The meteoric rise of the Algeria-born media personality is causing disquiet within France’s Jewish establishment

Photo: AP Images

It’s a case of fact being stranger than fiction. France’s far right, headed for decades by the Holocaust-denying National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, now has a new front-runner — Eric Zemmour, a Jewish journalist.

The 63-year-old has overtaken Marine Le Pen — Jean-Marie’s daughter, and current leader of her father’s rebranded party — in polls that position him as President Emmanuel Macron’s closest challenger only six months before the next elections. In a dramatic twist, Le Pen senior, who has fallen out with his daughter over her attempts to make the party more electable, has spoken of backing her rival.

The meteoric rise of the Algeria-born media personality is causing disquiet within France’s Jewish establishment, which fears becoming associated with Zemmour’s hardline anti-immigration positions. But might some in the Jewish community support the right-wing star, and could he actually oust Macron from the Élysée Palace?

French Decline

“The first thing to know about Zemmour is that he’s not some marginal figure; he was a high-profile commentator at the conservative Le Figaro paper, and C-News, a French equivalent of Fox News,” says Jean-Yves Camus, a Paris-based expert on extremism and longtime Mishpacha source. “About 20 years ago, he began writing about French decline, that the country was losing prestige and becoming a Muslim colony, longstanding ideas among conservatives who never came to terms with the loss of empire. He’s talked of repatriating non-citizens, but lately he’s sounding like Le Pen, saying that ending immigration would count as success.”

French Trump? Zemmour’s swift rise has drawn comparisons to that of Donald Trump, another media star who campaigned on an anti-establishment platform. “I think that he’s more similar to Stephen Miller, Trump’s ultra-conservative Jewish aide,” says Camus, who studied at an elite Paris university at the same time as Eric Zemmour. “Trump himself was a real outsider, whereas Zemmour has come from the heart of political journalism.”

Assimilation Ironically, the man who identifies as a Jew has become a strident advocate for a return to France’s Catholic roots, including assimilating minorities by mandating Christian names. That alone should be enough to discomfit potential Jewish supporters. But Zemmour has also spoken positively of Marshal Philippe Petain, the wartime French leader who collaborated with German occupiers to deport Jews. And his comments about the victims of the Toulouse Jewish school massacre in 2012 — that their families’ wish for burial in Israel was somehow unpatriotic — shocked many.

Bad for the Jews

“France’s Jewish lay leadership body, known as CRIF, has spoken out against Zemmour,” says Camus, “and I agree with them. The Jewish community should not take the lead in the immigration debate, but let conservatives deal with it.” But that establishment view, Camus admits, is not shared by many young Jews who are desperate for someone to fight back against Islamic extremism. Another community source says that Zemmour went to a Paris shul on Yom Kippur, where he was honored with opening the aron kodesh.

Macron’s moment With a flatlining 24 percent support in polls, Emmanuel Macron, who was elected in 2017, is in trouble. But Zemmour’s potential eclipse of Le Pen could be good news for the incumbent, splitting the right-wing vote. “France’s two-round voting system, where the second vote is essentially a vote against a candidate, means that Zemmour is not electable, as Le Pen’s loss in 2017 shows. And that’s before the main conservative party — Les Republicains — chooses a candidate who will have a party infrastructure.” But, Camus cautions, Zemmour can do a lot of damage even short of winning, by associating Jews with the far right. “It’s a dangerous moment,” he says.

“I’m so many formers, I’m trying to figure out the current.”

—Eric Adams, the Democratic candidate for New York City mayor, to the New York Times

In a week, Adams will in all probability be declared the city’s 110th mayor. But which Eric Adams will voters get? Eric Adams who praised Louis Farrakhan and Al Sharpton in the early 1990s? (He has since apologized.) Or Eric Adams who a couple of years later became a Giuliani Republican, and struggles to this day to explain why? Eric Adams the veteran cop? Or Eric Adams the racial justice crusader? It’s not often that politicians are this honest.

A quick scan of Adams’s bio is a head-scratching puzzle. A vegan who refers to himself in third person, even his political scandals are weird. Does the Brooklyn borough president actually live in New Jersey? And how does he constantly come up with one-liners that rhyme?

As former governor David Paterson said, “This should be a very interesting experience for us, having him as mayor.”

—Yochonon Donn

1657%

Donald Trump may not yet have said whether he intends to run for the presidency again in 2024, but even out of office, he retains the ability to move markets. His announcement last week of the founding of a new social media network — Truth Social — after being blocked from Facebook and Twitter, sent the stock of the shell company (known as a SPAC) that is intended to purchase the new venture soaring.

As of Friday noon, the share price of Digital World Acquisition Corp., was $175, 17 times the price it had been just two days earlier, before Trump announced the launch of the new social network.

It’s difficult to say whether by the time you read this the price will have stabilized, or soared to new heights. What is certain is that even months after leaving the White House, Trump still retains outsize influence on the American economy.

—Omri Nahmias

November 1

Save the date. Next week, the Knesset will begin the marathon process of voting on the 2021–2022 budget — on whose passage depends the future of Naftali Bennett’s coalition. By law, failure to pass the budget by November 14 means new elections, and the end of the road for certain ministers — a fact that will almost certainly prevent coalition squabbling from getting out of hand. Post-budget, the knives will be out for Bibi: Former Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein will challenge Netanyahu for the Likud leadership. Might the former Refusenik send the ex-PM into political oblivion?

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 883)