A generationAt the beginning of 2019, when we started discussing immigration issues, I was teaching French sixth graders about Erasmus placement. Some girls expressed admiration for women on the center-right, some boys were on the liberal left, despite being skeptical of the excessive social justice and politics of the Internet, while others might be dismissed as “awakening”.
When I asked them what they thought of Éric Zemmour, they all rolled their eyes. Running for president. My students think he is a racist and think he is a weird person. They hate Marina Le Pen of the far-right Rassemblement National, but they take her seriously. You have to accept that she is part of the political furniture, but this person is helpless.After all, he used to Sentenced for hate speech.
But even so, he is still a frustrating mainstream, writing best-selling books that contain Vichy’s apology and hateful anti-feminism and homosexual creed.He has a column in Le Figaro, where he wrote conspiracy theories, arguing that Christianity created France But Islam is trying to break it. Recently, Zemmour has become a semi-permanent TV fixture. An obscure infrastructure of donors and online commandos supporting him has emerged, and he travels to France to meet his fans.
Zemmour’s politics is terrible nihilism.His ideas came directly from extremism Reynolds Camus’s “Great Alternative” Theory Immigration to the unanimous population extinction of European whites. Although his new book La France n’a pas dit son dernier mot (France has not yet said the final words), Slightly optimistic, his conclusions on the so-called revival ignored the standard of living and fell into war slogans against foreigners and those who dared to oppose police brutality.
People often compare him with Donald Trump, even though Zemore is a different beast politically.In his own words, he is working on a Gramsci fight Over culture. His strategy seems to be more deliberate than Trump’s provocative incitement.
Presidential election vote Already shown Zemmour leads the potential candidates of Le Pen and the Republican Party with approval ratings of 15% and 17%, respectively. Downfall due to successive corruption scandals. A poll in November even showed that he faced Macron in the second round, and his position as a front-runner seemed solid. However, on the eve of the announcement of his candidacy, with the increase in scrutiny, his campaign began to be in trouble, and he was already behind Le Pen. Therefore, it is unclear whether this is a real phenomenon or media-driven fashion, but this extremist was able to portray himself as the protagonist of a political spectacle during the pandemic, while prices have risen sharply. This fact reveals that politics and the media have not Visionary class.
Aurélien Mondon, a far-right researcher at the University of Bath, told me that he did not “believe that this is actually what people want…if they have more choices and different sources of mediation and political knowledge , That’s not what they want.”
He described his latest research on opinion polls, which found that when you ask people to tell the most pressing issues facing their society, immigrants rank high, but when you ask the biggest issues affecting their lives, immigrants do not unimportant. Instead, people are talking about work, pensions, or health care.
Munden said that this is because people can truthfully answer their lives, but they cannot speak for all their compatriots, so they rely on the political knowledge of the intermediary, and the broadcaster that provides this knowledge has given up. He said that apart from “Islam, Islam, Islam”, they barely talked about other things.
People often think that young people are left-wing, and most of them are.Left-wing populists Jean-Luc Melanchon In the 2017 election, I got the most votes among young people aged 18 to 24, and most people who abstained may hold liberal views, just like the poorer and richer high schools I taught The same for students. But the second place among young people is not the liberal centrist or mainstream conservatives, but Le Pen.
The echo of that loop reappeared.In the most recent regional elections, 87% of young voters Abstain, Prefers protest movements rather than formal politics, but online Zemmour has “buzzing“. It’s important not to exaggerate things: although it is growing, the youth movement around Zemmour is small. But whether it’s Génération Nation (the youth wing of the National Rally) or Génération Zemmour, one is mainly young male users sharing the French emerging fascist YouTube Links to scenes and online communities debating Zemmour theories, the fact that these ideas have any appeal to young people should humiliate politicians.
This embrace of nihilism, even if it persists Le Pen 20% Or the split to Zemmour and the abstention rate indicate that a very politicized generation has been created (as my French friend who teaches will tell you), but there is no promising vision for France.
Out of consideration for electoral opportunism, the right wing is gathering politics around Zemur. Macronists have been around for some time. The debate between the Minister of the Interior Gerald Dammanen and Le Pen and Zemur revealed the amazing common ground between the three, and the Minister of Higher Education Frederick Vidal’s conduct of the so-called “Islamic Leftists” at the university. Of political persecution.
Republicans, always frightened by the fragility of their base, are busy declaring that Zemur is not a racist. Their presidential candidates are setting up a very similar booth. They seem to have no other ideas other than calculating how to absorb the extreme right in order to seek election benefits. At the same time, the laughingstock of the French left offers clichés, or where there are specific plans, as in the case of Melanchon, there is no strategy for overcoming the differences on the left.
Controversial French conservative writer Michel Houellebecq’s 2015 novel submission, One of the Muslim Brotherhood candidates won the 2022 election, and France became a moderate caliphate, capturing the tone of French electoral politics well. I disagree, but many people think that the face value of this book is an endorsement of the “great alternative” theory.submit Reflects France’s anxiety; it satirizes the elite’s overwhelming concern for Islam and stifles any vision beyond decline. Mei Langxiong also appears in the narrative. He stood on the side of the left and organized an idle protest.
Prices are rising, epidemics are raging, students line up at food banks, but politicians and broadcasters only want to talk about Islam, immigration, and Eric Zemur.
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Oliver Haynes, a student at City University of London, was highly praised for this article at the Hugo Young 2021 Political View Writing Award of the Guardian Foundation
