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French far-right hope Zemmour attacks welfare handouts

French far-right presidential candidate Eric Zemmour on Saturday used a meeting in the northern city of Lille to launch a tirade against welfare handouts.

Published: 5 February 2022 19:26 CET

French far-right party Reconquete! presidential candidate Eric Zemmour attends a campaign rally in Lille, northern France, on February 5th, 2022, ahead of the April 2022 presidential election in France. JULIEN DE ROSA / AFP

Zemmour, looking to outmanouevre fellow far-right rival Marine Le Pen, holding a first campaign rally at Reims, north east of Paris, said he was on the side of “the France that works”.

As Zemmour addressed 6,000 supporters, around 3,000 turned out to back their choice in Reims, where the general view was that Le Pen represents a less “extremist” view of the world.

Choosing Reims, a city where numerous French kings were crowned down the centuries, Le Pen beamed as one backer, 58-year-old businesswoman Annick, said she would get her vote.

“I am doing well economically but with Marine Le Pen there are values — attachment to our French identity, an image of firmness,” said Annick.

She dubbed Zemmour “an extremist in his attitude and words” who “has no sincerity”.

Both far-right candidates are looking to sweep up support in their bid to reach a presidential run-off vote in the industrial north of the country which is a traditional hotbed of support.

France goes to the polls in presidential elections in April.

The north is also a region, Zemmour suggested, where “handouts are an insult”.

Promising to tackle low salaries, he scoffed: “When you get up every morning to go and work … you don’t accept that your neighbour lives better than you do thanks to welfare without having to work.”

Lille’s Socialist mayor Martine Aubry had earlier said Zemmour was not welcome in the town and joined a demonstration against “hate” organised by anti-racism group SOS Racisme.

During Zemmour’s rally one journalist with private broadcaster LCI told AFP one of his supporters had spat in her face.

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Azerbaijan vehemently rejects the accusation it bears responsibility for the riots that have led to the deaths of five people and rattled the Paris government.

But it is just the latest in a litany of tensions between Paris and Baku and not the first time France has accused Azerbaijan of being behind an alleged disinformation campaign.

The riots in New Caledonia, a French territory lying between Australia and Fiji, were sparked by moves to agree a new voting law that supporters of independence from France say discriminates against the indigenous Kanak population.

Paris points to the sudden emergence of Azerbaijani flags alongside Kanak symbols in the protests, while a group linked to the Baku authorities is openly backing separatists while condemning Paris.

“This isn’t a fantasy. It’s a reality,” interior minister Gérald Darmanin told television channel France 2 when asked if Azerbaijan, China and Russia were interfering in New Caledonia.

“I regret that some of the Caledonian pro-independence leaders have made a deal with Azerbaijan. It’s indisputable,” he alleged.

But he added: “Even if there are attempts at interference… France is sovereign on its own territory, and so much the better”.

“We completely reject the baseless accusations,” Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry spokesman Ayhan Hajizadeh said.

“We refute any connection between the leaders of the struggle for freedom in Caledonia and Azerbaijan.”

In images widely shared on social media, a reportage broadcast Wednesday on the French channel TF1 showed some pro-independence supporters wearing T-shirts adorned with the Azerbaijani flag.

Tensions between Paris and Baku have grown in the wake of the 2020 war and 2023 lightning offensive that Azerbaijan waged to regain control of its breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region from ethnic Armenian separatists.

France is a traditional ally of Christian Armenia, Azerbaijan’s neighbour and historic rival, and is also home to a large Armenian diaspora.

Darmanin said Azerbaijan – led since 2003 by President Ilham Aliyev, who succeeded his father Heydar – was a “dictatorship”.

On Wednesday, the Paris government also banned social network TikTok from operating in New Caledonia.

Tiktok, whose parent company is Chinese, has been widely used by protesters. Critics fear it is being employed to spread disinformation coming from foreign countries.

Azerbaijan invited separatists from the French territories of Martinique, French Guiana, New Caledonia and French Polynesia to Baku for a conference in July 2023.

The meeting saw the creation of the “Baku Initiative Group”, whose stated aim is to support “French liberation and anti-colonialist movements”.

The group published a statement this week condemning the French parliament’s proposed change to New Caledonia’s constitution, which would allow outsiders who moved to the territory at least 10 years ago the right to vote in its elections.

Pro-independence forces say that would dilute the vote of Kanaks, who make up about 40 percent of the population.

“We stand in solidarity with our Kanak friends and support their fair struggle,” the Baku Initiative Group said.

Raphael Glucksmann, the lawmaker heading the list for the French Socialists in June’s European Parliament elections, told Public Senat television that Azerbaijan had made “attempts to interfere… for months”.

He said the underlying problem behind the unrest was a domestic dispute over election reform, not agitation fomented by “foreign actors”.

But he accused Azerbaijan of “seizing on internal problems.”

A French government source, who asked not to be named, said pro-Azerbaijani social media accounts had on Wednesday posted an edited montage purporting to show two white police officers with rifles aimed at dead Kanaks.

“It’s a pretty massive campaign, with around 4,000 posts generated by (these) accounts,” the source told AFP.

“They are reusing techniques already used during a previous smear campaign called Olympia.”

In November, France had already accused actors linked to Azerbaijan of carrying out a disinformation campaign aimed at damaging its reputation over its ability to host the Olympic Games in Paris. Baku also rejected these accusations.