A year of Reconquest!, what remains of the Zemmour phenomenon?

Marylou Magal is a journalist at Le Figaro, author of

"La BéréZina: Éric Zemmour: autopsy of an electoral rout"

Jules Torres is a journalist at Valeurs Actuelles, he published

“Zemmour, in the secret of his campaign”

FIGAROVOX.

– This December 4, Reconquest!

- the political party founded by Éric Zemmour – celebrates its first anniversary.

Has Zemmour become a politician like any other?

Jules Torres.

–

During the campaign, commentators kept talking about Éric Zemmour's "political change".

Everyone, friend or enemy of the former journalist, saw an evolution during the Villepinte meeting.

But Zemmour did not go into politics to become a man of the system.

On the contrary, he wanted to do politics differently, both in form and in substance.

This was also one of the pitfalls of his campaign.

Eric Zemmour has never been able to handle the elements of language and is incapable of formatting his speech in the allotted time.

He has the “little sentence syndrome”.

When he goes to Gilles Bouleau's set on TF1, on the evening of his candidacy announcement, he lets himself be trapped by the format of the interview, finds himself unable to explain his point and

Read alsoÉric Zemmour without regrets, but with a project to define

Marylou MAGAL.

–

That's right, Éric Zemmour has never really succeeded in extricating himself from the role of editorial writer which was his.

He kept one foot in, one foot out.

During the campaign, this status of intellectual attracted the attention of the public and allowed him to impose political themes and terminologies which were not accepted in the public debate: this was the case of the “great replacement”.

Its corollary is that it has not always been able to impose limits.

There was an excessive radicalism, even a brutality in his speech, which served him.

How do you explain the media enthusiasm around candidate Zemmour?

MM –

Éric Zemmour benefited from media over-treatment thanks to the communication put in place by his campaign team.

They managed to create a fast-paced political show, with constant momentum, giving the impression that there was always newness, world and fervor.

The press initially followed because it was a beautiful story to tell, perhaps even the only one of this presidential election.

J.T.

_

– Éric Zemmour benefited from media over-treatment during his pre-campaign.

But that does not mean that this treatment was favorable to him, unlike the treatment reserved for Emmanuel Macron in 2017. From September 2021, only a few days after his first pre-campaign event, private photos of him and his companion Sarah Knafo are unveiled on the cover of Paris Match.

Not to mention Here and Closer, who have just been sentenced for invasion of the privacy of Éric Zemmour.

This overprocessing is not surprising, however.

Eric Zemmour was selling.

Just look at the ratings of his television interviews or the sales figures of the magazines that featured him on the cover.

The war in Ukraine confronts Éric Zemmour with his personal pitfall.

He did not know how to react to the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, because he is an intellectual who offers a vision of the systemic world, with the will that reality bends to his analytical grid.

Marylou Magal

Was Russia's invasion of Ukraine a break in its campaign?

MM –

The war in Ukraine confronts Éric Zemmour with his personal pitfall.

He did not know how to react to the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, because he is an intellectual who offers a vision of the systemic world, with the will that reality bends to his analytical grid.

But in this case the real proved him wrong.

From then on, he finds himself trapped in his columnist posture and is unable to bounce back.

JT-

Indeed, his analysis grid was hit by the war in Ukraine.

His refusal to welcome Ukrainian refugees was not understood by the French and was much discussed even within his campaign team.

Even Damien Rieu, who represents an identity line, firmly opposed to immigration, expressed his disagreement on the subject.

Because the Ukrainians, unlike the Afghans or the Syrians, are a European and Christian people, who are undergoing an invasion.

From the war in Ukraine, the campaign goes off the rails because Eric Zemmour no longer controls anything.

The Russian invasion wipes out all other subjects.

He no longer manages to impose his themes.

He is obviously aware of it.

“We are going to deprive the French of an election again,” he told me two days after the invasion during a meeting in Chambéry.

Above all,

he knows his electorate will split.

On February 18, Eric Zemmour is given the second round in a poll.

On the 30th, a week after the war in Ukraine, he had already lost three to five points according to the various polling institutes.

These voters then turn to Emmanuel Macron, who benefits from the “flag effect”.

Read alsoA comeback under the sign of civilization for Éric Zemmour

How would you define the ideological base of the Reconquest candidate!

?

MM –

Éric Zemmour takes a socially conservative line, nostalgic for a certain France that is supposedly losing out, of a French culture that is dying out and of a population that would be destined to be replaced by people coming from outside.

Liberal on the economic side, he was surrounded by Julien Madar and Jonathan Nadler of Banque Rothschild, who defended an entrepreneurial vision of the economy.

He never ceased to denounce the deconstruction of France and its values.

His project aimed to reconcile a conservative vision on the societal level, and liberal on the economic level.

news

– At its meetings, I have only seen people nostalgic for a bygone France, which deplores the fact that we no longer produce great writers, that our cinema no longer shines in the world, that the music children listen to be more French, that the professor is no longer on a platform… It is also the nostalgia of a free France, in which we do not dictate their way of life, in which we do not unbolt the statue of Saint-Michel in Les Sables d'Olonne and in which you can go out into the street without being worried.

Eric Zemmour campaigned on this nostalgia for a France that is gradually disappearing.

Moreover, his candidacy announcement video is very revealing: he puts himself in the posture of General de Gaulle, he tells what France was before and violent images of today

today come to collide with this narrative.

Eric Zemmour is the only one to have embodied this line during the presidential election.

For Reconquête!, the European elections are very important.

This vote - proportional - can also favor a sovereignist and identity list like the one that Eric Zemmour's training will carry.

Jules Torres

MM -

Except that we don't vote for a prophet of bad omen.

This campaign was above all an identity awareness campaign.

Because, in fact, it burst the Overton window (allegory which locates the whole of the ideas, opinions or practices regarded as more or less acceptable in the public opinion, editor's

).

Today, we can talk about the great replacement on TV sets without being worried.

It is undeniably an ideological victory, but Zemmour failed to arouse hope and a desire to vote for him.

How Reconquest!

can weigh in the political debate now?

Can the 2024 European elections be a new impetus?

MM -

I think what interests Zemmour is the supreme election: the presidential one.

Until 2027, he will try to occupy the field by continuing to weigh as an intellectual...

JT –

Zemmour manages to exist in the political debate when the news concerns his favorite themes.

We have seen it in recent weeks during the Lola affair or the

.

Even if he was criticized during the Lola affair, he was able to make his voice heard.

Traveling to Toulon when the

docked on the coast, he pulled off his agit-prop stunt.

Unless Emmanuel Macron decides on a radical change in his policy, I can predict without too much difficulty that the debates on the themes of migration and insecurity will be very present in the coming years.

Eric Zemmour will be able to carry his voice and put forward his proposals in this area.

Read alsoEric Zemmour's party is heading for the Europeans

There is also the field of elections.

For Reconquête!, the European elections are very important.

This vote - proportional - can also favor a sovereignist and identity list like the one that Eric Zemmour's training will carry.

The sovereignist lists have always been favored during this election - except in 2019 -: Pasqua and the RPF in 1999, Villiers and the MPF in 2004… As in 2019, the National Rally of Jordan Bardella will propose an anti-Macron referendum.

However, we will have to look closely at what the Republicans are doing.

François-Xavier Bellamy is not guaranteed to lead the list if Éric Ciotti wins the congress.

There remains the main unknown: does Éric Zemmour want to lead the list for the Europeans?

For her part, Marion Maréchal does not forbid herself anything.

The games are open.