From the cauldron of 4,300 supporters at the Palais des Victoires in Cannes (Alpes-Maritimes), Saturday January 22, the Lepenist slogan ” We are at home “, gradually fainted from the meetings of the National Rally (RN), went up more than once to Eric Zemmour. As always with both fists raised, the far-right candidate paced the stage with his freshly rallied: Gilbert Collard, RN MEP propelled honorary president of Reconquest! ; Jérôme Rivière, former leader of the RN delegation to the European Parliament who became vice-president of the party; Guillaume Peltier, former number two of LR, same title. A casting intended to illustrate its key message in the Alpes-Maritimes: the call for this “union of rights” that he has professed for decades – RN voters and those of the Republicans, without forgetting the abstainers – all those, he says, who “believed in Le Pen, Pasqua, Villiers or Sarkozy”.
In a game of mirrors, Eric Zemmour therefore made the voters of the « Front national », from ” brothers “, then those of the Republicans, “held hostage by centrist politicians”. He criticized the distinction between “republican right” and “a right that is too extremist”, what his supporters know as the “trap of François Mitterrand”, before urging “Abolish the sanitary cordon”. This rhetoric is reminiscent of that of Jean-Marie Le Pen, who in his time never ceased to urge“unity of nationals, right-wing forces”, to overcome Jacques Chirac’s cordon policy. In the blink of an eye, Zemmour hailed his support Jacques Peyrat, the former mayor of Nice, who had put the National Front label in his pocket in 1994 to conquer the town hall: “You already embodied this union of the right that I carry today”, threw the candidate into the void at the address of the friend and companion of Indochina of Le Pen: expected in the VIP area, Jacques Peyrat was finally absent, but the campaign team of Eric Zemmour did not only noticed followingwards.
Resuscitating the Frontiste Program of the 1980s
Driven by his two-hour stroll to the Forville Provençal market, the very morning, his first successful countryside visit in contact with the population, concluded with a glass of rosé wine from the “Les Sources de la Marine” estate, Eric Zemmour rented the “so Mediterranean warmth” of his public, before claiming to give a voice to “silent France” Who “never speaks” but who can say “no to ideology, to lies, to the system”. An anti-system discourse which he is always fond of. But then it seemed to resurrect the Frontist program of the 1980s more than its nationalist refrain of a “great replacement”.
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