Following disappointing showings at presidential and legislative elections last spring, Éric Zemmour, the leader of the French national Right party Reconquête, has licked his wounds and is mounting a political comeback, making a slew of media appearances this month along with several speeches delivered at university campuses.
In his most recent television appearance, which aired Thursday on the CNews political talk show L’Heure des Pros, the leader of Reconquête heavily criticized President Macron, who earlier this month—after presenting new legislation on immigration—announced his intention to reroute streams of newly-arrived foreigners to the French countryside.
Zemmour, reacting to Macron’s announcement, argued that it evinced the French president is fully aware of the outcomes of the ‘Great Replacement,’ a term used to describe the people native to France being gradually replaced by foreign populations, approves of them, and wishes facilitate the process.
“We now know that Emmanuel Macron accepts the Great Replacement, loves it, and wants to organize it,” Zemmour told the host of the program.
Macron, who outlined the proposed immigration reforms during a press briefing at the Elysée Palace last week, claimed that rural areas which presently “are in the process of losing population,” are better suited to receive migrants than densely populated urban centers where “a concentration of massive economic and social problems” already exist.
In the wake of his proposals, the French president faced a deluge of criticism from his opponents on the political Right, with Marine Len, the president of the Rassemblement National, describing his scheme as “madness,” adding that foreigners belong in their homelands—not in the French countryside.
Les Republicans MP Éric Ciotti, who is running as a candidate for the presidency of the center-Right LR, also slammed Macron’s program, saying that endeavoring to “move the problems linked to immigration to rural areas” amounts to “heresy and cowardice.”
