Conservative writer and television pundit Eric Zemmour has announced his candidacy for the French presidency, saying he will end the “third-worldisation” of the country.
The anti-mass migration and anti-Islamisation pundit, who has been compared to former American President Donald J. Trump and television host Tucker Carlson, announced on Tuesday that he will be running as a candidate in next spring’s presidential election, ending months of speculation on the matter.
“My fellow citizens, (…) like you, I have decided to take our destiny into my own hands. (…) It is no longer time to reform France, but to save it. I decided to run for president. (…) Long live the Republic, and especially long live France!” Zemmour stated in a video posted on social media and reported by Le Figaro.
The ten-minute film sees Zemmour address key issues, including what he called the “dispossession” many French feel living in their own country
“You have not moved and yet you have the feeling of no longer being at home. You feel like a stranger in your country. You are exiles from within,” he said and added that while immigration was not the source of all of France’s problems, “the third-worldisation of our people and our country impoverishes them as much as it dislocates them.”
“Right and left have hidden from you the reality of our replacement,” Zemmour said, referencing the theory of the Great Replacement, a term coined by French writer Renaud Camus to describe the mass migration phenomenon and the demographic shifts taking place within France other parts of the world.
A recent poll revealed that as much as half of the French public believes in the theory of the Great Replacement, which states that elites in politics and business view human beings as interchangeable and replaceable.
Among Zemmour’s proposed policies are banning gender studies from French schools, claiming back French sovereignty from European Union bureaucrats, and greatly reducing France’s public debt.
Prior to the announcement, Zemmour had made waves after polls had put him second to current President Emmanuel Macron and ahead of populist National Rally (RN) leader Marine Le Pen. He has also generated headlines in recent days after the announcement his campaign adviser, 28-year-old Sarah Knafo is pregnant with his child. The pair again hit the headlines shortly after when Zemmour, Knafo laughing beside him, gave a middle-fingered salute to a member of the public heckling him.
Zemmour has become well-known over the years for his often politically incorrect opinions on mass migration, Islamisation, and other issues, some of which have led to legal trouble and two have led to convictions for hate speech.
Comments Zemmour made last year regarding the criminality of minor migrants have led to him being placed on trial for hate speech again earlier this month. In an indication, perhaps, of his feeling on the trial Zemmour declined to attend the first hearing, sending a lawyer in his stead.
His representative explained his client’s absence, saying: “He will not be present, in order to prevent the judicial precinct from turning into a continuous news TV studio.”
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