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| Zemmour: saying "the bad things" |
But I have another theory. It is that Zemmour is an "Overton window pusher," that is someone who uses his more extreme identitarian rhetoric to push the parameters of what is acceptable in French political debate so that someone else more moderate than himself, i.e. Marine Le Pen, gets the benefit.
Populist National Rally (RN) leader and French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen has achieved a record level of popularity in a new poll, while French President Emmanuel Macron has seen a decline.The popularity of Ms Le Pen has risen to 40 per cent among the French public, according to a poll released by the firm Ifop this week. The poll is the best result ever for the populist French presidential candidate who is one of the main contenders in the presidential race.
The result for Le Pen also places her far above her main populist rival, the conservative writer and television pundit Eric Zemmour, who scored 27 per cent in the poll and placed Le Pen on the same level as conservative Les Republicains candidate Valérie Pécresse, who saw a decline of 5 per cent, Paris Match reports.
Interpreted correctly, this suggests that Zemmour is creating much of the energy in the French Presidential campaign by effectively raising issues like the “Great Replacement” and the “third-worldisation” of France, issues which the mainstream has ignored and suppressed for too long. But Zemmour is also picking up the heat for bringing these "controversial" and "socially divisive" issues into the public forum. Le Pen, meanwhile, by taking a gentler and more conciliatory tack, benefits from Zemmour's work because she doesn't have to pay the costs -- namely the emotional backlash at the person driving these "awkward" issues and narratives.
Right-wingers in Western politics often need someone like this in order to succeed; someone to soak up the reactionary energy of the Leftist and Establishmentarian backlash. A recent example that springs to mind is the 2019 EU elections in the UK. In this, the final European Parliament election in British history, Nigel Farage's Brexit Party swept the board, winning 29 out of 73 seats, and threatening the disintegration of the Conservative Party, which only won 4 seats. This disastrous result for Theresa May's Conservative Party finally forced it to dump her and unite behind Boris Johnson and his Brexit agenda, which then won a landslide at the Westminster election some months later.
One reason that Farage's party did so well was because his new Brexit Party could not easily be demonised as a "far-right" party of "haters" and "racists." This role was assumed by his former party, UKIP. Under the leadership of Gerard Batten, it had swung further to the right, becoming more anti-Islamist (and therefore borderline "racist" as far as the British mainstream was concerned), while also taking on board e-celeb figures who were controversial for normies, like Count Dankula, Paul Joseph Watson, and Sargon of Akkad. With UKIP serving as the main target for the hysteria and vitriol of the Establishment and the Left, Farage's Brexit Party was allowed a fairly clean run at the voters.
Will Zemmour end up serving a similar function for Marine Le Pen, allowing her softer identitarian populism, like Farage's, to be seen as squeaky clean by the mass of the voters, because someone else is there to soak up the Left's usual tactics of smearing, dirtying, demonising, and carpet bombing with the R-word anyone remotely right of centre? Will Zemmour, in fact, end up carrying the so-called "sins" of the Right off into the wilderness, like the proverbial scapegoat, so that others may be redeemed?
Hate to think what Putin's gamble in the Ukraine will do to Zemmour and Le Pen's chances.
ReplyDeleteInteresting view. So we have two scenarios how this could play out:
ReplyDelete1. Zemmour reaps the benefits from his candid campaign because he sets the tone of the debate, making Le Pen looking too established and tame by comparison.
2. Zemmour widens the overton window but draws too much flak in the process on himself so that Le Pen following safely behind is the one who benefits.
Neat. But the important thing is that at least one of them gets through the first round and that he is supported by the electorate of the other one in the second round.