When It Comes To The Working-class the French far-right is fighting a “civil war”

The truce between Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour is over. The former is playing for political survival. The latter is establishing himself as the main candidate of the nationalist right.

The far-right French presidential candidates are at war. The latest polls have Eric Zemmour tied with Marine Le Pen, the leader of the Rassemblement National. Some other polls say Zemmour would reach the second round against Emmanuel Macron.

For Le Pen, Zemmour is what can threaten her candidacy. If the writer makes it to the second round it would almost certainly be the end of Le Pen’s political ambitions.

Zemmour understands that part of his electoral success is to overtake Marine Le Pen. The quasi-candidate never misses an opportunity to stress the inadequacy of Le Pen’s candidacy. Indeed, Zemmour argues that voting for the Rassemblement National leader is pointless. “She can not win the elections,” he argues, “because she is unable to represent a part of the French bourgeoisie.” In this way, he says, Le Pen condemns the voters who support her to political irrelevance. The only way to get Le Pen’s voters out of the “political ghetto” into which they have been “led” is to elect a new candidate: himself.

Instead, Le Pen criticizes the liberal policies of the French writer and polemicist. “Old remedies that have proven their ineffectiveness,” he declared. Above all, the Rassemblement National leader said, “the working class doesn’t support them.”

To seduce this constituency, Zemmour tries to campaign in small rural towns. As he said in Charvieu-Chavagneux — population 10,000 — “it is I who can keep everyone together.” And he highlighted the difference with Le Pen’s “moderation.” “67% of the French believe that the Great Replacement is underway, and I am the only one who uses these words,” he said. The Great Replacement is a conspiracy and racist theory that has gained adherents in France and many other parts of the world. In 2019, Le Pen claimed to be “unaware” of this theory and “never used this term,” while in 2014 she spoke about exactly that.

For Zemmour, the working class does not care about form. People want strong and clear language combined with radical policies. In a way, Zemmour marks a return to the language of Jean-Marie Le Pen, Marine’s father. And he seems to have the support of the Le Pen family. Jean-Marie Le Pen declared his support for Zemmour. And Marion Maréchal is helping him collect the signatures needed to run in the presidential election. Marion Maréchal is the niece of Marine Le Pen and a former far-right political star.

The Rassemblement National leader has sought to counter Zemmour’s push by returning to classic themes: the fight against immigration and security. “I want to propose solutions,” Marine Le Pen said, pointing to an image of presidential competence. An element that, according to political analysts, was missing in the 2017 campaign.

Even if the leader of the Rassemblement National tries to present an almost more moderate image than Zemmour, there is no cordon sanitaire towards Zemmour. The refusal to cooperate with the Le Pen family has prevented the victory of the far-right party for longer. And that is not pointless. To overcome this cordon sanitaire, Marine Le Pen had begun the process of de-demonizing the party. A process that also marked the departure of her father’s heavy-handed political figure from the scene. Having eliminated the racist, anti-Muslim, and anti-Semitic overtones, the leader of the far-right preferred to present extreme policy proposals without her father’s inflammatory rhetoric.

Today, however, this choice seems to pose some problems. To confirm these difficulties, Le Pen has shown that she does not know how to react to Zemmour. Not only has she ignored him, but she has asserted the similarity of their programs. “I will never treat him as an opponent,” she said as recently as September. Then, with the writer’s rise in the polls, Le Pen suggested he join her political fight because “Zemmour’s chances of getting to the second round are very slim.”

Zemmour, on the other hand, continues to insist that Le Pen can never win the elections. In support of the author’s strategy, some research also suggests that Zemmour can reach a broader electorate. In a poll by Ipsos-Sopra Steria and Cevipof for Le Monde, Marine Le Pen scores only 4% of the voting intentions of voters who voted for former center-right Prime Minister François Fillon in 2017. Zemmour gets 24%.

This is Zemmour’s advantage over Le Pen: the writer represents the merging of the far-right electorate with a part of the right-wing electorate that Marine Le Pen has never been able to reach. According to a poll by the Fondation Jean Jaurès, a think tank close to the Socialists, Zemmour manages to capture part of the working class voting intentions: 17% among workers and 16% among employees. Most importantly, unlike Marine Le Pen, who is more attractive in rural areas, Eric Zemmour’s electorate is evenly spread across the country.

The consequences of this clash between the two far-right candidates could have significant implications for the French political system. A conservative and identitarian pole could emerge. And its boundaries would no longer be limited to Rassemblement National voters.