Eric Zemmour, the French far-right presidential candidate, made a career out of controversy as a provocative writer and a regular TV commentator for almost 20 years.
From 2019 until 2021, the 63-year-old hosted a daily show on the conservative channel CNews which allowed his far-right ideas about immigration and Islam to enter the mainstream.
Yet at his first official political rally on December 5, Zemmour appeared to boast about his minority background, calling himself a “little Berber Jew who came from the other side of the Mediterranean.”
Zemmour is of Jewish-Algerian descent, but his comments on Jewish history have been heavily criticised as offensive and false.
Zemmour upset many in September when he commented on a dark chapter in French history: the Vichy government’s role during the Holocaust.
In September, he reiterated a theory that he has been claiming since 2014, that “Vichy protected French Jews and gave foreign Jews away.”
JW
Article URL : https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/12/22/french-jews-denounce-far-right-candidate-zemmour