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Alain Policar is associate in political science, Sciences Po Alain Policar 12 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 24 OCTOBER 2021 OPINION ÉRIC Zemmour has become a household name in France. Buoyed by repeated appearanc- es on French television news shows, including the conserva- tive channel CNews (often re- ferred to as the French version of Fox News), Zemmour is widely assumed to be considering a run for president in 2022. A recent poll saw him predict- ed to reach the second round of voting alongside current president, Emmanuel Macron, out-performing Zemmour's po- tential rival on the far-right, Ma- rine Le Pen. Zemmour has twice been con- victed by the French courts for inciting racial hatred. He openly promotes the "Great Replace- ment" theory – a racist belief, popular on the far-right in Eu- rope, the US and the UK, that white people will soon be "re- placed" by non-white, non-Eu- ropean immigrants. He would have us believe that France's greatness is built upon its position at the top of a "hier- archy of cultures". This position turns a blind eye to the horrors of French colonial racism, con- sidering it a necessary price for offering colonised people their moral enlightenment. Assimilation and separatism In Zemmour's view, French life and French values are un- der threat from Islam. He argues that France is contaminated by "separatism". "Separatism" is a loaded term in France. It was once used to describe anti-colonial struggles, particularly those in Algeria and has been the standard accusation thrown at Jewish people since antiquity, and forms the basis of much modern anti-Semitism. But it is also current government policy to root out "separatism" through a new law promoting "respect for the principles of the Republic". Zemmour is also an ardent supporter of assimilation of mi- grants to France. His endorse- ment of assimilation should not be surprising, particularly when we recall that this word was once used to justify the race-based politics evident in the privileg- es enjoyed by French colonists, which turned them into a qua- si-aristocracy; a race apart. In fact, American historian Tyler Stovall observed that col- onists were more inclined to call themselves "white" or "Europe- an" than French. He writes: "It was in the colonies that under- standings of the French national idea first became confused with the racial idea of whiteness." Yet upholding assimilationism in Zemmour's view would also imply the non-assimilation of certain groups. He regularly ar- gues, for example, that Islam is not compatible with the Repub- lic – the opposite of assimila- tionist politics. This is also an idea with deep roots – it should be remembered that to obtain French citizenship in 1958, Algerian Muslim wom- en were required to remove their headscarves during inaugura- tion ceremonies. What better way to illustrate that you had to stop being a Muslim woman to become a French one? False universalism Zemmour's pronouncements may be incendiary, but through them we can see that the old idea of a French nation defined in ra- cial terms has had a lasting influ- ence on contemporary debate. One such idea is that of "uni- versalism", which holds that the national characteristic of being French supersedes any other identity an individual may have. But if immigrants are asked to defer to French traditions based on an assumption that such tra- ditions are inherently univer- sal, universalism becomes not a form of humanism that embrac- es diversity, but rather a nation- alistic symbol. This is how Achille Mbembe described the concept in a 2005 article: "Having long upheld the 'republican model' as the per- fect vehicle for inclusion and the emergence of individuality, we have ultimately turned the Republic into an imaginary in- stitution, and underestimated its original capacity for brutal- ity, discrimination and exclu- sion." A harsh judgement, perhaps, but French history (long before the establishment of the Repub- lic) attests to this racialised di- mension. When it uses national identity as the guiding light of the republican cause, universal- ism has been seriously misled, to the point of forfeiting all sub- stance. It is worth noting that this ver- sion of universalism can appear in other guises, particularly in anti-cosmopolitanism, which slanders society's incorrigible utopians and blindsided bleed- ing hearts. This is precisely the tone adopted by Éric Zemmour. One might even hypothesise that hiding behind this false uni- versalism is a hatred of the uni- versal, exemplified in the famous quote by Joseph de Maistre in his Considerations on France (1796): "In my life I have seen French- men, Italians, Russians, and so on. I even know, thanks to Mon- tesquieu, that one can be Per- sian. But as for man, I declare I've never encountered him." In much the same way, Zem- mour presents us with a frag- mented world that offends his own obsession with purity – his simultaneous hatred of inter- mingling and a fear of sameness. Three years ago, my colleague and I wrote an article about Zemmour's place in the public arena in France, and how we should resist his impoverished, black-and-white vernacular. In light of his recent rise, we must continue to do so. There may still be time to change things. TheConversation.eu Éric Zemmour: the far-right polemicist's ideas have a long history in France Éric Zemmour