Eric Zemmour did not convince anyone this Tuesday evening in Versailles.
He didn't need it.
Invited by
Les Éveilleurs
, an association close to the Manif pour tous launched in 2015, the essayist faced a conquered audience, at the Palais des Congrès of the royal city: 1,500 people, all, or almost all, having spent between 30 and 70 euros to come and listen to the
political
“phenomenon”
of the start of the school year.
And this, while the author of
Suicide Français
has already participated this last month in two events around his latest book in the upscale town of Yvelines.
To discover
Presidential 2022: where are the candidates in the polls?
For the former journalist, the stake of this evening was not to widen its audience.
It was not to clear, fundamentally, new programmatic fields.
But to beat the recall of a whole Catholic and conservative community not having recovered from the failure of the mobilizations against homosexual marriage.
Nor that of François Fillon in the 2017 presidential election.
Read also Geoffroy Lejeune's Zemmour prophecy
Questioned with kindness by the lawyer Benoit Sevilla, one of the co-founders of the association, Eric Zemmour was able to unfold his views without hindrance on
"the issue of civilization"
which he believes the country is facing. The
"disaster"
that was the five-year term of Emmanuel Macron. The danger that mass immigration poses to France, as well as its identity that needs to be reaffirmed in order to regain all of its sovereignty.
“Do we want to become an Islamic land? Or do we want to remain a Greco-Roman land? In this case, we must give ourselves the means ”,
he said to applause.
In particular, in the front rows, Laurence Trochu, president of the conservative movement (ex-Sens commun), Gabrielle Cluzel, editorial director of boulevard Voltaire, or the president of the Christian Democratic Party, renamed Via, Jean-Frédéric Poisson.
We must combine the sociology of the Manif for all, and the sociology of the yellow vests.
"
Eric Zemmour
Six months before the presidential election, the non-candidate, who should soon become one, especially insisted on the path to take to make his ideas triumph: to ally the
“patriotic bourgeoisie” -
overrepresented in the assembly - to the classes popular - quite absent.
"We must combine the sociology of the Manif for all, and the sociology of the yellow vests,
" he declined. The whole point of this evening was to remind the first that none other than the essayist would better defend their ideas. He who maintains that
"same-sex marriage was a mistake"
, who reiterates his opposition to medically assisted procreation (MAP) without a father and who sees
"surrogacy as big as a house"
(pregnancy for others, editor's note).
Read also Eric Zemmour, the phenomenon: will it go to the end?
But also to warn them that he would not make any of these themes of the battle horses in the campaign to come.
"The Demonstration for all, mostly bourgeois, failed because the popular classes remained foreign to it
," he blurted out.
We must find the axes that unite these two sociologies.
The subject that brings together is the question in the broad sense of identity and immigration.
The other fights are no less important but will make us lose.
We must move forward with the theme that unites.
Then we'll see. ”
In front of an audience of influencers from the media, the Catholic world or the business world, the opportunity was also to recall that, to win when the time comes, the essayist would need their mobilization and their financial support.
"There is great potential here, we are not going to lie to each other,"
recognizes a member of his team.
The goal was above all to tell them: Eric Zemmour is there. "
Alongside Jean-Pax Méfret, the
"singer of the West",
symbol of a generation of the anti-communist right-wing and nostalgic for French Algeria, the ex-LREM Joachim Son-Forget understood the message well. .
If he does not say
"100% agreement on all subjects"
with Eric Zemmour, the parliamentarian assures him that he has promised his sponsorship:
"On his attachment to France and on societal values, we are completely connection.
I think I'm the only MP to have given it. ”
Mass is not said, however.