Presidential election 2022: Eric Zemmour takes advantage of his position as a potential candidate

The far-right polemicist spoke to 3,700 people on Monday at the Palais des Congrès in Paris. If he says he is "more, very far" from declaring himself, his skilfully staged hesitation allows him for the moment to escape the imperatives of a classic campaign.

Eric Zemmour welcomes the ovation with both arms raised. Michel Onfray waits, his arms crossed. The cries of "President Zemmour" fill the Palais des Congrès in Paris on the evening of Monday, October 4.

If the philosopher and founder of Front populaire, a magazine aimed at "sovereignists on both shores", organized this "conversation" in the air of a spectacle , most of the 3,700 spectators had come to see Eric Zemmour, applauding each of his diatribes against "theocratic Islam in essence" or the "nomads from the south of the Mediterranean" .

One comes from the right, the other from the left, but the two men agree in 2021 on the main lines: the country would be in civil war, civilization would threaten to collapse, France should move closer to Russia in a "greater Europe" stretching from the Atlantic to the Urals. This meeting illustrates what sociologist Philippe Corcuff describes as “blurring of political boundaries” . "Onfray's confusionism, which tinkers from the far right to the radical left, supports the ultraconservatism of Zemmour, which mixes xenophobia, sexism and homophobia in a nationalist framework", thus considers the author of La Grande Confusion. How the far right wins the battle of ideas(Textual, 672 pages, 26 euros).

Confusion is one of the foundations of this pre-campaign. Putative and undeclared candidate for 2022, Eric Zemmour claims intellectual independence to nurture his identity as a “non-professional politician” . And yet, the CSA asked the chains to count its speaking time, as for the declared candidates. “It blurs the boundaries, it has several facets, decrypts Philippe Corcuff. It appears to be uncorrupted by politics, which appeals to the anti-system left. He takes advantage of his status as an editorial writer at Le Figaro [his column was suspended while his book was being promoted]and an image inertia, despite its radicalization, to speak to the right. Its arch is very wide. It reconfigures the political space. "

"I can't stand to miss it"

Partisan benchmarks are blurred, despite a fairly homogeneous sociology. "Zemmour is somewhere between the right and the extreme right," Marion advance, former filloniste 25 present at the convention center, a resident of 16 th  arrondissement of Paris and employee of a champagne house, which "loves that 'he advocates the conservative values ​​of traditional France ”. Enguerrand, 18, from a family where "we voted Marine Le Pen out of spite", situates the polemicist "simply on the right" . Zemmour claimed, later: “There remains a right which has not mourned France and which does not want the Islamization of the country. I am the spokesperson for that France. "