French politics: Is Marine Le Pen going to get "out-niggered"?

In my usual coherent fashion, I will begin this update on prospects for the French presidential election, coming next May, with a story about the 45th governor of the great state of Alabama, George Corley Wallace, Jr. 

Mr Wallace served as a member of the Alabama House of Representatives and later as judge in the Third Judicial Circuit Court, hence  his nickname "the Little Judge". He was known as a moderate on racial issues, and was associated with the progressive, liberal faction of Alabama politics.

During his first campaign for the governorship in 1958, Mr Wallace spoke out against the Ku Klux Klan, and although he endorsed segregation his centrist views won him the support of the NAACP. In contrast, his opponent John Patterson accepted the endorsement of the Ku Klux Klan and made racial issues a major part of his campaign.

Mr Patterson won the race for governor by a large margin. After this defeat, the Little Judge determined that in order to be elected governor he would have to change his position on racial issues, and told one of his campaign officials, "I was out-niggered by John Patterson. And I'll tell you here and now, I will never be out-niggered again." And he wasn't!

What (I hear you ask) does this have to do with French politics? Just this. Until recently, Walt's favourite Frenchperson, Marine Le Pen, leader of the conservative/populist Rassemblement National (National Rally), looked a good bet to defeat the incumbent President Macron, if not in the first round, then in the second, which includes only the two candidates who got the most votes in the earlier round. See "Referendum on immigration? What a novel idea!", WWW 10/10/21. 

But suddenly another contender has emeerged, from even deeper in right field. Behold Éric Zemmour, described by the controlled media as "a Donald Trump-like TV pundit". M Zemmour has not officially announced his candidacy, but has been organizing Trump-style rallies, and is expected to throw his chapeau into the ring very soon.

Éric Zemmour is considered even more right-wing than Mme Le Pen, who has noticebly softened some of the RN rhetoric, in an attempt to appeal to more moderate voters. M Zemmour, on the other hand, does not shy from calling a spade a spade. 

According to the Financial Times, he has been convicted twice of "racial or religious provocation", and has just published a book on the sujbect of national identity, La France n'a pas dit son dernier mot, which has sold 100,000 copies in the first week.

According to respected journalist Yves Mamou, M Zemmour represents the France of yesteryear: the France of Napoleon, Notre Dame de Paris and General Charles de Gaulle, a France that does not want to become an Islamic Republic. He often says "the danger for France is to become a second Lebanon," by which he means a country fragmented between sectarian communities that hate and fear one another.

M Zemmour (still quoting M Mamou) is the man who broke through the glass ceiling to insert into the media discussion topics such as "immigration" and "jihad" -- which no one had ever dared to talk about publicly. He is a man who embodies the fear of seeing traditional France -- the one of church steeples and the "baguette" -- disappear under the blows of jihad and political correctness.

The meteoric rise of Zemmour has had a second effect: he has broken a degrading electoral trap in which the French people are stuck: dividing the right to prevent them from returning to power. From the middle of the eighties until now, the media and the left, together, manufactured an industrial-strength shame-machine to stigmatize as "racist" and "Nazi" anyone who dared to raise his voice on issues of immigration.

M Mamou concludes: The Zemmour fight is just beginning. One thing, however, is certain: Zemmour is restoring an authentic democratic debate about topics -- security, immigration, Islam -- that really matter to the French. 

He's right about that, but I'm not so sure about his assertion that M Zemmour has broken the electoral trap, the splitting of the conservative/rightist vote. According to Politico's Poll  of Polls, President Macron is currently polling around 24%, with Mme Le Pen at 16% and M Zemmour at 15%. That sure looks like a split to me!

If only one candidate presented a real alternative to M Macron and his centre-left, one-world policies, he could be defeated. If that candidate were to be M Zemmour, there is the added problem that he's on his own. Without a primary system such as obtains in the US of A, he cannot take the leadership of the RN away from Mme Le Pen. He would be a "party of one".

If M Zemmour runs as an independent, all he can do is "out-nigger" Mme Le Pen, to the detriment of both of them and another seven years in opposition for those who represent the France of de Gaulle. Tant pis pour eux. Tant pis pour la France!