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Politics

An Online Army Is Drumming Up Support for a French Extremist

The buzz surrounding Eric Zemmour may have been created by fake accounts, but they’ve started drawing in plenty of real voters.

A torn poster of Eric Zemmour in Paris. 

A torn poster of Eric Zemmour in Paris. 

Photographer: Joel Saget/AFP/Getty Images

Ultra-conservative pundit Eric Zemmour has been a fascination in certain far-right circles for at least a decade, but this year he has been elevated to a kind of cult status among French-language Facebook groups, Twitter discussions and other online spaces.

As he keeps voters guessing about whether he’ll fight President Emmanuel Macron for his job in the April election, a whole online ecosystem has been built around the best-selling author and television star on France’s answer to Fox News.