Éric Zemmour
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In his recently published essay, La messe n’est pas dite (The Mass Is Not Over), Éric Zemmour positions himself as a defender of France’s Christian—and especially Catholic—identity. Since its release, it has set off a flurry of controversies and stirred up heated public debate.
The book complements the reflections the polemicist began with the 2014 publication of Le Suicide français (The French Suicide), in which he analysed the causes of France’s malaise with depth and rare accuracy, followed in 2021 by La France n’a pas dit son dernier mot (France Has Not Said Its Last Word)—a programmatic work intended to accompany his entry into the 2022 presidential election race.
The political experience was bittersweet for him. While the journalist could boast of great success in terms of media virality, this did not translate into votes. The European and then legislative elections in 2024 confirmed this difficult-to-deny observation: the man, a formidable debater on television and an unrivalled analyst of the shortcomings of French political life, clearly does not have the makings or the temperament of a leader. It is in writing that he excels, which is why the publication of a new work from his pen can only be welcome.
Zemmour’s latest publication is entitled La messe n’est pas dite (The Mass is not over)—an expression to be taken both literally and figuratively. It deals with religion, specifically Catholicism. But that’s not all: in French, the expression “la messe n’est pas dite” means that the fight is not over, or that the matter is not yet settled. The implication is that the defeat of conservatism is not yet a foregone conclusion.
Zemmour has always been a thorn in the side of the French Right and beyond. With this latest publication, things are not changing much, and tongues are wagging to destroy or praise the master’s reflections.
The subtitle of the booklet provides one of the keys to understanding it and gives rise to controversy: “for a Judeo-Christian revival.” Zemmour is probably the most perfect embodiment of this concept of ‘Judeo-Christianity’: born into a Jewish family, he practises the rites of his ancestors out of cultural loyalty if not out of faith—which does not prevent him from being steeped in Christian culture and proud of it.
Within the French right wing and the many factions that comprise it, this idea of ‘Judeo-Christianity’ is not self-evident. Defending Christian roots is something obvious, both for France and for Europe. The Greco-Roman heritage is proudly claimed: we are the heirs of the Athenian democracy accomplished in the res publica and Roman law. But Judeo-Christianity is not unanimously accepted. For some, as emphasised by the intellectuals gravitating around the Institut Iliade, Europe existed before Christianity, and its ethno-cultural substratum has nothing in common with that of Judaism. Is not the very notion of ‘Judeo-Christianity’ a very recent political construct? It would never have occurred to the very Christian kings who, for more than a thousand years, shaped France to define themselves as ‘Judeo-Christians.’ Finally, the history of Christianity is one of rupture: the message of the Gospel puts an end, by definition, to the privilege of the chosen people. For all these reasons, Zemmour’s attachment to Judeo-Christianity causes discomfort among some on the Right, who believe that his thinking is not universal but remains dependent on his belonging to the Jewish community.
But it is when he goes into detail about his vision of Christianity, and especially Catholicism, that Zemmour raises the most questions and controversy. In his book, he develops the idea of a substantial opposition between the Christianity of Saint Peter and that of Saint Paul. He writes: “The followers of Jesus then divided into two camps, which became increasingly irreconcilable: those who, around his brother James or Peter, worshipped Jesus as the greatest of the prophets, but Jewish prophets, while continuing to respect the legal obligations of the religion of their fathers; and the others, following in the footsteps of Paul, who believed that Jesus was a divine revelation that rendered everything that had preceded him, even the Law, obsolete, and who threw these practical constraints overboard to embrace faith in Jesus alone.”
Zemmour is not a theologian; he is not even a believer. It is therefore difficult to fault him for his analyses: with all the approximations and inaccuracies they contain, they are ultimately his alone.
This initial distinction between the Christianity of Peter and the Christianity of Paul leads him to take sides with Peter against Paul. To put it briefly, he sees Peter as the father of the defence of identity, while Paul is on the side of cosmopolitan universalism. In doing so, he creates a division fraught with misunderstanding: he ends up drastically separating identity and faith.
In terms of culture and political heritage, Zemmour claims to follow two main models: Napoleon Bonaparte and General de Gaulle. Napoleon is the one who, after the turmoil of the Revolution and its destructive desire to eradicate Catholicism from France, put religion back at the helm. “A society without religion is like a ship without a compass,” the First Consul and Emperor of the French liked to say, in an aphorism that Zemmour could make his own. Faith has little to do with it. In doing so, Zemmour, following in his footsteps, ends up making faith a private matter, which is the great misunderstanding and mistake of modern times. Faith is also a public matter; to omit it leads to the greatest tragedies of our society, which ends up rejecting all morality and transcendence in its choices.
From this point of view, there is a great temptation to bring Zemmour to trial for something that is well known in French political thought: Maurrassism. The monarchist Charles Maurras, a leading figure in the Action Française movement and himself an agnostic, argued that the great work of restoring the French nation could not be achieved without the backbone of Catholicism. This idea led to the movement he had created and its members being excommunicated, so strong was the temptation of utilitarianism in the eyes of the pope: Catholicism perceived as a tool in the service of a political project, devoid of any spiritual attributes and stripped of its essence, the conversion of souls. Zemmour is said to be one of the avatars of Charles Maurras today, using the Catholic faith as a social and identity-building force disconnected from religious and spiritual experience.
This accusation is somewhat simplistic. Zemmour’s arguments reveal a passion, almost an incandescence, in his admiration for Catholic culture that cannot leave one indifferent. If Zemmour bows down before the beacons of a French culture steeped in faith, that of Boileau, Fénelon, Pascal, Chateaubriand, Huysmans, Claudel and so many others, it is not merely a tactical and political calculation. He has understood what so many French Catholics themselves have forgotten today: that there are unique treasures in the French soul that give it a mission to accomplish in the eyes of the world that only it can accomplish.
Some commentators have understood this and pay tribute to Zemmour for his ability to restore pride in identity, which Catholics, under pressure from the good conscience distilled in Brussels by the European Union or in New York by the United Nations, have a tendency to write off a little too easily. National identity is not a dirty word. It is the first of the incarnations. Christianity is, in fact, a religion of incarnation. “Our homeland is our villages, our altars, our tombs, everything our fathers loved before us. Our homeland is our faith, our land, our King… But what is their homeland? For them, the homeland seems to be only an idea; for us, it is a land. They have it in their brains; we have it under our feet…,” said the counter-revolutionary Charette in more than eloquent words.
Abbé Clément Barré, well known to French Catholics through his presence on social media, invites Christians in an op-ed published in the newspaper La Croix not to deny the identity dimension of Christianity. Zemmour is faced with a situation that Maurras did not know: the pressure, on French soil, exerted by growing populations defending another religion, Islam. He sees the Catholic faith as one of the essential weapons in the fight against inexorable demographic change. And he is not wrong. “Whether we like it or not, this need for Christian identity, its place in society and its relationship to Islam are questions that many Christians today, especially the younger ones, are asking,” notes Father Barré. In line with the analyses of many sociologists and historians (Guillaume Cuchet, Yann Raison du Cleuziou, Jérôme Fourquet), Father Barré acknowledges the transition from the once-dominant Catholicism to a minority position. And the members of this minority no longer want to practise the strategy of concealment: asserting a visible identity, made up of ostentatious signs, a ‘counter-model’ or a ‘counter-narrative’ makes it possible to resist erasure. This is, moreover, a limitation of Zemmour’s discourse: this need for affirmation should not only be felt in relation to Islam. Atheism and the breakdown of moral standards in favour of a society that destroys the natural order and the hierarchies intended by the Creator also call for a determined and confident response, fuelled by ardent faith. In the face of this deadly offensive, the cultural forms of Catholicism, however beautiful they may be, will unfortunately not be enough.
Once you have closed Zemmour’s book, you find yourself thinking two things: the man is definitely a fine writer, and the best we can wish for him is that he converts!
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