’s campaign remains unclear four months ahead of France’s presidential election, with President Emmanuel Macron still ahead in the polls, and fierce competition emerging from the right. But the rally offered a glimpse of where the election could head, and which Trumpian tones it could take.Unlike Marine Le Pen, the candidate of the traditional far right, who has long sought success by softening her party’s far-right views, Mr. Zemmour has bet that a full-on promotion of his reactionary ideas can fuel his rise.He has done so by mastering the codes of social and news media, and by appealing to a somewhat wealthier and more educated base than the traditional far right. Recent polls suggest this approach has worked; about 15 percent of French voters say they intend to vote for him in the first round of voting.Mr. Zemmour, beneath a banner reading “Impossible Isn’t French,” used his rally to attack the news media, elites and immigrants.Julien De Rosa/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“He’s the one who breaks a dam,” said Vincent Martigny, a professor of political science at the University of Nice. Voters who once balked at supporting Ms. Le Pen have now embraced his more extremist ideas, he said.But this quest to stake out a position on the extreme right may also backfire, as shown at Sunday’s rally, when dozens of his supporters attacked antiracism activists. The violent brawl could stain his image and undermine his attempts to broaden his electoral base, according to political analysts.Still, as with Mr. Trump, no scandal to date has done any lasting damage to Mr. Zemmour’s political ambitions as he taps into widespread fears that French identity is being whittled away by immigration. Those fears have been heightened by a number of terrorist attacks in recent years, some committed by the children of immigrants.The crowd, of about 12,000 people that gathered in the Villepinte convention center, reflected some of the forces that have fueled the candidate’s meteoric rise — upper middle-class voters and some segments of an educated, affluent youth.Men close to retirement age in hunting jackets and loafers waved French flags and cheered alongside young people dressed in crisp polo shirts; many displayed Roman Catholic crosses around their necks.“Zemmour is someone who can actually make our ideas triumph and save France,” said Marc Perreti, a 19-year-old student from Neuilly-sur-Seine, a wealthy suburb of Paris.Many of Mr. Zemmour’s supporters are members of the educated middle-class, a departure from the working class voters who traditionally supported nationalist candidates in France. Rafael Yaghobzadeh/Associated PressIn contrast with the affluent voters seen at Mr. Zemmour’s rally, Ms. Le Pen’s support comes mainly from the working class. A recent study showed Mr. Zemmour scoring well among the upper middle class, at 16 percent compared to 6 percent for Ms. Le Pen.There was widespread nodding at the rally when Mr. Zemmour talked of France’s “great downgrading, with the impoverishment of the French, the decline of our power and the collapse of our school.” And there were loud cheers when he mentioned “the great replacement, with the Islamization of France, mass immigration and constant insecurity.”The so-called great replacement, a contentious theory that claims the West’s population is being replaced by immigrants, has been cited by white supremacists in mass shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand, and El Paso, Tex.But Sophie Michel, a former history teacher and a mother of nine, said she believed the theory, pointing to the growing number of immigrant families living in her apartment building in western Paris.“We’re the last white people there,” she said, “this is for real.”The name of Mr. Zemmour’s new party, “Reconquest,” evokes the centuries-long period known as the Reconquista, when Christian forces drove Muslim rulers from the Iberian Peninsula.Two of Ms. Michel’s children also attended the rally, along with hundreds of young people. Hortense Bergerault, 17, said she followed Mr. Zemmour on Instagram, where he has nearly 150,000 followers, ranking only behind Mr. Macron and Ms. Le Pen among the presidential candidates. “I have many friends who are really into it,” she said.Supporters of Mr. Zemmour arriving at the campaign rally in Villepinte, near Paris, on Dec. 5.Julien De Rosa/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Martigny, the political scientist, said that Mr. Zemmour was the product of “culture wars” that had gradually spread far-right ideas across society, especially through Fox-style news networks, clearing “a space for a Trumpian player in the French political life.”“They have understood that there is no lasting political victory without a prior cultural victory,” Mr. Martigny said of Mr. Zemmour’s team.This cultural win was evident in Villepinte, where many supporters referred to Mr. Zemmour’s books and TV appearances as eye-opening experiences. Some wore baseball caps reading “Ben voyons!” — a rejoinder that Mr. Zemmour often uses to dismiss criticism, and which roughly translates to “Oh, come on!” The crowd even chanted the phrase when Mr. Zemmour, speaking from his lectern, mocked those accusing him of being a fascist.Antoine Diers, a spokesman for Mr. Zemmour’s campaign, said that although France and the United States were two different countries, they had “obviously” looked at Mr. Trump’s 2016 presidential run “because it was a success.”Raphaël Llorca, a French communication expert and member of the Fondation Jean-Jaurès research institute, said Mr. Zemmour had successfully waged a “battle of the cool” designed to popularize his extreme ideas and “reduce the cost of adherence” to the far right.His YouTube campaign-launching video, riddled with cultural references, has drawn nearly 3 million viewers — evidence of his command of pop culture codes, Mr. Llorca said.“The cool is a way to defuse and neutralize otherwise extremely violent” ideas, he added.A video grab taken from AFPTV footage showing a scuffle at Mr. Zemmour’s rally. Dozens of his supporters attacked several antiracism activists.Colin Bertier/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn October, Mr. Zemmour said his success would depend on his ability to appeal to both the conservative, bourgeois electorate and that of the Yellow Vests, the mostly working-class movement that protested against economic injustice that Ms. Le Pen has long courted.Whether he can achieve that balancing act is far from clear, as shown by the attendance at the rally. The main economic proposal he outlined last weekend — slashing business taxes — is unlikely to speak to working-class voters.Mr. Zemmour’s theatrical entrance into the convention center, to the sound of dramatic music, also did little to eclipse the fact that he has so far failed to garner support from any major political figure, or party. This remains a major difference from Mr. Trump, who could count on the powerful Republican Party and solid financial backing.Mr. Zemmour said he was the target of the media and the elites. He praised the crowd before him for standing up to these attacks. “The political phenomenon of these rallies, it’s not me, it’s you!” he shouted.But some of his supporters might also prove to be his greatest liability.Midway through his speech, dozens of sturdy militants threw punches at several activists from SOS Racisme, an antiracism organization, who had stood on chairs at the rally and revealed T-shirts spelling out the phrase “NO TO RACISM.”Mr. Zemmour, right, on a political TV show on Thursday. Many of Mr. Zemmour’s supporters have referred to his books and TV appearances as eye-opening experiences.Christophe Archambault/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesProsecutors have opened investigations into the violence, including one against a man who lunged at and grabbed Mr. Zemmour as he walked toward the stage.Mr. Diers, the spokesman, said the antiracism activists had acted provocatively and that he had called on supporters “not to use force unreasonably.”Mr. Llorca, the communications expert, said that with such a polarizing campaign, Mr. Zemmour risked “being overwhelmed” by the extremism of his own supporters.The French news media later reported that some of those who had attacked the antiracism activists were neo-Nazi militants. As they chased down the activists toward the entrance hall, wearing black mufflers that hid their faces, they were stopped by a security staff member.“Thank you for being there,” he told them. “You did the job!” More

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      France's Éric Zemmour Tries Channeling De Gaulle to Win Votes

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      Éric Zemmour has adopted imagery reminiscent of Charles de Gaulle, the wartime leader. But his call for reborn glory for France is sharply at odds with the realities of the country today.PARIS — The retro choreography was heavy-handed, its intent obvious: Éric Zemmour in a dark tie, eyes averted from the camera, reading into an old-fashioned microphone from sheets of paper, just like Charles de Gaulle in his famous speech from London on June 18, 1940, when he called for the liberation of a fallen France.Mr. Zemmour is not a towering general, and France is not on its knees. But Mr. Zemmour, the far-right polemicist who this week announced his run for next year’s presidential election, understands the power of provocative imagery. Effrontery and scandal have propelled his outsider candidacy.His campaign-launching video was a nationalistic call for reborn French glory. From Joan of Arc to the singer Johnny Hallyday, from Napoleon Bonaparte to Brigitte Bardot, from Voltaire to Versailles, from Notre Dame to village church bells, it took viewers on a tour of Mr. Zemmour’s imaginary France.The France that — in the telling of this Jewish journalist of North African descent whose family arrived in France 70 years ago — existed before immigrants, Muslim veils, vandalism and mealy-mouthed elites led the country to its most recent strange defeat.“His catastrophic vision speaks to a deep-rooted French pessimism,” said Pascal Perrineau, a social scientist. “We are one of the most pessimistic countries in the world. Combine that with alienation from the political class, inward-looking nationalism, and a defiant French inclination to overturn the table, and you have the Zemmour phenomenon.”Charles de Gaulle delivering a speech from London in which he called for the liberation of a fallen France. Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesWhether or not Mr. Zemmour can build out from his current support — in the 12 to 15 percent range, according to polls — and qualify for the runoff round of voting in April is unclear. But one way or another, he will affect the outcome, splitting the far-right share of the vote and so opening up the field. Already this man without a party has illustrated just how far France has lurched to the right.There would be no Zemmour phenomenon if France were not ripe for it, just as there would have been no President Donald J. Trump if the United States had not been ready for his nationalist message.Mr. Zemmour explicitly models himself on Mr. Trump. He rose to notoriety through regular TV appearances, he laces his apocalyptic message with anti-immigrant slurs, he makes the unsayable sayable, he delights in a macho contempt for women, and his slogan might as well be “Make France Great Again.”“We are a great nation, a great people. Our glorious past presages our future. Our soldiers conquered Europe and the world!” Mr. Zemmour declared this week, before insisting that “we will be worthy of our ancestors. We will not allow ourselves to be dominated, turned into vassals, conquered, colonized. We will not allow ourselves to be replaced.”Mr. Zemmour, like Tucker Carlson of Fox News, is an ardent adherent to the theory of “the great replacement,” a phrase generally attributed to a xenophobic French writer, Renaud Camus, who said: “The great replacement is very simple. You have one people, and in the space of a generation, you have a different people.” The new France, according to Mr. Zemmour, would be the one that has been led to “decline and decadence” by Muslim immigration.Mr. Zemmour, a far-right media pundit, his risen to notoriety through regular appearances on television. Christophe Simon/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesHow did France arrive at this state, where polls suggest at least 35 percent of the population will vote for either Mr. Zemmour or the perennial candidate of the far right, Marine Le Pen, in the first round of voting?Some factors are shared with the United States — cultural fracture between cities and the hinterland, deindustrialization, racial tensions, growing precariousness in the workplace — but others are unique to France.Chief among them is the place of the second religion of France, Islam. Many of the millions of Muslims in France, as much as 10 percent of the population, according to estimates, are successfully integrated, but their story has tended to be overshadowed by numerous terrorist attacks by radical Islamists.This has engendered fear, as has the perception that the teachings of Islam may be hard to reconcile with a Republic dedicated to the notion that education dissolves differences of faith in shared citizenship.“Immigration equals Islam equals insecurity,” said Hakim El Karoui, a Muslim who is a senior fellow at the Institut Montaigne. “No politician praises diversity any longer.”Mr. Zemmour’s emergence changes the presidential election, to be held a little over four months from now. Because Ms. Le Pen, the leader of the National Rally, who is making her third attempt to become president, and Mr. Zemmour, will divide the hard-right-right vote, it may open the way for a center-right candidate to reach the second round. The percentage of votes needed to qualify by being one of the top two candidates in the first round will be lower.Valérie Pécresse, at her campaign headquarters in Paris on Thursday, is emerging as a potential dark horse candidate for the center-right in the 2022 presidential election.Christophe Ena/Associated PressValérie Pécresse, a moderate conservative who heads the Île-de-France regional council and is a former budget minister, won a runoff party vote this weekend to become the candidate of the center-right Republicans. She has described herself as “one-third Thatcher, two-thirds Merkel” and is emerging as the potential dark horse of an election where the French left seems condemned to irrelevance.For now, President Emmanuel Macron, occupying a vast vacated middle ground, looks like the favorite. But he would be less comfortable facing Ms. Pécresse in a runoff than an extreme right-wing ideologue.Mr. Zemmour, unlike Ms. Le Pen, has appealed to some of the center-right through his erudition and culture, but his challenge is now twofold: to convince the French that he is not a one-trick pony and to overcome the impression that he is not “presidential.” In other words, he has to address issues beyond immigration, not least formulate something resembling an economic plan; and he probably needs to cut from his repertoire the kind of crude gesture he aimed at a protester in Marseille last month.Still, until now, as with Mr. Trump, every outrage that might have derailed Mr. Zemmour has left him reinforced, or at least still standing, and often leading the news of the day. An editorial in the center-right daily Le Figaro noted this week that it was a French writer, Honoré de Balzac, who described scandal as “the pedestal of success.”Mr. Zemmour has called child asylum seekers “thieves, killers and rapists.” He has said “most drug dealers are Black and Arab.” He has suggested France’s collaborationist wartime Vichy government saved French Jews. He has equated Jewish children murdered in 2012 with their jihadi terrorist killer because their parents chose to bury them outside France, in Jerusalem.He has argued that “Islam is incompatible with the French republic” and suggested that mass deportation of immigrants might not be impossible. This despite the fact an entire section of the cemetery at Verdun, the World War I battlefield where about 300,000 people were killed, is given over to Muslims who gave their lives for France.Mr. Zemmour signing a copy of his latest book in Toulon, southern France, in September. Daniel Cole/Associated PressHe would ban all “non-French names” like Muhammad. He would rescind the 1972 Pleven law that made incitement to racial hatred illegal and has earned him repeated charges and one conviction.Mr. Zemmour’s 2006 book called “The First Sex,” published when he was a journalist at Le Figaro newspaper, was a best seller. It argued that France had declined because of the loss of male “virility” and the “feminization” of society. In a subsequent best seller, “The French Suicide,” published in 2014, he waxed lyrical about the world before feminism when a bus driver could “slide a concupiscent hand” over a woman’s backside without risking prosecution.Married to a lawyer, he is openly involved in a relationship with his political adviser Sarah Knafo, 28. He has not denied a news report that she is pregnant, although he has sued the magazine that published the article for invasion of privacy, according to his lawyers. The revelations have not caused a stir in France.“A lot of French people don’t care,” said Mr. Perrineau, the social scientist. “They think some level of scandal is the price to be paid for renewing French political life.”De Gaulle said in his London speech that “the flame of the French resistance must not be extinguished and will not be extinguished.”That, of course, was resistance to a France that had succumbed to the racist, antisemitic ideology of Vichy. More

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      As French Election Looms, Candidates Stake Out Tough Positions on Migrants

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      With a presidential election looming, French presidential hopefuls are hardening their positions against immigration even as other countries compete for migrant workers.PARIS — An out-of-control influx of immigrants. A threat to French identity and stability. A reason to urgently close France’s frontiers.The issue of immigration is dominating political debate in the country five months before presidential elections, as candidates on the right as well as the left harden their positions. The drowning last week of 27 migrants off France’s northern coast has only added to the argument that migration must be checked.Despite the fierce words on the campaign trail, the reality is far different: Nearly all of France’s neighbors have a greater proportion of immigrants in their populations. In the past decade, immigration has grown less in France than in the rest of Europe or in other rich nations worldwide.The figures show that the migration situation in France is “rather ordinary, rather moderate,’’ said François Héran, a leading expert on migration who teaches at Collège de France. “We’re really not a country overrun by immigration,’’ Mr. Héran said.That has not stopped pledges by politicians to impose a moratorium on immigration, hold a referendum on the issue or simply close the borders — in contrast to moves by other wealthy nations, like Germany and Australia, to attract migrant workers to fill labor shortages exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic. As French restaurants, hotels, construction companies and other services face a shortage of workers, politicians across the ideological spectrum have proposed raising wages — but not the number of immigrants allowed into the country.“In France, we never talk about the economy when we talk about immigration,’’ said Emmanuelle Auriol, an economist at the Toulouse School of Economics and the co-author of a recent government-sponsored report that described how France’s growth has been hampered by its immigration policies. “All the talk is about national identity.’’As French restaurants, hotels and other services face a shortage of workers, politicians across the ideological spectrum have proposed raising wages — but not loosening immigration policies.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesFears that traditional French identity is threatened by Muslim immigrants from Africa — fanned for decades, either openly by the extreme right or with winks and dog whistles by others — have long consumed discussions about immigration. A series of terrorist attacks in recent years, some perpetrated by children of immigrants who grew up in France, have heightened those fears.These concerns have had a cumulative effect in France — making any embrace of immigration political suicide, obstructing badly needed reforms to attract qualified workers from abroad and pushing inward a country once known as a global crossroads.“We’re in a new phase,’’ said Philippe Corcuff, an expert on the far right who teaches at the Institute of Political Studies in Lyon. “What we’re seeing is the result of what has been happening in France for the past 15 years: the collapse of the left, which is now silent on immigration, and the rise of the extreme right, which ultimately may not win the elections but is setting the terms of the debate.”Candidates among the Republicans, the main party of the center right, are agreed on the need to “retake control” of the borders and to tighten immigrants’ eligibility for social benefits. One candidate, Michel Barnier, who served as the European Union’s negotiator with Britain during the Brexit talks, even proposed changing France’s constitution to be able to impose a “moratorium on immigration” for three to five years.On the left, while most candidates have chosen to remain silent, a former economy minister pledged to block remittances sent home by migrants via Western Union to countries that he said refused to repatriate citizens who are in France illegally. The proposal followed President Emmanuel Macron’s recent announcement that he would tackle the problem by slashing the number of visas issued to citizens of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia.Michel Barnier, a center-right party presidential primary candidate, proposed changing France’s constitution to be able to impose a “moratorium on immigration” for three to five years.Gonzalo Fuentes/ReutersOn the far right, Éric Zemmour, the writer and TV personality who on Tuesday announced a run for the presidency in next year’s elections, has said France’s very survival is at stake because immigration from Muslim nations threatens its Christian heritage.“We won’t allow ourselves to be dominated, turned into vassals, conquered, colonized,” Mr. Zemmour said in a video announcing his candidacy. “We won’t allow ourselves to be replaced.”With Mr. Zemmour’s candidacy, the previously taboo topic of the “great replacement” — a conspiracy theory accusing politicians like Mr. Macron of using immigration to replace white, Christian people — has become part of the election discourse. Mr. Zemmour accused successive French governments of hiding “the reality of our replacement’’ and has said that Mr. Macron “wants to dissolve France in Europe and Africa.’’During a recent prime-time debate, while center-right candidates hesitated to embrace the expression — which has been cited by white supremacists in mass shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand, and El Paso, Tex. — they indicated that the threat of replacement represented a real problem facing France.According to a recent poll, 61 percent of French respondents said they believed that Europe’s white and Christian population would be subjected to a “great replacement’’ by Muslim immigrants.The intensity of the election rhetoric stands in contrast to the recent elections in Germany, where immigration was not an issue — even though Germany has led Europe in accepting refugees in recent years.“Immigration was missing from the campaign in Germany,’’ said Jean-Christophe Dumont, the head of international migration research for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or O.E.C.D.A regional training hub in Dortmund, Germany. To deal with a labor shortage, Germany is trying to improve how it integrates both asylum seekers and migrant workers.Laetitia Vancon for The New York Times“There is a French obsession with immigration issues,’’ Mr. Dumont added. “In reality, France is not a major country for immigration.’’In 2020, France’s share of immigrants in its population — 13 percent — was below the average of O.E.C.D. nations. That proportion grew 16 percent between 2010 and 2020.By contrast, immigrants made up 16 percent of Germany’s population — a 30 percent increase during the same period.France stopped taking in huge numbers of workers from its former colonies in northern Africa as a long period of economic growth came to an end in the mid-1970s — a few years before the rise of the far-right, anti-immigrant National Front, now known as the National Rally, which helped make immigration a radioactive subject in French politics.Since then, migrant workers have accounted for only a small share of new immigration, which has been dominated by foreign students and family-linked arrivals.“We take in immigrants, not to work, but to join their spouses,’’ said Ms. Auriol, the economist.The result is that France’s immigration population is much less diversified than in other rich nations. In 2019, more than 40 percent of all arrivals came from Africa, especially Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, according to government data.That lack of diversity — coupled with the concentration of new immigrants in urban areas like Paris — fuels anxieties related to immigration, said Patrick Weil, a historian of immigration who teaches at Panthéon-Sorbonne University in Paris and at Yale.While anti-immigrant sentiments played a role in former President Donald J. Trump’s campaign in 2016, immigration in France — closely linked to its colonial history, especially in Algeria and other Muslim nations — makes it an even more combustible topic, Mr. Weil said.“In France, there is a link between immigration and religion, whereas in the United States they are separate,” Mr. Weil said.Éric Zemmour, center, who is running for the presidency in next year’s elections, said that France’s very survival is at stake because immigration from Muslim nations threatens the country’s Christian heritage.Yoan Valat/EPA, via ShutterstockFanned by the right, the fears surrounding immigration and a supposed threat to France’s Christian heritage make it extremely difficult to hold any discussions about reforming to attract qualified foreign immigrants, said Ms. Auriol, the economist.Current immigration policies, she added, stifles economic growth and the economic recovery from the pandemic.Modest changes have been carried out in recent years. But they are insufficient to attract the kind of motivated, skilled immigrants that France desperately needs to bring innovation and fresh thinking, Ms. Auriol said. Given the anti-immigrant climate, France also attracts relatively few citizens of other European Union nations, who can move freely to France, and suffers from a low retention of foreign students after graduation, she said.“In the 20th century, all the world’s talented people came to Paris,’’ she added. “Immigrants who contributed to France’s economic greatness, its scientific greatness and its cultural greatness. We were an open country. What happened to us?”Léontine Gallois More

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      Éric Zemmour, Far-Right Pundit, Makes French Presidential Run Official

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      After months of speculation, Mr. Zemmour, an anti-immigration writer and right-wing television star, said he was running in the presidential elections next year to “save” France.PARIS — Éric Zemmour, a polarizing far-right writer and television star, announced on Tuesday that he was running for French president in elections next year, ending months of speculation over a bid that upended the race before he had even made it official.Mr. Zemmour, 63, is a longtime conservative journalist who rose to prominence over the past decade, using prime-time television and best-selling books to expound on his view that France was in steep decline because of Islam, immigration and leftist identity politics, themes he returned to in his announcement.“It is no longer time to reform France but to save it,” Mr. Zemmour said in a video with dramatic overtones that was published on social media, conjuring images of an idealized France and then warning about outside forces that threatened to destroy it. He has fashioned himself as a Donald J. Trump-style provocateur lobbing politically incorrect bombs at the French elite establishment — saying, for instance, that the law should require parents to give their children “traditional” French names — and rewriting some of the worst episodes from France’s past. He has been charged with inciting racial or religious hatred several times over his comments, and twice convicted and fined.Mr. Zemmour spoke over 1950s footage full of men in hats and vintage Citroën cars, contrasted with recent clips of crowded subways, crumbling churches, burning cars and violent clashes with the police.“You feel like a foreigner in your own country,” Mr. Zemmour said, reading from notes at a desk in front of old bookshelves in a way that seemed intent on replicating Charles de Gaulle’s posture when he issued a call to arms against Nazi Germany from London in June 1940.Mr. Zemmour said that he was running “to prevent our children and our grandchildren from experiencing barbarity, to prevent our daughters from being veiled and our sons from being subdued.”He accused the elites — journalists, politicians, judges, European technocrats — of failing France, which he said was represented by a long list of illustrious men and women, including Joan of Arc, Louis XIV and Napoleon.“We will not be replaced,” added Mr. Zemmour, who has espoused the theory of a “great replacement” of white people in France by Muslim immigrants — a conspiracy theory that has been cited by extremists in several mass shootings.Mr. Zemmour’s announcement video shows him speaking in a setting designed to recall a wartime address by Charles de Gaulle.Thomas Samson/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe announcement, after months of barely veiled hints that Mr. Zemmour intended to run, surprised no one. It also came after the yet-to-be-declared candidate had endured a dip in the polls and a series of setbacks in recent days — including a disastrous visit to Marseille, in southern France, that ended with him making a crude gesture at a protester. The vulgar gesture gave ammunition to critics who say Mr. Zemmour is not fit to be president.“One may have doubts as to his ability to represent our country and serve in its highest office,” Gabriel Attal, a French government spokesman, told Europe 1 radio on Tuesday.Mr. Zemmour has already reshuffled the political calculus for several candidates in the presidential elections, which will be held in April next year.French presidential elections use a two-round system, with the top two candidates in the first round advancing to a runoff. Recent polls have put Mr. Zemmour in third place, with roughly 14 to 15 percent support, behind President Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Rally party, who met in the runoff of the last presidential election in 2017.Even so, Mr. Zemmour has drawn in some of Ms. Le Pen’s supporters with his hard-line stance on immigration and identity. He has also pushed Les Républicains, France’s traditional conservative party, further to the right. The party is expected to pick its own candidate this week.Mr. Zemmour’s latest book, “France Has Not Said Its Last Word Yet,” which he released in September to mark his unofficial entry into the presidential race, has sold more than 250,000 copies.Some of his books have contained incendiary statements about women and minorities. They have also contained historical inaccuracies as Mr. Zemmour attempted to clear France of wrongdoing in some of the worst episodes of its past, including in World War II and Algeria’s war for independence from France.Mr. Zemmour is the son of parents from Algeria, and he styles himself as a defender of France’s Christian civilization against the influence of Muslim immigrants. But he himself is Jewish, and his repeated attempts to rehabilitate France’s collaborationist government and its leader, Marshal Philippe Pétain, have been condemned in vigorous terms by leaders of the French Jewish community, even as some Jews have identified with his anti-Islam message.Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Rally party, has seen some of her supporters drawn to Mr. Zemmour.Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesOlivier Faure, the head of France’s Socialist Party, quipped on Twitter that Mr. Zemmour had used “De Gaulle’s microphone but Pétain’s speech” for his announcement.“Beethoven’s music but the wrong notes of a fantasized past for a caricatured present,” he added, referring to the soundtrack Mr. Zemmour used in Tuesday’s video. Mr. Zemmour has excelled as a right-wing television pundit deploying virulent nationalist, anti-immigrant rhetoric. In 2019, he joined CNews, a Fox-style news network, which provided a platform for him to express his ideas to hundreds of thousands of viewers.Mr. Zemmour experienced a rapid rise in the polls over the past few months, fueled by feverish media coverage of his latest book tour, but he has stumbled in recent weeks.Several supporters, including a key French financier who had lent him money, have distanced themselves, describing his campaign as disorganized and amateurish. Mr. Zemmour is not backed by a powerfully established political force, like Mr. Trump was with the Republican Party, and it remains unclear whether he can gather the official support of 500 elected representatives — a requirement to run for president in France. Some recent moves have also cast doubt on Mr. Zemmour’s ability to handle the challenges and pressures of the campaign trail.He was widely criticized for making political statements to journalists in front of the Bataclan concert hall in Paris on the sixth anniversary of the terrorist attacks there, and in Marseille, he was heckled by protesters and was photographed making the crude gesture toward a woman who had done the same thing toward him.“He has a lot of qualities as a polemicist, a lot less as a presidential candidate,” Ms. Le Pen, the far-right leader, told Sud Radio on Tuesday, accusing Mr. Zemmour of being “disconnected” from the French working class and of dividing voters. “If you want to be president, you have to unite.” More

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      How Éric Zemmour Is Turning French Politics Upside Down

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      Éric Zemmour, an anti-immigrant writer and TV commentator, is surging in opinion polls before presidential elections next year — and he is not yet a candidate.PARIS — He is the anti-immigration son of parents from Algeria. He styles himself as the great defender of France’s Christian civilization, though he himself is Jewish. He channels Donald J. Trump in an anti-establishment campaign. And he is now scrambling the battle lines before France’s presidential election in April.The meteoric rise of Éric Zemmour, a far-right author and TV pundit, has turned France’spolitics upside down.Until a few weeks ago, most had expected France’s next presidential elections to be a predictable rematch between President Emmanuel Macron and the far-right Marine Le Pen that, polls showed, left voters who wanted alternatives deeply dissatisfied.Though still not a declared candidate, Mr. Zemmour, 63, shot to No. 2 in a poll of likely voters last week, disrupting campaign strategies across the board, even beyond those of Mr. Macron and Ms. Le Pen.“The French want to upset a political order that hasn’t won them over, and Éric Zemmour appears to be the bowling ball that’s going to knock down all the pins,” said Pascal Perrineau, a political scientist at Sciences Po University specializing in elections and the right.Mr. Perrineau warned that voters were not seriously focused yet on the elections and that polls could be volatile.Yet candidates are not taking any chances.Mr. Macron’s campaign has focused on winning support on the right and forcing a showdown with Ms. Le Pen, in the belief that the French would reject her party in the second round of voting, as they have for decades.Now it is far less clear whom he would meet in a runoff: A strong showing in the first round could propel Mr. Zemmour into the second one, or it could split the far-right electorate to allow a center-right candidate to qualify for the finals.After weeks of ignoring Mr. Zemmour, Mr. Macron is now criticizing him, though not by name, while government ministers and other Macron allies have unleashed a barrage of attacks.Mr. Zemmour is the author of several books, and a star on the right-wing CNews network. Nicolas Tucat/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Zemmour’s rise has been most unsettling for Ms. Le Pen, who is plummeting in the polls — so much so that her own father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, the party founder, said that he would support Mr. Zemmour if the writer were in a stronger position.Ms. Le Pen has for years tried to broaden her base with a so-called un-demonizing strategy of moving her nationalist, anti-immigrant party from the most extreme xenophobic positions that it was known for under her father. Now she finds herself in the unusual position of being outflanked on the right.Mr. Zemmour became one of France’s best-selling authors in the past decade by writing books on the nation’s decline — fueled, he said, by the loss of traditional French and Christian values, the immigration of Muslim Africans bent on a reverse colonization of France, the rise of feminism and the loss of virility, and a “great replacement” of white people, a conspiracy theory that has been cited by gunmen in multiple mass shootings.As the child of Algerians who settled in metropolitan France, he has presented himself as the embodiment of France’s successful system of assimilation. He has said that the failure to integrate recent generations of Muslim immigrants lies with the new arrivals, who hate France, and not with a system that others say has not kept up with the times.Mr. Zemmour’s influence rose to an entirely new level in the past two years after he became the star of CNews, a new Fox-style news network that gave him a platform to expound on his views every evening.His supporters include voters most deeply shaken by the social forces that have roiled French society more recently and that they now lump into “wokisme” — a #MeToo movement that has led to the fall of powerful men; a racial awakening challenging France’s image of itself as a colorblind society; the emergence of a new generation questioning the principles of the French Republic; and the perceived growing threat of an American-inspired vision of society.“In its history, France has always had a strong cultural identity, but now there’s deep anxiety about that identity,” Mr. Perrineau said. “People feel that their culture, their way of life and their political system, all is being changed. It’s enough.”Mr. Zemmour at a book promotion event in Nice last month.Valery Hache/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“Éric Zemmour plays on that very well, on this nostalgia for the past, and this fear of no longer being a great power, of dissolving in a conglomerate that we don’t understand, whether it’s Europe or globalization or the Americanization of culture,” he added.In the 2017 election, Mr. Macron was the new face who overturned the existing political order. But during his presidency, “the new world of Emmanuel Macron has come to look a lot like the old world,” disillusioning voters, Mr. Perrineau said.Philippe Olivier, a close aide to Ms. Le Pen and a member of the European Parliament, said that French voters seek a larger-than-life figure in their president.“In the United States, a president could be a movie actor like Reagan or a carnival performer like Trump,” said Mr. Olivier, who is also Ms. Le Pen’s brother-in-law. “In France, we elect the king.”But the two-round system compels much of the electorate to vote in the runoffs against candidates — and not for someone of their liking.“In the second round, the point is who is more repulsive,” Mr. Olivier said. “I believe Macron would be more rejected than Marine, but Zemmour would be much more rejected than Macron.”As France has grown more conservative in recent years, Mr. Macron has tacked right on many issues to try to grab a bigger electoral slice, especially among voters in the traditional center-right Republicans party.The Republicans, who have yet to select their presidential candidate, are now facing a new threat themselves, because Mr. Zemmour draws support from them as well as from the far right.In their own bid to attract far-right voters, many leaders on the traditional right have flirted with Mr. Zemmour in recent years, excusing or overlooking the fact that the writer has been sanctioned for inciting racial hatred.“The traditional right made a serious mistake that is now exploding in their face,” said Jean-Yves Camus, director of the Observatory of Radical Politics. “Because it’s long been in competition against the far right on issues like national identity, immigration and sovereignty, it kept winking at Zemmour.”A fan taking a photo with Mr. Zemmour at a book signing in Toulon last month.Eric Gaillard/ReutersNow the traditional right is looking for ways to distance itself from the TV star without alienating his supporters.Patrick Stefanini, a Republican who ran President Jacques Chirac’s successful 1995 campaign, said Mr. Zemmour was benefiting from divisions within the traditional right on issues like immigration.“Mr. Zemmour has turned immigration into the single key to understanding the difficulties facing French society,” said Mr. Stefanini, who is now leading the presidential bid of Valérie Pécresse, the head of the Paris region. “The Republicans are having a little trouble positioning themselves because the tendencies aren’t the same within the Republicans.”Mr. Stefanini attributed Mr. Zemmour’s rise partly to the traditional right’s failure to quickly decide on a candidate, and said he felt confident that the TV star’s ratings would peter out.But for now, many voters appear to be taking a look at Mr. Zemmour, who has been attracting huge crowds at campaign-like events across France as he promotes his latest book, “France Has Not Said Its Last Word Yet.”Last week, three residents of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, a wealthy suburb of Paris, came together to attend an event with Mr. Zemmour in the capital.Françoise Torneberg, who said she was in her 70s, said she liked Mr. Zemmour because “he gives a kick in the anthill,” she said.Her friend Andrée Chalmandrier, 69, said, “We love France but not the France of today.”“We’re not at home,” Ms. Chalmandrier said, adding that often when she shops in her suburb, “I’m the only French representative. There are four or five veiled women around me, who furthermore are extremely arrogant.”“And yet it’s a good neighborhood,” Ms. Torneberg said. “It’s not at all a working-class neighborhood.”Léontine Gallois contributed reporting. More