August 2021
Éric Zemmour is the most important media personality in France today. He is also the most controversial. So, in February 2021, when he hinted on television that he was considering running for president, he sent shock waves through France’s chattering classes. Despite widespread denunciation, and even without formally declaring, polls showed that Zemmour could win between 13 and 17 percent of the vote. In the free-for-all first round of the French presidential elections, this would be an impressive performance for a rookie politician without a party behind him. The fact that a journalist now appears to command a political base twice the size of France’s Socialist Party demonstrates how the conventions and assumptions governing French politics have broken down.