French candidate makes taboo term his mantra

Paris: Two words, taboo for many in France because they evoke a conspiracy theory embraced by white supremacists, have been haunting the French presidential campaign.

“Great replacement” rolls off the tongue of presidential candidate Eric Zemmour, an outsider with views to the right of the far-right who has made the term the underpinning of his campaign. But when mainstream conservative presidential candidate Valerie Pecresse pronounced them at her first major rally last weekend, politicians and pundits screamed foul, saying she had crossed a red line.

The ”great replacement” is the false claim that the native populations of France and other Western countries are being overrun by non-white immigrants — notably Muslims — who are allegedly supplanting, and one day will erase, Christian civilization and its values.

The claim, popularized by a French author, has inspired deadly attacks in recent years from New Zealand to El Paso, Texas. “If I’m a candidate in the presidential election, it is firstly and above all to stop the ‘great replacement’ and to fight immigration,” Zemmour — whose upstart party is named Reconquest — told France 2 TV. Numerous polls place Zemmour fourth among a bevy of candidates for France’s April 10 presidential vote behind poll leader President Emmanuel Macron — who has yet to formally declare his candidacy — and slightly behind far-right candidate Marine Le Pen and Pecresse.

A presidential runoff will be held among the top two candidates on April 24 if no one wins outright. Zemmour, 63, controversial talk show pundit before entering the presidential race, has been convicted multiple times of inciting racist or religious hatred. He has, for instance, drawn ire for falsely stating that Marshall Philippe Petain, saved Jews from deportation to Nazi death camps. —AP