Brexit is done and U.S. voters have fired Donald Trump, but the neo-nationalist uprising that gave rise to both continues to shake up transatlantic politics. No country has seen its traditional political order more thoroughly fractured than France.
President Emmanuel Macron, who is running for reelection next spring, leads a centrist party he created in a tour de force of political improvisation after leaving the Socialist Party shortly before his 2017 election. Long France’s leading party of the left, the Socialists have been decimated. Their presidential candidate, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, barely registers in the polls with about 4 percent support.
The wild card in the race is Eric Zemmour, a political neophyte many observers are calling the French Trump. He is a writer and television pundit whose best-selling book, “Le Suicide Francais,” contends that immigration, globalization and a fast-growing Muslim minority represent fundamental threats to French values and culture.
