Threats in French Presidential Election Race

Left wing weekly Socialist Worker and the daily liberal Guardian have both this week profiled a new and emerging threat to French democracy in the shape of Eric Zemmour, a populist politician to the right even of the well known xenophobic leader Marine Le Pen. Mr Zemmour has not yet declared himself a candidate for next year's Presidential election in France, but has been widely touted as a new icon for the far right, disappointed by Ms Le Pen's toning down of some of the anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim sentiment of her party. Zemmour has several convictions for racist hate speech and puts forward the “great replacement” theory peddled by fascists, which claims that white Europeans are being replaced by immigrants. Zemmour is also anti-feminist and anti-LGBTQ. The political left is in some disarray in France, with Jean-Luc Melenchon on eleven per cent in the polls, the Greens on seven per cent and the social democratic Partie Socialiste on just six per cent. The Socialist Worker paper say that “It’s urgent that anti-racists and socialists organise against the far right and the fascists, against both Le Pen and Zemmour”.