The conservative French-Jewish pundit Éric Zemmour may well become France’s next president. The centerpiece of his campaign is opposition to the Great Replacement. The latter means the ongoing trend of substitution of the indigenous populations of France and Europe by non-European immigrants, in particular by Africans and Muslims.

In his most recent book, Zemmour writes the following on the Great Replacement:

I have the impression that no politician rightly apprehends what is at stake: the death of France as we knew her. . . . One simply needs to look at the films of [the 1960s and 70s] to realize this. The “great replacement” is not a myth, nor a conspiracy, but an implacable process. This vital identitarian question renders all other questions subsidiary, even the most essential such as education, industry, social protection, or the place of France in the world. I am sure that no candidate – not even Marine Le Pen – will dare to impose this identitarian and civilizational quarrel in the campaign. . . . Only [the far-left] Jean-Luc Mélenchon dares to mention the subject, but only to glorify the future of a mixed-race, “creolized” France …[1]

Zemmour’s central campaign promise is “zero immigration” to France (presumably not including immigration from the European Union). In addition, he would deport foreign criminals and would deprive criminal dual nationals of French citizenship (a suitable prelude to deportation). Significantly, French citizens of Turkish or Arab origin typically are dual nationals by default.

The key measures on immigration would be submitted to a national referendum. If successful, this clear expression of the people’s will would enable the government to punch through the predictable opposition of globalist elites in the media and judiciary. Great Britain’s withdrawal from the EU, despite the kicking and screaming of globalist elites, shows that referenda can lead to concrete results going against Establishment preferences.

In addition to his opposition to the Great Replacement, Zemmour is a forthright civic nationalist. He wants migrants to “assimilate,” by which he means to become culturally indistinguishable from Frenchmen. He is opposed to Islam as a “totalitarian” religion and wants Muslims to have a purely interiorized private spirituality, like Christianity, with no role in French public life. Zemmour’s assimilationist zeal goes so far as to propose restoring an old law mandating that children born in France be given only traditional French names.

Clearly there are serious contradictions here. The French “assimilationist” model has already failed, producing about the same results that we see in the United States or Great Britain: a society marked by ethnic stratification, clustering, and conflict. Today, around a third of newborns in France are African or Muslim, simply making assimilation obsolete. No doubt Zemmour can see this. His clinging to assimilation may be due to a combination of personal reasons (his own position as a proudly assimilated French Jew) and political ones (electoral palatability). Significantly, Zemmour has previously said that he understands why young French whites no longer believe in assimilation and that his attachment to it is due to his belonging to an older generation.

The Great Replacement in Practice: Kosovo and Seine-Saint-Denis

A typical street scene in Seine-Saint-Denis

In his book, Zemmour goes into vivid detail on the existential threat that the Great Replacement poses for France. He often compares the emerging new France to Kosovo or Lebanon, where besieged Christian minorities live at the mercy of the new Muslim majorities. He notes that in Kosovo, a highly important province in the history of Serbia, Muslim Albanians became the majority by the early twentieth century. With the 1999 NATO bombings the Muslim Albanians became the rulers over the Serb minority:

[I]n the 1970s, Orthodox Serbs represented only 13% of the population. Today they are only 5%, expulsed from the capital, Pristina, confined to enclaves, as ostracized second-class citizens, when they are not persecuted, martyrized, chased out of the land of their ancestors. The ethnic cleansing is accompanied of course by a religious and cultural great replacement. Medieval churches are burned down by ecstatic Muslim crowds, mosques dripping with gold-leaf are built in their place, financed by the nabobs of Saudi Arabia and Qatar: the inexorable and cruel reality of a great replacement that does not exist![2]

Zemmour often sarcastically remarks on the alleged “non existence” of these demographic and civilizational changes. He denounces the academic “sophists” who claim no significant change has occurred, falsely arguing that populations have always been in complete flux. The mainstream media-political establishment in France claims the Great Replacement is a mere “conspiracy theory.”

On the contrary, the demographic Great Replacement is prepared by a symbolic replacement in the cultural sphere. France, we are told, has “always” been a diverse land of immigration and thus there is nothing novel at all about the Afro-Islamization of the country. A museum of immigration celebrating these changes was installed precisely in … the building of the 1931 colonial expo celebrating France’s intercontinental empire in Africa and Indochina! Zemmour observes: “In the museums of France, too, it is the hour of the great replacement.”[3]

In France, the shape of things to come is announced by the département (county) of Seine-Saint-Denis, which makes up the northeast suburb of greater Paris, a significant place in French history as the resting place of our kings. For Zemmour, “Seine-Saint-Denis is the symbol of this great replacement which does not exist.”[4] Over two thirds of newborns have at least one foreign parent. Over 60% of youths are of foreign origin. But these figures are merely indicative: the administration simply doesn’t know how big the population is or how many illegal immigrants there are (estimated between 8 and 20% of the population).

While President Emmanuel Macron may hold up Seine-Saint-Denis as “California without the sea” [sic!], the territory is an economic basket case. National civil servants flee postings there after 2.7 years on average, despite a €10,000 bonus, whereas they last 7 years in the more comfortable département of Essonne. Huge urban renewal projects lead to no lasting change and even the corporate offices set up there (taking advantage of special tax breaks) fail to attract local workers: they are unqualified. Zemmour argues the issue is one of human capital, not infrastructure: “the problem is the content, not the container.”

Zemmour sees the State’s efforts in Seine-Saint-Denis as useless, akin to the myth of Sisyphus. Furthermore, the territory’s mosques have been infiltrated by the Muslim Brotherhood, as documented by the sociologist Gilles Keppel. No wonder François Hollande told journalists that France’s multicultural situation will “end with a partition.”[5] For Zemmour, “Kosovo is the future of Seine-Saint-Denis; Seine-Saint-Denis is the future of France.”tfg

Zemmour on the Limits of Civic Nationalism

Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s founding father and long-time prime minister (1959–1990), should be a role model for nationalists across the West. Lee was not a philosopher but a practical politician, so his insights are not theoretical but the product of three decades of leadership.

Lee was able to adapt to changing circumstances, eliminate Communist threats, maintain political stability, and reach astonishing levels of prosperity. All this in a small, insecure city-state with no history of independent self-government, in a region marked by aggressive geopolitics and sharp ethnic conflicts. Lee understood not only human capital, racial differences, and ethnic conflict, but navigated these realities to build a thriving nation for his people.

The wreckage of the British Empire

For most Westerners, southeast Asian countries scarcely register as anything other than tourist destinations and old war zones, but they offer interesting cases studies of the difficulties of nation-building and ethnic conflict.

Under the British, what are now Malaysia and Singapore were governed by administrators, such as Stamford Raffles, who ruled with a combination of commercial acumen and genuine moral concern. Economic opportunity brought many Indian and Chinese immigrants to the area. There has been ethnic conflict ever since, especially between the native Malays and the Chinese. By the 1950s, locals of all races wanted independence, but how to create coherent, free, and prosperous nations from heterogeneous human material?

Statue of Sir Stamford Raffles in Singapore (Credit Image: Wachholder0 via Wikimedia)

Singapore is a small island of just 281 square miles, off the Malaysian coast. Whereas the Chinese diaspora are a scattered minority in the rest of southeast Asia, in Singapore they have long been a majority of 75 percent, the rest of the population being mostly Malays (15 percent) and Indians (7.5 percent).

In the 1950s, Communism was popular among many Singapore Chinese, inspired by Mao Zedong’s triumph on the mainland. Lee Kuan Yew tried to prevent the Bolshevization of Singapore by merging it into a larger country with a conservative Malay majority: Malaysia. This lasted from 1963 to 1965, with Singapore leaving because of ethnic chauvinist policies of the central government dominated by Malay nationalists. Lee said, “I had believed in the merger and unity of these two territories, with people connected by geography, economics, and ties of kinship.” His voice shook as he spoke the final words. This left Singapore alone, surrounded by the much larger, generally hostile Muslim states of Malaysia and Indonesia.

An Illiberal, Stable, and Prosperous Democracy

Lee set about building a new nation with a patriotic people, a prosperous economy, and political stability. He ensured stability with “illiberal” democracy: There were elections at least every five years, but opposition parties could operate only with difficulty, if at all. Communists, Communist sympathizers, and “chauvinists” of various stripes (ethnic, linguistic, or religious) were repressed and excluded from political life. The government had great influence over the media and the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) ruled an essentially one-party, parliamentary state. Lee also kept close ties with Britain and America as guarantees in the face of foreign threats, Communist or otherwise.

East Asia is the only region in the “global south” with countries that have been able to equal or even surpass Western standards of living. The rest, in the words of Francis Fukuyama, are perpetually trying to “get to Denmark.” Most of the successful nations caught up to the West thanks to stability through authoritarian or non-electoral governments. This has been the case not only in Singapore, but in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and also to some extent in Japan and South Korea. Typically, there is collaboration between government and big business together with a high savings rate for reinvesting profits. Once the country is wealthy, with a secure middle class, liberal democracy may then be instituted.

Lee Kuan Yew never trusted Western democracy; he refused to import divisive, multiparty politics. He thought the best people should rule through a meritocratic system of selection and make enlightened long-term plans. He thought this would be impossible under a democratic system susceptible to short-sightedness and demagogy. But whereas South Korea’s and Taiwan’s non-elected illiberal regimes collapsed, the Singapore government’s legitimacy has been continually refreshed at the ballot box, with popular support for authorities who gut liberalism when needed.

Jun 6, 1959 – Singapore – Lee Kuan Yew speaks during a People’s Action Party press conference after the PAP won 43 of the 51 seats in the legislative assembly. (Credit Image: © Keystone Press Agency / Keystone USA via ZUMAPRESS.com)

Lee did not reject all the Western practices inherited from the British. He was impressed by the capacity of Western capitalism to stimulate economic growth. With a sharply rising population, Communist agitation among the unemployed, and the end of Singapore’s previous role as a trade hub for the British Empire, the island needed a new model. Lee tried to enrich Singapore through world trade and investment.

In many post-colonial nations, infrastructure and public services declined when the British left. Many of the new governments were chauvinist and socialist. They seized foreign- and minority-owned businesses, which destroyed the trust and incentives needed for economic activity. Together with native incompetence and corruption, this led to stagnation, isolation, and underdevelopment, from Burma to Indonesia.

Lee stamped out corruption and protected all private property and foreign investments. The result was massive Western and Japanese investment, and Singapore benefited enormously from transfers of technology and know-how. In 1965, Singapore’s GDP per capita was US $500, today it is around $60,000 (equivalent to $100,000, considering the low cost of living).

Few governments, whether democratic, liberal, or authoritarian, can claim the continuous legitimacy and popularity that the Singapore regime has enjoyed. Voters supported Lee because he faced down Communists, eliminated corruption, and — last but not least — produced results: decades of political stability and economic growth. The Singapore authorities have kept their peculiar system of government even after Lee left the premiership in 1990.

Biopolitics I: The importance of human capital

Singapore also practices what can be called biopolitics: policies that affect the biological character of the people through immigration, reproduction, and identity formation. Lee wanted to turn the diverse population of Singapore into patriotic citizens. This meant making as many Singaporeans as possible employed property owners with a stake in the new country. He conscripted young men for two years of military service; the island needed citizen-soldiers in case of hostile action by Malaysia, Indonesia, or some Communist power.

The Great Replacement is a “discredited conspiracy theory,” but it also an empirical reality, wherever governments and agencies deem fit to publish the relevant figures.

France has long been loathe to publish such statistics, but neighboring Belgium — which has a similar history of recent immigration — is not so circumspect. The Belgian Federal Bureau for Planning recently published a highly interesting fact sheet on the national origin of mothers in Belgium.

The figures for 2020 show that Belgium now has a historically-low total fertility rate of 1.58 per woman. Of these, barely half of births (52.3%) are to native Belgian mothers. The rest are more-or-less evenly split between mothers who are Belgian citizens of foreign origin and foreign mothers.

Fertility rates differ drastically by origin, with native Belgian woman at a mere 1.38 and foreign women at 2.05 (48.5% higher).

Belgian citizens of foreign origin have a fertility rate of 1.58, suggesting a convergence of birth rates over time. Admittedly, interpretation is difficult as it is unclear what is included in this category. What proportion of these are Italian-origin Belgians (significant waves came from 1945 onward, now numbering around 450,000)? What proportion are Arabs or Congolese with Belgian passports? We don’t know.

Proportion by origin and age of women of child-bearing age, (orange: native Belgians, blue: Belgian citizens of foreign origin, grey: foreigners).

The replacement of the Belgian population will only ratchet up over time. Significantly, among 15-year-old girls, foreign-origin Belgian citizens and foreigners outnumber native Belgians more than two-to-one!

One struggles to find any previous examples in European history of population substitution on this scale. Probably one has to go all the way back to the Indo-European conquests circa 5000–4000 years ago.

The Belgian statistics are frustratingly unclear concerning the national origin of mothers in Belgium. “Citizens of foreign-origin” and “foreigners” indiscriminately include southern Europeans, eastern Europeans, Middle-Eastern Muslims, and Africans. There has been substantial European immigration to Belgium from Italy, Romania, and elsewhere.

It seems highly probable that European-origin mothers will have lower fertility rates than Africans and Muslims, though conceivably the latter converge somewhat in fertility with the natives over time.

Figures from the Belgian Statistics Agency revealed that in 2021 the proportion of native Belgians had fallen to a mere 67.3% of the population (from 74.3% in 2011 and 81.8% in 2001). The collapse of native Belgians is real, drastic, and ongoing.

Among Belgian citizens of foreign origin and foreigners, 48.3% are from neighboring or other EU countries and 51.7% from non-EU countries (mostly from the Maghreb, Turkey, and Black Africa). The proportion from non-EU countries has increased, being 38.4% in 2001 and 47.6% in 2011.

Thus, foreign-origin people in Belgium make up one third of the population, about evenly split between Europeans and non-Europeans. I suspect non-Europeans make up about a third of births in Belgium, similar to France.

Whatever one makes of all this, the Belgian population is being irreversibly transformed beyond recognition within a single lifetime.

The consequences for the native population have often been dire. In France, recent figures show that foreigners (not including citizens of foreign origin) make up 7.6% of the population but are two to four times more likely to commit crimes such as theft, sexual assault, and murder:

This does not even factor in French and Belgian citizens of African nor Muslim origin. During a trial of the French-Jewish pundit Éric Zemmour for “hate speech,” the Socialist politician Jean-Pierre Chevènement came to Zemmour’s defense. He testified that as interior minister he received a daily list of crimes in France and most of the criminals had African or Muslim last names.[1] Note that Chevènement was Minister of the Interior from 1997–2000! The situation is no doubt even more stark today.

Beyond the decline in social capital and well-being, there are also plenty of signs the population change is leading to a collapse in any common values within the society. A recent poll by the respected agency IFOP found that 65% of young Muslim high-schoolers in France considered that “the norms and rules” of Islam “are more important than the laws of the Republic.”

The right is often faulted for being alarmist on immigration. Part of the reason for this is that the consequences of these trends take time to become apparent but also have tremendous momentum. The most extraordinary political courage will be necessary to hold back the tide, let alone roll it back. In any case, wholly preventable ethno-religious conflicts among Europeans, Blacks, and Muslims will continue to be facts of life in Western Europe for the foreseeable future. There is every likelihood these problems will worsen and, if nothing is done, will indeed become overwhelming.

Note

[1] Éric Zemmour, La France n’a pas dit son dernier mot (Rubempré, 2021), p. 127

France is abuzz with the news that Éric Zemmour – a right-wing pundit – may in run the country’s presidential elections set for April 2022. Polls already have Zemmour enjoying double-digit support and potentially even beating Marine Le Pen and the mainstream conservative candidates, thus making him run off against sitting President Emmanuel Macron in the second round.

Zemmour would, according to these same polls, win around 45% of the vote in this scenario. That’s short of a victory but, this early in the game, it’s exactly the kind of level of support Brexit and Donald Trump received before their triumphs in 2016.

But who is Éric Zemmour? The pundit has been virtually a household name in France for many years. He is akin to Tucker Carlson in America: just about the only voice in the TV news media who effectively, though usually not explicitly, defends the interests of the nation’s core ethnic demographic.

I have previously written on Zemmour’s career in the media. Suffice to say that he has been able to carve out a lucrative niche for himself as the highest-profile nationalist/conservative voice in the French media landscape. This makes him a polarizing but popular figure as there is great untapped demand among audiences for patriotic rhetoric. This demand is largely ignored by journalists who are, like in the rest of the West, structurally biased in favor of left-liberal causes.

Occasionally, mainstream journalists forget to keep their biases subtle and covert. One journalist at the France Info public TV station said Zemmour “is not allowed to come here.” The channel then publicly contradicted the journalist and clarified that Zemmour would be invited only when he had officially become a candidate.

Zemmour’s career: right-wing media gadfly

Zemmour has successfully built up his profile on the right-wing edge of the media system. He long worked for the conservative newspaper Le Figaro and broke through on TV talk shows in which he was noted for his criticism of feminism and professional “anti-racist” activism. He has been periodically fired by certain media for going ‘too far.’ He has also often been dragged into court by said “anti-racist” lobby groups – while he has generally been vindicated, he twice was found guilty of “inciting racial hatred.” In the end, Zemmour has been able to flourish despite these setbacks, keeping gainful employment in a critical section of the French media and continuing to reach his audience.

Zemmour is technically still not a candidate for the election. However, things came to a head earlier this year as he set up a political party, recruited staff, and raised funds. Last month, France’s TV regulator, the Superior Audiovisual Council (CSA), required that Zemmour’s TV appearances be limited to what is proportionately allowed for presidential candidates. This was a big deal as Zemmour had previously been allowed to dominate a popular talk show on maverick TV station CNews, which had enjoyed as many as 800,000 viewers at a time.

Zemmour’s ideas: The defense of French interests, including the native French

Regarding Zemmour’s political ideas, the best place to start for English-speakers is probably the recent interview he gave to a Hungarian think-tank, on the occasion of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fourth Demographic Summit. (This event, focused on opposing immigration and supporting European families and fertility, was itself very noteworthy and included the participation of the prime ministers of Czechia, Serbia, and Slovenia.)

In the interview, Zemmour explicitly mentions France’s white identity with a suitable quote from General Charles de Gaulle, who said that the French were “a European people of white race, Greek and Latin culture, and Christian religion.” Both add that while some non-Whites and Muslims may become French citizens, the nation would lose her identity if these groups ceased to be “a small minority.” In the French media, few have been as explicit as Zemmour in denouncing the ills of Afro-Islamic immigration and the results in terms of criminality, welfare abuse, and day-to-day Islamization.

(Those who want a more detailed exposé of Zemmour’s views read my review of his longest work: Le Suicide français, a meticulous examination of the steady decay of the French nation over the past fifty years. The book sold an estimated 300,000 copies.)

In Zemmour’s politics, France is the be-all-end-all. He is enamored with the nation who gave citizenship to the Jews during the French Revolution, enabling his own people to flourish, and with the glory that France was able to achieve under great leaders such as Napoleon Bonaparte and Charles de Gaulle.

Zemmour’s dissident critics: A tool of the globalist oligarchy?

Zemmour has plenty of critics, including among patriotic dissidents. One such critic is the anti-Zionist civic nationalist Alain Soral, who asks: Why is Zemmour “allowed” to speak in the media in the way he does? Jean-Marie Le Pen, who has long made similar comments, enjoyed no such privilege but was viciously demonized. Is Zemmour not allowed to rise because, wittingly or not, he serves the interests of the global oligarchy which wishes to see France weakened, paralyzed, and bled by fatal internal conflict, namely the ethno-religious civil war which Zemmour is effectively promoting?

I personally do not find the Soralian critique convincing. He fails to recognize the fact that there are differing factions within the French and global oligarchies. Indeed, Donald Trump was able to win the U.S. presidency precisely by exploiting these divisions. He governed with the support of ultra-Zionists who won a great deal for Israel. America won a bit too, though admittedly much less, with drastic reductions in border crossings and refugee settlements.

In France, Zemmour has been able to survive thanks to the support of the Dassault family, an originally Jewish family (I don’t know how much they have intermarried with gentiles) who own the Figaro newspaper and a segment of the French arms industry, and Vincent Bolloré, a gentile billionaire industrialist who owns CNews. I cannot say if these men have supported Zemmour out of right-wing convictions or for subscriptions/ratings.

It is true that Zemmour’s rhetoric is ambiguous. At times, he speaks of “assimilating” foreigners into France, such as by a recent proposal to require newborns to be given traditional French names. At others, he speaks of France’s white identity and of potential civil war between the natives and the Muslims.

Assimilation is a non-starter in a country where around one fifth of newborns are Muslim and one third are non-European. I do not however think “racial civil war” will be occurring in France at least within the next 10-15 years. And even if it did, the fact is that at this stage the Europeans would easily win.

Le Monde has released an article reporting on the publishing of books by French politicians, a veritable cottage industry. The report confirms a few things which any observer of the genre will long have noticed, e.g.:

• That French politicians write books to give off airs of literary gravitas.
• “‘The exercise is getting banalized and is leading to a profusion of writings of variable quality,’ stressed [pollster] Brice Teinturier […]. [N]ew criticisms are addressed to politicians who are in office: they are criticized for writing instead of working.”
• “Sophie Charnavel, head of the publisher Robert Laffont, considers that certain books are only there to occupy space and ‘are standardized’ so that their author is invited to the morning radio shows. A marketing exercise.”
• That, as a rule, no one is reading the bulk of these publications.

E.g., European Commissioner for the Economy Pierre Moscovici’s memoirs have exactly zero reviews on Amazon.fr. Moscovici is well-known for his striking resemblance to pornographic actor-director Pierre Woodman.

The ultra-Zionist Socialist former prime minister Manuel Valls – who, being married to a Jewess, once declared that he was “eternally linked to the Jewish community and to Israel” – pointedly entitled his book Not a Drop of French Blood (his parents are Spanish and Swiss; and he is currently serving as a municipal councillor in Barcelona).

Admittedly, a few heavyweights are able to sell: Nicolas Sarkozy’s latest memoir The Time of Storms (volume I) has sold 238,000 copies and François Hollande’s The Lessons of Power has sold 200,000 copies (miraculous given how inert Hollande was as president). A few big names of the far left and far right like Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Philippe de Villiers can also break into six-digit sales.

I was most struck however by a throw-away paragraph at the end of the article:

There remains however one unknown person before the 2022 presidential elections. The question is now sharply posed: till when will last the big publishers’ consensus to never publish a book signed by Marine Le Pen? For now, the cordon sanitaire [quarantining of the far-right] remains the rule for the 10 biggest publishers. “[Publishing her] would mean participating in her detoxification, which I do not want to do. My hat as a citizen takes precedence over my hat as a publisher,” said Olivier Nora [the CEO of the publisher Grasset]. Here too, economic and political motives are intertwined: “Morally, I am not ready to do this,” concluded Muriel Beyer [deputy head of Humensis, a major political publisher]. “And, professionally, my authors would not want to be part of the same publishing house as her.”

Thus we have a tacit agreement among the major publishers to exclude a candidate who appeals to a solid third of French voters and who has made every effort to assert her “republican” and “democratic” credentials; fully abandoning her father’s rebellious streak on race, World War II and the holocaust, Charles de Gaulle and the Algerian War, etc. Today, you’ll occasionally hear praise of Marshal Philippe Pétain from our globalist President Emmanuel Macron, never from putative far-rightist Marine Le Pen.

The article also makes clear that the big publishers range politically from centrist to far-left in political orientation and that the few who publish right-leaning books are subject to moral opprobrium.

The public censure and politically-motivated discrimination faced by Le Pen supporters likely also accounts for the fact that her party often runs the same candidates for both county and regional elections (60% of candidates running in the regionals are also running in the counties). Few people are willing, or can afford, to take the professional and social hit of public association with one of France’s most popular political parties.

Number of candidates by party running for both the regional and county elections: Rassemblement National (RN or National Rally), is Le Pen’s party.

A fine democracy we live in! A few will come to the conclusion that there is a slight contradiction between liberal-democrats’ idealistic pretensions and real human psycho-social power dynamics. It’s a shame Our Moral Betters are not more honest with themselves about the nature of their vaunted political pluralism and their instinctive demand of hegemony.