Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Catholic
So. About Those Right-Wing Extremists.

So. About Those Right-Wing Extremists.

Last updated on: December 2, 2021 at 8:09 am by Jennifer Fitz

So. About Those Right-Wing Extremists. 2021-12-02T08:09:39-05:00 Jennifer Fitz

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

This morning I gave up on insomnia and watched Eric Zemmour’s 10-minute long YouTube announcement of his candidacy for the upcoming French presidential election. I’ll be honest, the content surprised me a little. I’m going to talk below about why, and how it relates to right-wing populist movements in the US as well.

The text of Zemmour’s speech is here on his website. Chrome’s translation function does an okayish job of producing an English rendering — don’t rely on it to tell you precisely what the speech says, but it’s enough to give you the broad outlines, which is all you really need for what I’m going to say below (and I’ll just say it, so you don’t have to click through if you don’t want to). The video imagery does convey important information about the underlying meaning of the text, and Zemmour’s speech is remarkably straightforward language-wise, so if you’re an intermediate-level French student you’ve got a good chance of following the whole thing, especially if you use the transcript on his website (NOT YouTube’s comically erroneous auto-captions) to help.

Two updates on the video:

YouTube decided this might be inappropriate content. Wowzers. I went and checked the original video, and was able to view it, but not without first passing through the warning that maybe it would be dangerous to me somehow.
Rod Dreher has an English translation posted.

My comments that follow, meanwhile, are due in part to my very weird background. I lived in France for a year in high school as an exchange student (so, attending a French high school, living with French families — very much immersed in the local culture), and later spent a year of undergrad studying modern (20th century) French political history at Sciences Po in Paris; US-French international relations was basically my topic for undergrad. So there was a time, long long ago, when I had an undergraduate’s level of expertise (“expertise”) on contemporary French politics circa 1994.

After that I went on to completely different things, and hadn’t been back in-country until the epic vacation a few years ago. My current level of engagement consists of following a smattering of Twitter accounts and periodically crashing and burning on Le Figaro’s little language quizzes.

So. Zemmour. Salon Beige kinda likes the guy, and that’s an outlet that runs to the right side of Catholic traditionalism, with a tendency towards all the same faults that are found stateside. (I don’t read there for the anti-Semitism any more than I read Vox for moral guidance, thanks.) Thus when the mainstream media categorizes Zemmour as a xenophobic right-wing extremist, well, it’s not a shocker they take that point of view, and thus it’s not a shocker that the reporting this morning is pulling out all the plays from the 2016 effort to convince Americans that Trump was a big fat nothing-burger.

But y’all, I watched the video. Zemmour is explicit in his nationalism, but what you need to understand is something I am saying in my capacity as a living time-capsule on the topic of French culture and French political culture: The radical right-wing extremist agenda Zemmour presents to the French public in his video is nothing more, and nothing less, than an unapologetic appeal to mainstream French culture circa 1990.

I was there. The images selected in that video, the choices of cultural references, even the choice to bring up industrialization and nuclear power . . . it’s just 1990 redux. The implicit question he’s posing is this: What if the great questions of thirty years ago — and there was a lot of tumult simmering thirty years ago — had been answered differently? What if we (France) as a nation had taken a different course? What if we had solved the big problems of that era in a different way? Off the top of my head, the big three topics of the era were unemployment, immigration, and cultural identity. The French were worried then, and all those worries have come to pass.

***

So in 1994 I set aside my interest in foreign policy and instead got engaged to this guy who was firmly settled in one of the reddest red-state corners of the US. Good decision, but one which has afforded me many, many years of getting to decide whether to vote or abstain from voting for the many Republican sole-candidates on the ballot in our local elections. I remember rejoicing when the Democrats finally started fielding candidates for US Congress again. I live in exactly the kind of place contemporary American elites despise and attempt to crush. (Personally, I just want a second candidate? Please? And also maybe sidewalks?)

***

What I am seeing in the US populist movement that elected Trump, and now in the French populist movement that has brought us to Zemmour’s run for the presidency, is the implosion of the old political and social center. Extreme right-wing racists, anti-Semites, and xenophobes are attracted to these movements, but they aren’t the reason Trump got elected, and they aren’t the reason Zemmour has whatever amount of traction that he does. Populists get elected because they appeal to broad swathes of the public who just want things to not be that bad.

And this is what the elite do not understand: Things are that bad.

Some of us still remember the 1990s. We remember rioting being unusual and bad. We remember an ethic of live-and-let-live. We remember it being okay to love your imperfect country and your imperfect family and your imperfect life trying to be a decent person who was considerate of others.

***

Our contemporary elites here in the US and in Europe have lost complete touch with the great unwashed who just want to live our lives. The media is busy painting Zemmour as a far-right extremist, but his appeal is not directed to the extremes. His appeal is to normal people — people who just want to have a job and raise a family and mind their own business, but the elite can’t leave well enough alone anymore.

(Why did Republicans win Virginia? Because voters who otherwise don’t give a crap about other people’s personal choices do still insist their daughters not be raped at school.)

Unfortunately the unrelenting crushing of anyone who dares dissent from whatever elite orthodoxy happens to be this week means that moderates and centrists have little hope. When JK Rowling is getting death threats for failing to toe the line, who exactly could be the centrist candidate?

So. Lord willing we move past the corrupt power-hungry demagogue phase sooner rather than later, but that can only happen when it again becomes possible for moderates to speak and act freely.

Image: Both sides of a French 1oo Franc bank note, circa 1993, featuring Eugène Delacroix. Via Wikimedia, public domain. Would have been about $20 at the time, and also the cost of one dinner out someplace decent but “inexpensive.” Very painful for inadequately-privileged American students used to eating out for far, far less at home. But were survivors, we managed somehow.

Previous Post

November 30, 2021

Of Course Prenatal Learning is Real

Next Post

December 2, 2021 Intergenerational Interdependence is a Blessing Not a Curse

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Books Catechesis Catholic Q&A Chastity Church Craziness Come See Me Talk Disability & Chronic Illness Economics Evangelization Facepalm Forgiveness Good Things History Homeschooling Human Rights It's All Catholic Listen to Me Survey Series Liturgical Living Marriage Modesty Not Satire. But almost. Rant-o-Rama Sacred Art & Music Satire South Carolina Spark Clutter Stick that Corner Suffering Thinking Topics Writing Stuff

Select a Month September 2026 July 2026 June 2026 January 2026 December 2025 September 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 November 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 May 2019 April 2019 February 2019 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What symbol is most commonly associated with Christianity worldwide?

Select your answer to see how you score.

The dove The cross The fish The lamb