FRENCH POLITICS IS BUILT ROUND THE PRINCIPLE OF STOPPING MARINE LE PEN BECOMING PRESIDENT

Charlie Hebdo cartoon showing Zemmour with 
the Le Pens as concentration camp guards 

by Daniel Barge

I don't know who Éric Zemmour is or what his appeal to French people is. To get a true flavour of the guy I would probably have to learn French, which is never going to happen. But I can infer that he talks a great game, and makes plenty of good points. But those are mere details, and details are generally irrelevant. What is important is the big picture.  

What is obvious, however, is that France has a Presidential election next year, and it would be extremely awkward for the governing elites if someone like Marine Le Pen won.

The way the election is structured is that there are a couple of rounds, with the final round being a run off between the two leading candidates. Last time it was the clearly astroturfed Macron vs Le Pen in the final, with Macron winning 66% to 34%. 

The reason Macron won was because he was a "centrist" with almost total media support, who was able to take most of the votes to his Left as well as many Cuckservatives to his right. While he got 95% of voters describing themselves as "Left-wing" and 91% of voters describing themselves as "rather Left-wing," Le Pen interestingly got almost a quarter or voters describing themselves as "Very left-wing."

Since then, Le Pen has been making moves to break out of the "far-right extremist" framing imposed on her, and has made further inroads both to Leftist and Centrist voters. 

For years now, in head-to-head polls with Macron she has been in the mid 40s, sometimes narrowing the gap to just 6 points. As we know, polls grossly under-count populist Right figures, so the gap may be much narrower or even inverted. Also, it has to be borne in mind that Le Pen's support, which is socially unvalidated and constantly demonised by the media, is much harder than Macron's, after all, his wishy-washy centrism does not inspire much passionate support anywhere. 

So, from this we see that the macro-data was all pointing to Le Pen having a much better chance of beating Macron in 2022. Now, suddenly we are hearing about this "new" nationalist meteor, Éric Zemmour. Marine Le Pen's own father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, now in his 90s, is said to be backing him.

From a quick "catch-up" article in Axios:

A far-right firebrand is shaking up the French presidential election and, with six months to go, has pulled into second in the polls.

Why it matters: This race had long seemed on course for a rematch between President Emmanuel Macron, now an unpopular incumbent, and far-right leader Marine Le Pen. But it's Le Pen who's now facing a major threat on her right flank.

Driving the news: Éric Zemmour, a writer and TV pundit sometimes compared to Tucker Carlson, is second in the latest Harris Interactive poll — a crucial benchmark, as the top two finishers will enter a runoff. Never before has a candidate jumped so quickly in the polls, pollster Antoine Gautier told AFP.

Zemmour — who was convicted in 2009 of inciting racial hatred and is an advocate of the "Great Replacement" theory popular among white supremacists — has yet to enter the race, but took a leave of absence from the French equivalent of Fox News.

I won't comment on his Jewishness, but it's clear that Zemmour is an effective communicator who talks in a way that strikes a chord with ordinary French voters, but why is he pushing himself forward as a potential candidate, especially now? Remember, details are irrelevant. It is the bigger picture that is important. 

Zemmour and Le Pen

There are three reasonable possibilities of what will happen with Zemmour, all of them negative for the populist Right:

1. He crashes and burns, whereupon his lack of purchase with Right-wing voters is attributed to "anti-Semitism" and used to smear Le Pen as a "Nazi" again, scaring some voters to cling to Macron. An old trick that seems to keep on working.
2. He does well, whereupon Le Pen's bloc is split down the middle, allowing someone else -- a bland Centre-Leftist or Centre-Rightist -- to push Le Pen and Zemmour down to 3rd and 4th spot, and thus set up a "safe" final round for the Establishment.
3. He does very well, whereupon he faces off against Macron in the final round and somehow manages to lose. 

The idea that Zemmour goes all the way and wins the Presidency seems a little far-fetched but not impossible. However, this can safely be set aside for the moment.

So, to summarise, what are we looking at here?

In 2017 Le Pen does well for a Right-wing Populist but is defeated in the final round to an astroturfed Macron. By 2021 President Astroturf is looking shop-worn and jaded, while Le Pen continues to build a solid challenge. Suddenly, out of nowhere, Zemmour is unleashed, his most obvious purpose apparently being to stop Le Pen winning again. Conclusion: he's a spoiler candidate.

What we are seeing here, once again, is the central principle around which contemporary French politics is built: namely stopping Marine Le Pen becoming President. 

Is this part of the "shadow war," which Colin Liddell and others allude to, that is being fought out between the West and the rising "ChiRus" powers of the East, with Le Pen weaponised to destablise the West while Zemmour is a French Deep State countermove? Or do the elites just genuinely dislike Le Pen, and think that their version of Pan-European and Eurabian multiculturalism is the way forward? 

Perfect timing: France's Tucker Carlson

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