France has been thwarted in its destiny of greatness by the English and is now doomed to collapse into civil war between Christians and Muslim “barbarians”. You might think that such a prophecy – articulated by one of the country’s top thinkers – would banish its author to the lunatic fringe. Yet Eric Zemmour is earning fame and fortune charting his country’s decline, with his latest gloomy book Mélancolie Française flying off the shelves.
The thesis that lands Zemmour in the hottest water is his belief that France sealed its fate when it abandoned its tradition of assimilating immigrants, and embraced the concept of ethnic diversity. “French culture is not Muhammad,” he says. “It is François, it is Christian.” The result is a new “barbarism”, with the emergence of Muslim ghettos that have broken away from society, he argues in his book. To back his thesis, he quotes Charles de Gaulle as saying that mixing Muslims and French Christians is “like blending oil and vinegar”.
While Zemmour is deemed beyond the pale by much of the Establishment, he enjoys public backing. Two months ago, supporters demonstrated outside Le Figaro, the most conservative newspaper, after Étienne Mougeotte, the Editor, tried to sack him as a staff columnist. His offence had been to claim on television that the majority of French drug dealers were of Arab or African origin. Mougeotte backed down and Zemmour kept his job.