Éric Zemmour — The New Dreyfus?

Éric Zemmour is a French author and journalist who has caused a lot of controversy in the past with his principled stance against mass immigration and Islamization. The French establishment seems determined to bring him down and end his career. The latest media frenzy directed at him was obviously conjured out of thin air, putting words into his mouth and condemning him for things he did not say.

Many thanks to Oz-Rita for translating this interview from French television, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

The translator includes these background notes:

The TV chain where this interview was aired was RTL, the French BBC. Éric Zemmour had a daily editorial on this leftist taxpayer-funded chain. Then, in a heated discussion some two years ago, he said that “most of the inmates in prison are from Arab/sub-Saharan background and culture.”

He was factually right, and it was a heated discussion. He was taken to court by those fake “anti-racist” organisations, the main one of them in France taxpayer-funded. Ironically one of these serial litigants against Islam-critics is Jewish (as is Zemmour). He was convicted of something (all this from personal memory), but the amount he had to pay was only €100 instead of thousands they asked for. After this, he was more or less sacked from that channel. The same chain also reduced his weekly editorials from five days to one.

After this new false accusation and witch hunt against him, he was sacked (affiliated chain, but more conservative).

Éric Zemmour is a brilliant writer (even fiction). He is Jewish. He was born in the Maghreb, and grew up in the “problematic” areas of Paris which are now exclusively Arab/Muslim.

His big sin is: he is conservative. His deadly sin is: He sees Islamisation as bad for his country. He is fiercely protective of the France he loves — he is French first, Jewish second.

Ives Calvy, the interviewer: I ran into him a few years ago, when he was still quite objective. I told him: you are good, because I don’t even know if you are right or left. His partner whispered to me “He is certainly not of the right”, wink wink.

Today it’s obvious. I have stopped watching his nightly political round-table discussions, filled with leftist commentators.

Education Minister Jean-Luc Mélenchon: The Deadly enemy, a slimy [redacted]. He is the leader of the Communist Party, and says (literally) that his idea of happiness is to live with Arabs/Muslims etc. During the last elections he was the main adversary of Marine LePen. He is a dirty fighter, but she had him for breakfast.

He is now a has-been, but tries to slime where he can. He discovered the interview with Zemmour in Italian, and started this renewed media campaign against Zemmour. The hatred by the Left, ergo the Government, against Zemmour is violent. They want him dead, and not only metaphorically.

This campaign has gone nationwide. His latest book Le suicide Français – although a 500-page doorstopper and not an easy read — is the bestseller in France, hence the renewed and continued pack-attacks on Zemmour. Among other affronts he gets insulted (and was physically attacked) for being Jewish. I don’t know how he keeps going.

Video transcript:

00:00   More than ever we do not necessarily agree,
00:04   and today it’s a new polemic which surrounds you after your interview with
00:08   the Corriere della Sera. We will speak about
00:12   your book “The French Suicide”: have you, yes or no, spoken of
00:16   “deportation” to evoke the Muslims of France. The word “deportation”,
00:20   has it been said? It’s an extraordinary story. Not only was the word
00:24   “deportation” NOT pronounced by me (as reported), but it was not even
00:28   said by the Italian journalist recognised in “Le Figaro” (respected conservative Daily)
00:32   who said, “No; I had asked a longish question and had SUMMARIZED
00:36   my question with one word: ‘deportation’.” So I am accused of saying a word
00:40   which I did NOT pronounce. After that I was accused of not having contradicted
00:44   a word which had not even been said.
00:48   We have here a fantastic manipulation.
00:52   I am accused not of having said something, but of having thought it.
00:56   I insist: this idea which shocks us all is not your idea;
01:00   you don’t demand the departure of Muslims/Maghrebians from our country.
01:04   I “demand” nothing at all, you understand, it’s ridiculous.
01:08   There are French citizens;
01:12   one will not force French citizens to leave. Then there are
01:16   foreigners whom the state has the right to tell: ‘Now you go back home’. Between the two there is nothing.
01:20   Simple as that. What was the substance of what you meant to say? Because
01:24   you invoke this shock to civilisation, or in any case what you describe
01:28   as a ‘civil war in our country’. Indeed I think that the present situation
01:32   causes communities to freeze,
01:36   to harden, to separate on the territory of France.
01:40   It is a dramatic situation which will lead to the Lebanisation of France,
01:44   with the prospect of a civil war between communities that
01:48   have nothing to say to each other, who will confront each other because of no shared values,
01:52   and who have no longer any interests in common. This I foresee.
01:57   I guess it, I analyse it, it’s one of the major themes in my
02:01   book. I think it’s dramatic, and what I wanted to say in my book
02:05   in my “famous” interview: WHEN the civil war arrives with its cortege of horrors,
02:09   everything is possible, everything is conceivable which today
02:13   we cannot imagine. France, historically, is the country of civil wars
02:17   and of religious wars.
02:21   Nevertheless, the Interior Minister condemns the words attributed to you, pledges his support to the Muslims
02:25   of France and he even calls for rallies of solidarity. Bruno LeRoux,
02:29   Chief Minister of Socialist MPs, affirms that media (that is, us) must cease to receive you.
02:33   What do you say to them? You know the old phrase
02:37   of St. Juste: No Freedom for the enemies of Freedom. The Left is still there.
02:41   It was the “Terror” I remind you. When Bruno LeRoux says this,
02:45   he is really the heir of St. Juste. And if the Interior Minister
02:49   tells us that one should demonstrate and mobilise against me, do you realise it is
02:53   a MINISTER OF THE INTERIOR, who is charged with maintaining Order
02:57   and the security of citizens, who calls for rallies against a French citizen.
03:01   We have a Prime Minister who has already said my book should not be read.
03:05   Now we have an Interior Minister who calls for rallies against me; what next?
03:09   Will they send my readers to prison? I ask you again:
03:13   Do you understand that your comments are perceived as an incitement
03:17   to hate for an important component of our country,
03:21   that is, the Muslims and Maghrebians (Arabs). This too is what the Islamic Council accuses you of
03:25   There is no incitement to hate. I try to
03:29   analyse, rationally, a situation.
03:33   Let’s go back to the begininning: Jean-Luc Mélenchon (French Communist Party) who has
03:38   translated an interview, while recognising that he speaks no Italian.
03:42   He has incited and inflated this with compliant media,
03:46   who did not even verify their sources, preferring to give moral lessons
03:50   and to put me on the media pre rather than
03:54   simply verify, as “Le Figaro” did.
03:58   These are Stalinist Methods. Well, for a former Trotskyite, it’s a return to his sources.
04:02   My last question, which is often asked of you today:
04:06   Are you agitating with harmful ideas to sell books?
04:10   Could we occasionally
04:14   get out of this permanent malevolence,
04:18   this phony psychoanalysing? I am here
04:22   to defend ideas. Could I at least be given this credit?!
04:26   Or don’t I even have the right to this? Could one pose the question: WHY
04:30   do I sell books? Perhaps people are interested in my books?
04:34   Without doubt. But you know that there are ideas who hurt? Ideas always hurt.
04:38   Finally, we do not necessarily agree.
04:42   We will see you here again in the New Year, as all our commentators…
04:46   Have a nice day. Thank you.
 

23 thoughts on “Éric Zemmour — The New Dreyfus?

  1. Baron Bodissey. Elegant visually and writerly (if that’s a word). Just a few tiny corrections en passant:

    The execrable Jean-Luc Melanchon WAS Minister of Vocational Education from 2000 to 2002.

    In the 2012 French presidential election, he was the candidate representing the Left Front (Communist Party of France, Left Party, Unitarian Left) He took fourth place and achieved 11.05% of the vote, trailing behind François Hollande, Nicolas Sarkozy, and Marine Le Pen and their respective parties, the Socialist Party, Union for a Popular Movement, and National Front.

    Now, being a has-been, and his writings (such as they are) being at the other end of literary success such as Eric Zemmour is experiencing, he started this renewed campaign against Zemmour; I am convinced that part of his motivation for it is of the colour GREEN.

    I must confess (if it’s not obvious) that I am completely subjective about Melanchon and consider him a nasty piece of work. Having heard him speak, I have seen him, literally foaming at the mouth. I am tempted to say he is an unmitigated HATER, but they say “it takes one to know one” so I will stop here 😉

  2. I’d love to read his book, but I don’t read French. Also I have no money to buy it as Obama and the Democrats have destroyed the American economy and I cannot find work (despite having a Ph.D and having published scholarly articles). But if you are a Democrat and unaccomplished, and barely literate you can always get a job.

    • Susan The Warrior

      Keep fighting!

      Count Your blessings. Remind yourself of all your qualities that the person that hasn’t employed you yet, is yet, not aware of. Sometimes there are longer paths, leading to your goal.

      All the best wishes to you, Susan, for the New Year!

  3. All Zemmour is asking for – his own words – is a rational discussion. The irony of the French Establishment, the Prime Minister no less! refusing to allow such a rational discussion – in the nation that purports to worship la raison – would be delicious if the peril was not mortal for France.

  4. Ah, the poor man is still living in the 20th century. He still believes there are still countries in western Europe with names like France, Germany and England (not to mention all of Scandinavia). Remember, like the old Mitch Miller song went, Istanbul was Constantinople, now it’s Istanbul not Constantinople. The Muslims just haven’t gotten around to renaming them yet.

  5. Baron: “Éric Zemmour .. was born in the Maghreb.” No, he was born at Montreuil-sous-Bois in France.

    • Easy mistake to make since his parents, Jewish “Pieds-Noirs” had just arrived in France not long before he was born, from the Maghreb i.e. Algeria.

  6. Yves Calvi, France5

    Daily debate “C dans l’air”
    “It’s in the air”, Mon – Fri

    Yes. It is very politically correct.

    • That’s the one ! Pity it has been infected by the PC virus. Yves Calvi has more programs than this one – just goes to show that “submission” does pay. Zemmour will soon only have Honour and Integrity left, unless….

  7. Galliawatch has a lot on the subject

    From the interview With Corriere della Sera

    – Then what are you suggesting? To deport five million French Muslims?

    Note: The only spot in the conversation where the word “deport” appears.

    – I know it’s unrealistic, but history is often surprising. Who would have thought in 1940 that a million pieds-noirs, twenty years later, would have left Algeria to return to France? Or that after the war five or six million Germans would leave Central-Eastern Europe where they had lived for centuries?”

    …..

    The journalist of Corriere della Sera, interviewing the journalist and author of the book “The French Suicide”, Eric Zemmour, is the one who brings up the word “deport”, and the one who pronounces this word.

    Eric Zemmour has not uttered the word “deport”, BUT he is being accused of thinking it!

    The racists, apologists for islam, media etc are accusing him of thinking a bad word…!

    Him, that is, Eric Zemmour, of an immigrant Jewish family, who did everything right in order to integrate and assimilate into their new country, France, and be good citizens.

  8. – Then, in a heated discussion some two years ago, he said that “most of the inmates in prison are from Arab/sub-Saharan background and culture.” –

    Why did Eric Zemmour express the above? Because there was a discussion of why the French police were checking on the Arabs and Africans, making them show IDs etc, more often than the French, and Zemmour was explaining the obvious!

    If there is one wolf among the sheep. Who will you search first, the wolf, or all the sheep?

    • You are correct. Now, with their extreme left (*) Minister of Justice, Ch. Taubira, who completely emasculated the French Police, they have a quota where they can ask only one or two “cultural enrichers” per day for their identity. As to the famous law forbidding the wearing of the full islamic veil in public – the eunouch-y-fied law-enforcers dont DARE enforcing the law, so you will see plenty of fully veiled creatures on the streets – with the rare “token” punishment meted out, 100 Euros.

      (*) Personally I find Taubira is corrupt. She installs her friends (incl. her lover) in positions of power, she gets her son off some legal prosecution, I forget for what crime, she gets a former member of Marine LePen’s party, who posted a little, admittedly extremely stupid, caricature on Facebook tried In Absentia in French Guiana ( the poor young woman could not afford the travel expenses) and condemned to a custodial sentence and an astronomic amount of fine plus the ban from all positions in local government) She is behind a lot of really bad things happening to French Justice.

  9. Please don’t blame French Christians again with the “Dreyfus” reference. This has to do with tribal warfare between Arabs, Jews and other multicultural minorities in France.

    They (together with the Communists) fought to criminalize thought and speech to force multiculturalism on the French people. If only the French people could be prevented from speaking their minds the multicultural miracle would succeed. And it has been effective. The French people have essentially stopped speaking on these matters.

    Now we have a falling out between minorities and Communists. Zemmour is happy with the hate speech laws. He just feels that the laws were misapplied to him. He did not say the magic word “deportation”, that’s all.

    Frankly, I have little sympathy. Were Zemmour to speak out against hate speech laws generally, as a matter of principle, I might care somewhat more. But he hasn’t and he won’t.

    • WHO blames the French Christians?

      The “Dreyfus” reference was made by others too, and justifiably in my opinion, since Eric Zemmour stands accused of something he absolutely DID NOT DO NOR SAY. = False accusation, punishment of innocent who happens to be Jewish: A French patriot, and a Jew. Rings a bell?

  10. Zemmour is being prosecuted under laws that ethnic/religious/national minorities and Communists fought for. Zemmour is being prosecuted under laws that were supposed to suppress speech and writing by for-real French people. And now the communists and minorities are using the laws on each other.

    What does “Dreyfus” have to do with this? Why attack white Christian Frenchmen?

    Zemmour likes the hate crime laws. He has said nothing against them. He merely thinks they are misapplied to him, that’s all. Perhaps the hate crime laws should b changed: “it shall be unlawful for French people to offend minorities.” That would get Zemmour off the hook.

    • 1. Zemmour is NOT “prosecuted”, he is PERsecuted by no less than the Left Government who, even with their dictatorial powers are unable (as yet) to “prosecute” him for something he did not say, despite their former Education Minister (Melenchon) who started this witch-hunt, inventing the charge.

      2. you say and repeat: “Why attack white Christian Frenchmen?” WHO has been “attacking white Christian Frenchmen” here?

      3. You say: “Zemmour likes the hate crime laws. He has said nothing against them. ”

      How do you KNOW he likes hate crime laws?

      4. You also say: “He merely thinks they are misapplied to him, that’s all.”

      So you join the attack pack in accusing him of “THINKING” something.

      I dont know wether it is Eric Zemmour, or Eric Zemmour the Jew, you dislike.

    • Admit it. You are filled with belief that Evil Jooos cause the Eurabian nightmare. And cause all the social currents – such as the post-colonial moral regret – that causes the West’s warped interactions with those from colonized lands. When you see the Jooo Zemmour so compellingly critiquing the result of the Euro-Arab Dialogue, you just see your blame-goat getting off unblamed. And so you post as you have.

      Read Eurabia. It was not a project of Jooos, but of the Christian Europeans (to borrow your term, as Christianity is fairly unpopular in most of *Western* Europe, where the madness reigns. Post-Christians might be a largely more apt term today).

      That said, I know that many lefty Jews are seduced by the shelter from hate and blame which multiculturalism seems to offer to them as a minority, and so they support it (as most minority members do reflexively). They rankle. Yet those are dwarfed by the numbers of what you term Christians who embrace and advocate the same zeitgeist. Within the few European lands that have Jews, Jews are found somewhat prominently on both sides. Some of the most ardently multiculturally immigrating lands have virtually none, yet they actively lead the trend.

      • @WestwardHo, you are 100% right. Altough a noisy minority of Jews (lefties, communists and some academics) support this crazy immigration, it is really Hitler’s dream came in practice. Read the “Mein Kampf”.If you can, the original, or a copy interpreted during the Hitler era, because later they made some cosmetics and slightly altered it.

  11. More Arabic must to be taught in France
    thinks Sugar Daddy

    Qatar, by its Mohamed Jaham Al Kuwari, allegedly, is convincing socialist Jack Lang, former French Culture Minister, as well as former Education Minister, to make France more Arab, by teaching more in Arabic at the “Arab Cultural Center” in Paris.

    Mohamed Jaham Al Kuwari was offered a degree of the Légion d’Honneur in 1998, which was upgraded by President Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007.

    This is what is happening in 2015, in the land of “The Eldest Daughter of The Church”, as well as the land of Enlightenment.

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