France’s Trump Is Imploding

The UnPopulist: “Until Zemmour’s presidential campaign was derailed in February by the political fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he was not only starting to unite France’s far-right and center-right, but bidding fair to do so under a nativist platform and his own personal leadership. Zemmour appeared, as author [Fredrik] Segerfeldt puts it, to be Trumpifying the French right.”

“This would have been the political equivalent of drawing to an inside straight, but as Segerfeldt observes, Zemmour’s success might well have triggered similar right-wing fusions throughout Western Europe. Zemmour’s surprising rise, though checked, may prove a harbinger of the future.”