Eric Zemmour a brief comet or a president?

Two European political figures have chosen to present their political engagement explicitly as a struggle for the survival of European civilisation. One of them is Thierry Baudet; the other is the journalist turned candidate in the French presidential election, Eric Zemmour. Other conservative figures may be against immigration or the EU but they do not ground their political action on civilisational issues as such.

Setting out goals 

Thierry Baudet has recorded a video[1] outlining his philosophical vision and especially his desire to see European civilisation defended and restored against the ravages of oikophobia and post-modernism. Eric Zemmour has made a similar video[2], the pretext for which is to send Christmas wishes to his French compatriots but whose real function is to set out his political goal in all its sophistication and depth – the goal of saving European civilisation.

The mere fact of sending Christmas wishes are itself a political statement in France, just as it is becoming a political point in the Netherlands to organise the visits of Sinterklaas and Zwarte Piet. The current French president[3] and prime minister[4] did publish Christmas wishes on Twitter this year but they were mean-minded and in reality nothing but a pretext for killjoy finger-wagging about Covid and how to avoid it when seeing friends and family.

This is because, in France today, as in much of Europe, the current practice of secularism (la laïcité) is in reality little but oikophobia and Islamo-leftism. Whereas secularism means either the separation of the state from religious matters, or the tolerance of all religions, as in the practice all over Europe, islamophilia has become a totem of political correctness. It often happens that French political figures celebrate Muslim feats like Ramadan but they very seldom if ever publicly celebrate Christmas, still less Easter and never Lent.

Western civilisation 

Zemmour in his video trains all his considerable rhetorical and intellectual talent at this target in a strenuous effort to destroy it. He says that Christmas is celebrated by all, believers and non-believers alike, because it is in fact at the very root of European civilisation a root which, he argues, is Christian. “To like Christmas, it is enough to like the West,” he says Zemmour, against a charming background of a medieval European street. “Christmas celebrates the birth of a civilisation, our civilisation, a civilisation which considers that man is absolutely free whatever his birth or his background.”

Zemmour goes on to say that Christianity is also the basis of the associated doctrine of equality (before God) and, furthermore, that beauty is as sacred as liberty. He is evidently thinking of Dostoyevsky’s ‘beauty will set you free’ but he does not quote him. “The whole world admires Western art,” he says after listing some of the giants. He then says that Western civilisation is based on the idea that truth is not something theoretical but instead something very concrete. “To reject truth is to reject the good. Lies are the daily and eternal aspect of evil.”

Christian roots of Europe 

His is an intensely theological approach to politics. For Zemmour, who is Jewish, the political significance of Christianity is its conviction that paradise does not and cannot exist on earth. This, he says, is one of the key points about European civilisation which traditionally has rejected that Utopianism which was the great scourge of the 20th century. Communism and Nazism destroyed the last century, he says, and now other Utopias threaten the 21st century in new forms. But since Christ said to Pilate that his kingdom was not of this world, it is precisely when Europe forgets His message that it slumps into dictatorship and brutality. European civilisation, he says - Zemmour repeats the word ‘civilisation’ at least ten times in the video - “believes that gentleness, tenderness and love are better than all other forms of human behaviour.” It is difficult to be more Christian than that.

It is a tour de force on a very high intellectual level. It reminds me of the concluding moments of the great 1960s BBC documentary, Civlisation, by Kenneth Clark[5] : “I believe that order is better than chaos, creation better than destruction. I prefer gentleness to violence, forgiveness to vendetta. On the whole, I think that knowledge is preferable to ignorance, and I am sure that human sympathy is more valuable than ideology. I believe that in spite of the recent triumphs of science, men haven't changed much in the last two thousand years; and in consequence we must still try to learn from history. History is ourselves.”

Clash of civilisations 

Politically, Zemmour’s video is an attempt to position himself not only as a candidate for the Catholic vote – there are numerous sequences with the veteran and now retired politician, Philippe de Villiers, who embodied that conservative bourgeois electorate in the 1990s and 2000s – but also to take up the mantle of Gaullism which many other politicians also claim. Zemmour reminds his viewers that Charles de Gaulle was a practising Catholic who regularly went to confession but he goes further with a very good line: “Without the cross, there would never have been the cross of Lorraine” (the symbol of the French Resistance).

Zemmour is, of course, a believer in the clash of civilisations, specifically with Islam which he has repeatedly described as a totalitarian religion. In the video he says that it is essential for “the Christian world” to win any wars which are waged against it. “But it is even more important to win the peace after the victory. It is to this that we owe the incomparably peaceful character of Western societies when they are faithful to themselves.” Further, “our civilisation must be considered the most evolved, the most sophisticated, the most creative, the most tolerant that the world has ever known.” “Christmas is the opposite of civil war, it is reconciliation which shines in the night … Every year, at midnight, the miracle returns.”

A close race 

The comparison with Marine le Pen’s somewhat sugary Christmas wishes[6] is striking. Zemmour is intellectually infinitely superior to her. Whereas both videos play on the Christmas tree, the crèche and the decorations, and whereas both mention the persecution of Christians around the world as well as the Christmassy values of peace and reconciliation, Zemmour’s video is a political and ideological manifesto against Marine le Pen’s folksy banalities. The two contenders are currently neck and neck in the polls and neither is currently credited with making it through to the crucial second round. Instead, both of the current leaders in the polls, Emmanuel Macron and Valérie Pécresse, two politically indistinguishable centrists, recorded no Christmas message at all.

Elitist victory 

We are months away from the election. Anything can happen between now and next April: one month before the last election in 2017, the former prime minister Alain Juppé topped the polls but he never even stood as a candidate. Charles Maurras said that it was stupid to despair in politics but today it feels like it is stupid to hope. Zemmour’s brilliance does indeed light up the grey world of French politics, but it is unfortunately possible - likely even - that he will prove little more than a brief comet, soon to burn out politically and be engulfed by the stifling insipid centrism which has held now France in its grip for nearly half a century. My foolish bet for 2017: Macron remains president but appoints Valérie Pécresse as prime minister and governs with a centrist majority including members of Les Républicains. Or vice-versa, it doesn’t really matter. Either way, the elites’ victory will be total.

1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28GdnZs8hy0&feature=youtu.be 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfJyAHnbI8E 3 https://twitter.com/EmmanuelMacron/status/1473934219323887616 4 https://twitter.com/JeanCASTEX/status/1474415860592820229 5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3y2xrfynlks 6 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPEj4il19GQ 7 https://www.huffingtonpost.fr/entry/tous-les-sondages-de-la-presidentielle-2022-dans-notre-compilateur_fr_61c57bbfe4b0bb04a62f1fc0