Former French Presidential Candidate Zemmour Fined 10K for World War Two Comments

Former French presidential candidate Éric Zemmour has been sentenced to pay a 10,000 euro fine after being convicted over comments he made concerning the Holocaust.

After previous acquittals were overturned, the Paris Court of Appeal found this week Reconquête! (Reconquest) party leader and Éric Zemmour had engaged in ‘denial of crimes against humanity’ and ordered the French polemicist to pay a 10,000 euro ($11,000) fine for his historical claims that the government of Vichy France had sought to protect French Jews from Nazi death camps during the Second World War, Le Figaro reported.

Zemmour first made the claim in his 2014 essay ‘The French Suicide’ and repeated the arguments during a nationally televised debate in 2019 on broadcaster CNews. Zemmour argued that Marshal Philippe Pétain, who led the collaborationist regime during the Nazi occupation of the country, had acted as a “savior” for French Jews by focussing on the deportation of foreign Jews to concentration camps in Germany rather than those born in France.

The claims sparked major controversy in France, with Zemmour’s own Jewish heritage cited as a factor. His argument has also been widely contested, with French historians testifying during his trial that of the 78,000 Jews sent to their deaths in concentration camps by the Pétain rump state, at least 24,000 were French Jews.

The former presidential candidate argued he was not attempting to defend Marshal Pétain or the Nazi-controlled Vichy state and that his claims did not dispute that “Jews were exterminated by Germans” during World War II and thus should not be considered a denial of crimes against humanity.

Unlike the United States, where the First Amendment protects such claims, many European nations, including France, have laws against Holocaust denial. The speech restrictions have previously been used against other top figures on the political right in France, including the former leader of the National Front, Jean-Marie Le Pen.

Le Pen was convicted in 2012 of claiming that the Vichy regime in France was not “particularly inhumane” and later in 2016 for claiming that Nazi gas chambers were a “detail” of the Second World War. The controversy ultimately led to his expulsion from the party, after which his daughter Marine Le Pen took over the party and rebranded it as the National Rally.

The ruling against Zemmour came just days after a separate court sentenced Marine Le Pen to a five-year election ban over alleged embezzlement of EU funds, a decision that has faced accusations of having been politically motivated to block the populist politician from standing in the 2027 presidential election, which she currently stands as the clear frontrunner.

Like Le Pen, whom he stood against in the 2022 presidential election, Zemmour has vowed to appeal the decision against him this week, arguing that the debate on Vichy France should be settled by historians rather than the justice system.

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