France: Far-Right Presidential Candidate Sentenced for Incitement to Hate

The far-right polemicist Eric Zemmour, candidate for the presidency of France in the April elections, he was convicted this Monday of inciting racial hatred, after statements in 2020 in which he branded unaccompanied minors as thieves, murderers and rapists.

Zemmour, fourth in the polls with 15% of voting intentions three months before the elections, became the phenomenon of the first part of the campaign, when his candidacy aroused enormous enthusiasm among circles of the extreme right, which has subsequently cooled.

Today’s is the third conviction against the former journalist and writer for the same charges.

On this occasion, the Paris Correctional Court imposed a fine of 10,000 euros on him, after some thirty humanitarian associations denounced some words he spoke on the television program that until the end of 2020 he had on the CNews information chain, owned by the billionaire Vincent Bolloré.

Absent from the court, as he did last November during the oral hearing, Zemmour issued a statement in which he showed his intention to appeal and accused the judges of “giving in to the whims” of humanitarian associations.

“It is an ideological and stupid sentence,” said the intellectual, who denounced a sentence “on a free spirit imposed by a judicial system invaded by ideologies.”

Speaking to the press, Zemmour considered it ridiculous that he is convicted of racial hatred “when unaccompanied minors are not a race.” In addition, he assured that they are “responsible for 96% of mobile thefts in France.”

“I think most of them are not minors, nor are they isolated: they are sent by their parents to steal,” he said.

After an attack against the old Charlie Hebdo newsroom in September 2020, Zemmour charged against unaccompanied minors: “they have nothing to do here, they are thieves, murderers, rapists, that is all they are. They must be expelled, they should not even come, it is a permanent invasion, there is a political problem with immigration”.

These types of controversial statements have occupied a large part of his public interventions since he announced his candidacy for the presidential elections at the end of last year.

After several weeks in which his options of overcoming the first round were even considered, in recent days the polls place him in fourth position, behind the current president, Emmanuel Macron, who leads the polls with more than 20% of the votes. votes, and the far-right Marine Le Pen and the conservative Valérie Pécresse, who tie with 16%.

Zemmour has been accused on a dozen occasions of inciting racial hatred, a crime for which he has been convicted twice.

Next Thursday he will be tried again on appeal after having been acquitted in the first instance for denying crimes against humanity, after having argued in his CNews program in 2019 that Marshal Petain, who collaborated with the Nazi regime during World War II , “saved” French Jews.

In France, the denial of crimes against humanity linked to the Holocaust is a crime.

In addition, on the 27th he must appear due to the complaint of several filmmakers who accuse him of having used his images without permission for the video in which he announced his candidacy for the presidency.

Zemmour accused the rest of the political class of wanting to “frighten him with Justice” because he is the “only one who denounces the situation of invasion” that France is experiencing.