PARIS — There have been many startling elements to Éric Zemmour’s as yet undeclared campaign to forge a hard-right path to the French presidency, but perhaps none as surprising as his attempt to rehabilitate France’s collaborationist wartime regime.
“Vichy protected French Jews and gave the foreign Jews,” Mr. Zemmour said in September on CNews, a growing Fox News-like TV channel, one of several remarks suggesting that the wartime government of Marshal Philippe Pétain that sent more than 72,500 Jews to their deaths was not so bad after all.
The comment was shocking not least because Mr. Zemmour is Jewish. From 1942 onward, there is no evidence that the Vichy regime tried to protect French Jews. It collaborated with the Nazis to round up Jews, whether foreign or French.
Clearly borrowed from the Trump playbook of staying at the top of the news through provocation and outrage, Mr. Zemmour’s declarations have divided the French Jewish community and made the unsayable sayable. But they have not slowed the giddy rise of this smooth-talking TV star and author, with the French presidential election less than six months away. » | Roger Cohen | Monday, October 25, 2021
