Hate speech trial begins for far-right French pundit Éric Zemmour

French far-right pundit Éric Zemmour, who is widely expected to run for the presidency next year, went on trial on Wednesday charged with racist hate speech over a televised tirade against unaccompanied child migrants.

Published: 17 November 2021 15:41 CET

Far-right pundit, Éric Zemmour, gives an icy stare to the camera. He is facing charges of using racist hate speech.

French far-right pundit, Éric Zemmour, faces charges of racist hate speech. It is unclear how this could affect a potential campaign going into the 2022 presidential election in France. (Photo by BERTRAND GUAY / POOL / AFP)

His incendiary comments were made on French news channel, CNews, back in September.

The 63-year-old did not appear in person, saying in a statement that he refused “to accept that a political debate takes place in a courtroom”.

Even if he were convicted, he would almost certainly appeal, and his electoral prospects would be unlikely to suffer as his contempt for “politically correct” speech is part of his appeal.

Around 20 members of his Generation Z support group gathered in front of the Paris court building and unfurled a French flag.

The case was ‘nothing other than another attempt to intimidate me’, his statement said under the headline ‘they won’t shut me up’.

The journalist, author and TV pundit has two previous convictions for hate speech and has been investigated 16 times in total for his incendiary remarks on immigration and Islam.

This most recent trial was for comments made several days after a Pakistani man had attacked two people with a meat cleaver at the former offices of the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine, which had recently republished cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.

The 25-year-old assailant, who was unaware that the magazine had changed location, had arrived in France with false papers to claim asylum as an unaccompanied minor.

Immigration is a major theme of early presidential campaigning, with Zemmour and other right-wing hopefuls promising to address fraud in the asylum system and the difficulty of returning people if their claims are rejected.

In 2011, he was fined €10,000 for claiming on TV that “most drug dealers are black and Arab”, and in 2018 he was ordered to pay €3,000 for stigmatising comments about a Muslim “invasion” of France.

Polls have shown a surge in support for him over the last two months, with some at the end of October putting him ahead of the veteran far-right leader Marine Le Pen.

In the latest surveys ahead of the first round of the election on April 10, he was shown winning 13 to 15 percent, with Le Pen on around 18 percent and President Emmanuel Macron on around 25 percent.

Macron is tipped to win the second-round run-off irrespective of his opponent, but analysts warn that the election remains highly unpredictable.

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“I don’t believe in the model… which would involve finding third countries on the African continent or elsewhere where we’d send people who arrive on our soil illegally, who don’t come from these countries,” Macron said.

“We’re creating a geopolitics of cynicism which betrays our values and will build new dependencies, and which will prove completely ineffective,” he added in a wide-ranging speech on the future of the European Union at Paris’ Sorbonne University.

British MPs on Tuesday passed a law providing for undocumented asylum seekers to be sent to Rwanda, where their asylum claims would be processed and where they would stay if the claims succeed.

The law is a flagship policy for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government, which badly lags the opposition Labour party in the polls with an election expected within months.

Britain pays Paris to support policing of France’s northern coast, aimed at preventing migrants from setting off for perilous crossings in small boats.

Five people, including one child, were killed in an attempted crossing Tuesday, bringing the toll on the route so far this year to 15 – already higher than the 12 deaths in 2023.

But Macron had warm words for London when he praised the two NATO allies’ bilateral military cooperation, which endured through the contentious years of Britain’s departure from the EU.

“The British are deep natural allies (for France) and the treaties that bind us together… lay a solid foundation,” he said.

“We have to follow them up and strengthen them, because Brexit has not affected this relationship,” Macron added.

The president also said France should seek similar “partnerships” with fellow EU members.