Between them, the candidate of the RN and that of Reconquest!

weigh about 30% of voting intentions two months before the first round, and can all the better install their favorite themes in the campaign, such as the fight against immigration.

On January 8, in Sables-d'Olonne (Vendée) alongside Eric Zemmour to defend a statue of Saint-Michel and "Christian traditions", Patrick Buisson, former adviser to Nicolas Sarkozy, noted the "advantages of the multiplicity candidacies" Zemmour and Le Pen.

Presidential candidate Eric Zemmour (C) with Patrick Buisson (G) and Philippe de Villiers, in front of the Saint-Michel statue in Les Sables-d'Olonne, in Vendée Sebastien SALOM-GOMIS AFP / Archives

This will "contribute to ideological progress", "we can clearly see what is moving, it is not favorable to the left, to wokism, to progressivism", he rejoiced with the far-right site Boulevard Voltaire.

Far-right activists have long taken up Antonio Gramsci's concept of "cultural hegemony", which they quote at will.

Ideological victory - by imposing one's ideas in the public space - would precede political success, they believe, drawing inspiration from the Italian communist thinker.

"The left is everywhere"

"I am convinced of the reality of the cultural struggle", testifies Hippolyte Verac, a young supporter of Eric Zemmour who is working to popularize his candidate with students from large schools, including his own, ESCP.

"For 50 years, the left has been everywhere: at school, in the arts, especially in the media," he considers.

"There is an awareness and the desire to have right-wing personalities, for example among journalists. For that, you have to be in decision-making positions to have an impact on society", estimates this student, who leads the group "the great schools with Zemmour" .

Eric Zemmour has publicized the theory of the "great replacement" of European populations by non-European immigrants, a relatively confidential conspiracy thesis so far, defended by the sulphurous writer Renaud Camus and that Marine Le Pen does not take up as is.

The writer Renaud Camus, at the origin of the theory of the "great replacement", during a photo session carried out on December 9, 2021 in Paris JOEL SAGET AFP / Archives

In mid-January, in front of the press, the candidate Reconquête!

was pleased to have "imposed its themes" in the campaign, by weighing for example on the speech of the primary LR, very focused on immigration and security.

According to sociologist Erwan Lecoeur, Eric Zemmour's strategy is to make sayable "things that could not be said ten years ago, such as the great replacement" or the association between "Islam and Islamism".

In discourse theory, this is called "the opening of the Overton window" (the name of the inventor of this concept), he explained on France Info: integrating new themes into this which is considered acceptable by public opinion.

"Metapolitics"

Several people close to the candidate have been hammering home for years the importance of this "cultural battle" and of "metapolitics", in particular the ex-megretist Jean-Yves Le Gallou, a former member of the Club de l'Horloge who, from the 1970s and 80, chained conferences to defend concepts such as "national preference".

Supporters of Eric Zemmour are delighted today to obtain more media coverage, citing the CNews channel where the former polemicist chronicled, or the program "Touche pas à mon poste!", on C8, two channels whose main shareholder is Vincent Bolloré.

The host "Cyril Hanouna sometimes says a little too much what he thinks, but at least gives him the floor to everyone", recently told the former identity Damien Rieu to two young activists, during a trip to Menton (Alpes-Maritimes).

On the side of the RN, Marine Le Pen often evokes her "ideological victory" over immigration, which is increasingly present in the political debate.

It is "a tribute, in a way, to our analytical skills and our forecasting skills", she judged in 2020.

RN candidate for the French presidential election Marine Le Pen (D) with ultra-conservative Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban on December 4, 2021 in Warsaw Wojtek RADWANSKI AFP / Archives

Saturday in Reims, she highlighted the support of the ultra-conservative Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, also pampered by his rival Eric Zemmour.

Orban hailed the RN candidate "a great experienced warrior" and reiterated that he "did not want to let LGBT+ activists enter schools".

A theme that Eric Zemmour also regularly calls upon.

© 2022 AFP