Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog

PARIS — Éric Zemmour, a polarizing far-right writer and television star, announced on Tuesday that he was running for French president in elections next year, ending months of speculation over a bid that upended the race before he had even made it official.

Mr. Zemmour, 63, is a longtime conservative journalist who rose to prominence over the past decade, using prime-time television and best-selling books to expound on his view that France was in steep decline because of Islam, immigration and leftist identity politics, themes he returned to in his announcement.

“It is no longer time to reform France but to save it,” Mr. Zemmour said in a video with dramatic overtones that was published on social media, conjuring images of an idealized France and then warning about outside forces that threatened to destroy it.

He has fashioned himself as a Donald J. Trump-style provocateur lobbing politically incorrect bombs at the French elite establishment — saying, for instance, that the law should require parents to give their children “traditional” French names — and rewriting some of the worst episodes from France’s past. He has been charged with inciting racial or religious hatred several times over his comments, and twice convicted and fined.

Mr. Zemmour spoke over 1950s footage full of men in hats and vintage Citroën cars, contrasted with recent clips of crowded subways, crumbling churches, burning cars and violent clashes with the police.

“You feel like a foreigner in your own country,” Mr. Zemmour said, reading from notes at a desk in front of old bookshelves in a way that seemed intent on replicating Charles de Gaulle’s posture when he issued a call to arms against Nazi Germany from London in June 1940.

Mr. Zemmour said he was running “to prevent our children and our grandchildren from experiencing barbarity, to prevent our daughters from being veiled and our sons from being subdued.”

He accused elites — journalists, politicians, judges, European technocrats — of failing France, which he said was represented by a long list of illustrious men and women, including Joan of Arc, Louis XIV and Napoleon.

“We will not be replaced,” added Mr. Zemmour, who has espoused the theory of a “great replacement” of white people in France by Muslim immigrants.

Oh, he’s also bigger on Russians than Americans. Which seems strange for a Bonapartist, given that whole “invasion of Russia” thing.

Given the notorious unreliability of our media in reporting on any figure considered even mildly right of center, it’s hard to tell whether Zemmour is indeed a radical extremist, a conservative populist, or something in-between. We’ll find out if he’s a real Bonapartist if he invades Germany and crowns himself Emperor. As a pre-TDS National Review once said about Jean Le Pen, “we have no frog in this fight.”

Minutes before President Tayyip Erdogan delivered a speech renouncing high interest rates once again, the Turkish central bank said it was selling dollars to support the lira. The bank has $25 billion of net reserves as of November, down from $28 billion the month before. But that includes another $48 billion of swaps from local banks, without which reserves are firmly in negative territory.

It’s a flawed bid to support Erdogan’s ultra-loose monetary policy, which has caused the lira to fall more than 40% versus the dollar this year. Propping up the currency might slow Turkey’s descent into hyperinflation, but the country’s pot of dollars risks running out. The bank sold some $128 billion to steady the lira in 2019-2020 and still had to hike rates. When net reserves were at $28 billion in August 2020, it took just five months to run them down to $11 billion – the lowest since at least 2003. The lower reserves fall, the more likely another depreciation becomes.

I’m not an international economic expert, but usually you raise interest rates to stem inflation. The timeless meme protocols call for posting this:

Erdogan even sacked the finance minister who disagreed with this strategy. I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that this doesn’t end well for the Turkish people.

Iranian border guards clashed with Taliban forces along the Iran-Afghanistan border on Wednesday after the Taliban opened fire on Iranian farmers, according to reports.

Local journalist Reza Khaasteh shared unverified video of the scene on Twitter, which appeared to show Iranian soldiers using heavy artillery to push back against the Taliban militants.

Khaasteh tweeted that the Taliban managed to capture several Iranian border posts; however, other reports citing unnamed sources claimed that was false.

OK, the Mullahs and the Taliban is maybe less of a “worry” story and more of a “sit back and watch the fireworks” one…