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[The American Conservative] Éric Zemmour and the Algerian Question
The right-wing candidate is more than just nostalgic for France’s 132-year presence in Algeria.
"I have been twice colonized,” intoned Éric Justin Léon Zemmour at a book launch for his 2018 bestseller French Destiny, hosted by Les Éveilleurs, a conservative media network. “First, by the conquering Arabs, then by France…My ancestors took refuge up in the mountains to avoid being forcibly converted to Islam,” he went on to say of his Berber roots, potentially tracing his ancestry back to the Maghreb’s pre-Islamic age. France, instead, “gave me liberty and emancipation,” he had loftily proclaimed in an earlier interview to iTélé from April 2014. “I am the blessed fruit of colonization.” At this stage of France’s presidential campaign, Zemmour’s background as an Algerian Jew of Berber stock should be widely known. But is it really?
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