By László Szőcs
The United States of Europe is a mirage of Europe-madmen who destroy sovereign nations without at least creating European sovereignty in their place, said Éric Zemmour, who is attending the Fourth Demographics Summit in Budapest. The anti-immigrant French journalist has 11 percent support just over six months before the presidential election, which means millions would vote for him if the elections were held now. Again, however, Zemmour did not announce whether he will officially run.
– At the Fourth Budapest Demographics Summit, you said that Hungarians had a good sense of this danger. What did you mean by that?
– This means that Hungarians have a dual political experience. One is due to the Islamic occupation by the Ottomans, the other to Soviet rule, which meant submission to a totalitarian regime. With this dual experience, Hungarians have a particular sharpness to filter out the dangers that lurk before us: the Islamic invasion and the progressive ideology that is a totalitarian regime, albeit without a gulag. Under viktor Orbán’s leadership, Hungarians are resisting both, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence. People are shaped by their history, and how they react depends on their history. The French intellectual René Girard writes in one of his last books, Achever Clausewitz (Clausewitz Fulfill), that today we must enter a time when we are closer to Karl Martel and the Crusaders than to the French Revolution and the consequences of the industrialization of the Second Empire. Today we live in an age of Islam and Christianity, of the civilizational struggle between East and West. This struggle has never stopped. And one of the basic elements is demographics.
– To what extent?
– In the sense that the West, including you since the fall of the Berlin Wall, is subject to another phenomenon, deconstruction. Since the 1960s, our intelligentsia, our elites, our universities, based on the American model, have adopted what Allan Bloom wrote so aptly about a long time ago: the attitude of deconstruction, of rejection. We have been incultated that we are guilty. Guilty of slavery, guilty of World War II, guilty of exterminating the Jews, guilty of colonialism, guilty of oppressing women, children, blacks, Muslims. For everything. And in order to obtain absolution for these crimes, we are capable of anything, including the destruction of our own civilization. But the countries of Eastern Europe are exempt from this because they were victims, victims of communism and the Soviet Union, and this – what a historical paradox – qualifies them and frees them from the need to absolve themselves of these crimes. Sometimes the story has such amusing, tragic and strange twists. But what is deconstruction all about? First the nation, then the family, then the paternal role, the human being himself and the biological sex is deconstructed. I wrote about this seven years ago in my book Suicide français: deconstruction is followed by ridicule, then destruction. Islam, too, is allied with the destruction of the nation, the family, and the individual, and exploits our weakness to enforce its own norms. For example, what does the Muslim woman’s headscarf express? That they Islamize our streets, that public space belongs to them.
– You were received in Budapest by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. What were they talking about?
– The same things. And I think he understands it perfectly, the civilizational struggle between West and East, North and South. He defends his people, he built the border fence, and he also defends himself against deconstruction, against George Soros and the LGBTQ lobby. Today it is about the struggle on both fronts. For me, too, the experience he shared was instructive.
– It is clearly important for the Hungarian leadership to deal with the French right. Former MEP Marion Maréchal, granddaughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, was also a guest at the summit.
But the French right is not right-wing today – at least not as far as the leaders of the Republicans, the LR, are concerned. The French right has subordinated itself to the left and can at best be described as centrist. They might as well stand behind Emmanuel Macron, because they share the same views as the president.
– You are now returning to France. Will you finally announce that you will be running for president?
– We’ll see.
– Judging by your new book and your appearances in the media, prepare for something.
– The preparations give me the opportunity to present my ideas to the French. Although I am not an official candidate, I am the only one whose reputation is improving. All others are stagnating or in decline. Marine Le Pen’s popularity has fallen by ten percentage points in six months, from 28% to 18%. Of Macron’s challengers, Xavier Bertrand is at 14-15%, Valérie Pécresse is stagnating. They have no dynamics. I’m the only one. Of course, time is also short for me, I will announce my decision soon.
– You have an approval rating of 11%. How do you think you can win?
– Politics is not about arithmetic, but about dynamics. I started with three percent, then I got five, seven, eight, ten and finally eleven. And pretty fast. We’ll see.
– The other day you debated with Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the candidate of the radical left. What would you say to Macron if he sat across from you, for example before the second, decisive round next spring? Where do you think the president made a mistake?
– I don’t think he understood the challenge to the existence of the country. Although he is a young man, he is old in his head. It is as if he were living in the 1970s, a contemporary of Valéry Giscard d’Estaing and Michel Rocard. He believes that the economy is the biggest fault line today. But it’s about civilization, identity, the fate of the nation. He does not understand what René Girard said. He is concerned with whether we should spend two percent of GDP on this or that. I’m not saying that this isn’t important, but the other side of the scale is the decline and disappearance of France. It’s not the same – it’s a matter of life and death.
– I have just seen that you have a very friendly relationship with Marion Maréchal. Can the same be said of your aunt Marine Le Pen, your rival on the right?
– I like Marion very much. I have a less intimate relationship with her aunt.
– What are the main differences between the two of you in politics?
– Le Pen has turned to the political centre, which I think is a tactical and strategic mistake. But 70% of french people agree with what I say about Islam.
Many people are still talking about the 2017 televised debate in which Le Pen was defeated by Macron. But as a publicist, you thrive on debates. Do you consider yourself a better debater?
– That’s the other problem with him. In the debate, he humiliated his own voters. I like to debate, but not for the sake of debating: I defend my ideas.
– And would you defeat Macron?
– Everything is possible.
– What is at stake in the French presidential elections for a divided European Union suffering from a crisis of values?
– I talked to Viktor Orbán about it and we were in complete agreement. We must press for the European Commission to return to its original task of managing the common market. At the same time, it should stop imposing on member states the ideas of a “progressive” minority and try to have a say everywhere with the complicity of the big players, Germany and France. We must abandon the view held by our elites and Macron that our future lies in the United States of Europe. We are not Texas or Wyoming. All this is a mirage of Europe-madmen who destroy sovereign nations without at least creating European sovereignty in their place. It is a myth, a utopia. The Germans and the Poles, for example, do not want an independent European defence policy, they always stand behind the United States. Macron, too, will not be able to achieve what Charles de Gaulle did with his knife. In other words, the common market must be left to the European Commission, and everything else – including immigration policy and border control powers – to the sovereign nation states, the people.
– However, this is not possible without action by the large Member States…
– Exactly. They must force the European Commission to do so. As Jacques Chirac said, Brussels alone cannot even declare war. Stalin once asked how many divisions the Pope had.
Source: Magyar Nemzet