In his candidate video for 2022, Eric Zemmour multiplies the clichés – The HuffPost

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POLICY – Do not look for the term “purchasing power” in the declaration of Éric Zemmour’s candidacy, you won’t find it. Just like the words “economy”, “taxation”, “housing” or “ecology” which were not pronounced. The polemicist, however, had ten long minutes before him to outline a presidential project. However, faithful to his interventions of recent weeks, the far-right candidate preferred to concentrate his efforts on nostalgia, by threading the clichés and symbols of a past France, which he intends to save.

Reading his text sitting in front of his microphone, a caricatural pastiche of the Appeal of June 18 by General de Gaulle, the former journalist at the Figaro has chained the cultural and historical references, supposed to prove to what extent the country is “disappearing”.

Éric Zemmour thus evokes “the country of Joan of Arc and Louis XIV”, but also that of “knights and gentes dames” or “fables of La Fontaine, characters of Molière and verses of Racine”, as s ‘he was reciting a timeline he had learned by heart.

“Exiles from within”

The whole on a background sound supposed to accentuate the dramatic character of this speech: the adagio of the 7th Symphony of the German composer Ludwig van Beethoven. An astonishing choice on the part of a candidate who intends to highlight the cultural greatness of the country, and who also ape staging from british film The speech of a king.

But whatever. For Éric Zemmour, the essential thing is to sell an imaginary in black and white, in which he arranges Jean Gabin, Alain Delon, Brigitte Bardot, Johnny Halliday, Charles Aznavour, Georges Brassens or even Barbara. So many references that appear in archive images (which could lead him to legal proceedings from the beneficiaries) and on which he relies to explain that everything was better before.

“This country you are looking for everywhere with despair, for which your children nostalgia without even having known it, this country which you cherish… and which is in the process of disappearing”, declares the presidential candidate, in s’ addressing the French directly: “you have not left your country, but it is as if your country had left you. You feel like a stranger in your own country. You are exiles from within ”.

Populist clichés

Once the decor of France fantasized of his childhood has been set, Éric Zemmour continues by accumulating, this time, populist clichés, targeting “the powerful, the elites, the well-meaning, journalists, politicians, academics , sociologists, trade unionists ”and also“ religious authorities ”who, according to him, have hidden from the general public“ the disappearance of our civilization ”. Besides immigration, of course, Eric Zemmour talks lip service to the structural problems of the country.

Thus he admits that it is necessary to “reduce our growing debt” and that it is also necessary “to reindustrialize France”, or even “to bring back to France our companies which have moved” and “to give work to our unemployed”. A bit like a doctor who would simply say that it is important to treat the sick, without offering any remedy.

Then come the dated stereotypes on National Education, prey according to him “to the egalitarian experiences of pedagogists and Doctors Folamour of theories of gender and Islamogauchism”. A kind of reactionary bingo bordering on caricature, preceding the highlight of his speech: his declaration. And no surprise, like in his book, Eric Zemmour (re) plays the worn-out card of the candidate forced by the circumstances.

Identity obsessions

“I understood that no politician would have the courage to save the country from the tragic fate that awaited him. I understood that all these supposedly competent were mostly helpless. That President Macron, who presented himself as a new man, was in truth the synthesis of his two predecessors and worse. That in all parties, they were content with reforms while time is running out. It is no longer time to reform France, but to save it. I therefore decided to stand for the presidential election ”, explains Éric Zemmour, who calls for universal suffrage“ so that our daughters are not veiled and our sons are not submitted ”.

End of speech? Not at all. Once his declaration has been made, Éric Zemmour gives a layer on “our lifestyles, our traditions, our language, our conversations, our controversies on history or fashion, our taste for literature and gastronomy”.

A long conclusion in which it is a question of our “glorious past” which “pleads for our future” and of nods to identity obsessions. “For a thousand years, we have been one of the powers that have written the history of the world. We will be worthy of our ancestors. We will not allow ourselves to be dominated, vassalized, conquered, colonized. We will not let ourselves be replaced ”, he promises, without having outlined the start of a project.

And the now candidate to deviate from the traditional formula recording the final point of a presidential speech: “long live the Republic and especially long live France”. As if, for him, the nature of our democratic system mattered less than his vision of the country. Which, at a minimum, has something to question.

See also on The HuffPost: Zemmour candidate for 2022: these 3 subjects that he will have to clarify