Éric Zemmour is a French writer, former journalist and politician who founded the far-right party Reconquête in 2021 and is its president. Born in 1958 in Montreuil, he worked as a political journalist at Le Quotidien de Paris and Le Figaro, then became a widely followed radio and television commentator on outlets including RTL, Paris Première and CNews. He has written several best-selling essays, among them Le Suicide français (2014). He ran for president in 2022 and finished fourth in the first round with 7.07 percent of the vote. He has been prosecuted many times over his public remarks and has been convicted of offenses including racial insult and incitement to hatred.
We have documented 1 statement by Éric Zemmour, in 1 case. Each statement below gives the quotation, its original source and a link to the full case.
Case updates
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Role at the time: President of Reconquête and presidential candidate, interviewed on TF1's Le 20H
Defended or excused
Response to this claim
Éric Zemmour's convictions for racial insult and incitement to hatred are for opinion offenses, not racism, under a law that lets judges restrict freedom of expression.
“I am the victim of judicial harassment ... This is not racism, it has nothing to do with it. That is how judges interpret a freedom-killing law that I will abolish if I am president, because it allows judges to ban freedom of expression (Translated from French. Original: Je suis victime d'un harcèlement judiciaire ... Ce n'est pas du racisme, ça n'a rien à voir. Les juges interprètent ainsi une loi liberticide que j'abolirai si je suis président, parce que ça permet aux juges d'interdire la liberté d'expression)”
Read the original post (opens in a new tab)TF1Info's clip of Gilles Bouleau questioning Éric Zemmour about his convictions on Le 20HPost on X, November 10, 2026, 9:45 p.m. CET, with a 1 minute 52 second excerpt of TF1's Le 20H
Why we used this label
The reference point is the remarks for which French courts have definitively convicted Éric Zemmour of racial insult and incitement to hatred. Zemmour says the remarks are not racism, calls his convictions an opinion offense and pledges to abolish the law under which judges punished them. Because he goes beyond rejecting the racism label and presents the remarks as acceptable speech that the law should not punish, this is a defense of the remarks rather than only a dispute over how they are described.
Announcing his 2027 presidential run on TF1, Éric Zemmour said his convictions for racial insult and incitement to hatred were for an opinion offense under a law he would abolish. Anchor Gilles Bouleau answered that racism is not an opinion.
