Jonathan Miller Jonathan Miller

My night in Béziers with Zemmour

[Getty Images]

Béziers is the ancient winemaking capital of the Occitanie region in the deep south of France and a stronghold of the French right. Its popular mayor, Robert Ménard, a former journalist, was elected as an independent, but with a strong endorsement from Marine Le Pen. Her political movement, the Rassemblement National, formerly the National Front, with historical roots in anti-Semitism, has been powerful here for decades.

So is it paradoxical, bizarre, or perhaps evidence of a more profound shift of social and political tectonic plates, that last Saturday night thousands of Biterrois turned out at the Zinga Zanga theatre to cheer Éric Zemmour, a Parisian Jewish intellectual, author and television and radio journalist?

I got there early and started talking to dozens of Zemmour’s fans as they lined up to enter the hall. Many had come hundreds of miles. There were scores of students. All were disillusioned with Le Pen. Many admitted they’d previously voted for Nicolas Sarkozy. This was not a traditional National Front crowd in their blue smocks, driving those battered Renault vans that look like garden sheds on wheels. The car park was filled with Audis, BMWs, top-line Peugeots and a Jaguar or two. The crowd was well-spoken and smartly dressed.

Zemmour, a Pied-Noir whose Berber parents fled Algeria during the war of independence, is labelled a racist, Islamophobe and right-wing extremist in much of the French media. Critics compare him with Trump and note his convictions for inciting racial hatred. This can sound shocking abroad — but in France, less so. Incitement to racial hatred can be a subjective crime, with prosecutions brought by politicised magistrates. If anything, his convictions seem to add to his insurgent appeal.

Zemmour is ready to confront taboo subjects.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in