US embassy warns citizens to avoid Paris rally of far-right candidate Zemmour

The United States embassy in Paris has warned its citizens to avoid the area where far-right presidential candidate Eric Zemmour is holding his first political rally on Sunday. This comes amid fears the event could be marred by clashes with counter-demonstrators.

The meeting at an exhibition centre in Villepinte north of Paris, comes five days after he finally declared himself a candidate with a campaign video loaded with anti-immigrant rhetoric and warnings about a grim future.

On Saturday, his team unveiled the campaign's official slogan: "Impossible is not French", a quote attributed to Napoleon.

Zemmour, a 63-year-old writer and political commentator on television, is counting on a strong turn-out Sunday to show he is a credible contender to unseat President Emmanuel Macron.

He has been working hard to outflank veteran far-right leader Marine Le Pen.

And as the right-wing Republicans chose moderate Valerie Pecresse as their presidential candidate Saturday, he got to work wooing those among its members who had backed a more hardline leader.

In an open letter to supporters of the Republicans' defeated second-round candidate Eric Ciotti, he invited them to join him at Sunday's rally.

"We are so close and have so much in common," he wrote.

Change of venue
Olivier Ubeda, a senior member of Zemmour's team, said 19,000 people had already signed up for Sunday's meeting, which had originally been scheduled to take place at a major Paris venue.

It was moved to an exhibition centre north of the capital due to what he said was the surge in interest for Zemmour but also, he said, for security reasons. A counter-demonstration has been announced in Paris for Sunday.

A group of around 50 associations, trade union groups and political parties, called for the protest against Zemmour -- who has been convicted for inciting racial hatred, and whose platform is anti-Islam and anti-immigration.

Far-left leader and presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon has also organised a rally for his supporters in Paris' La Défense business district on Sunday.

Police expect several thousand protesters to attend the Paris demonstration against Zemmour, and a few hundred far-left activists at Villepinte, where they fear clashes with Zemmour's supporters.

The American Embassy in Paris issued a demonstration alert on its website and on social media, asking its citizens to "keep a low profile" and avoid certain areas in the north of Paris on Sunday due to the potential presence of Antifa (far-left, anti-fascist and anti-racist) groups.

Stephane Troussel, the socialist president of the Seine-Saint-Denis region that covers Villepinte, has launched a petition to try to convince the conference centre's owners to cancel Zemmour's meeting.

Noting Zemmour's convictions in an opinion piece for the French weekly Journal du Dimanche, Troussel wrote: "The Republic is not a neutral regime. Racism is not an opinion but a crime."

Campaign video criticised
Zemmour waited several months before officially declaring his candidacy last week, running a kind of virtual campaign as he toured the country promoting his latest book.

While in September and October, he performed strongly in opinion polls, he has since appeared to lose momentum.

When on Tuesday he finally confirmed he was running, the accompanying campaign video was criticised across the political spectrum. Several media organisations also threatened legal action for footage used without their consent.

• French media slams election firebrand Zemmour over unauthorised use of images

And after a grilling on TF1's television's flagship news programme the same evening, he accused journalist Gilles Bouleau of "intellectual fraud" for having quoted his books "out of context".

The clash was just the latest in a series of setbacks for Zemmour's campaign.

A British charity cancelled an event he had planned in London. In Geneva, several hundred protesters turned out when he appeared there.

At home, he also encountered a hostile reception in the French Mediterranean port of Marseille last week, where demonstrators forced him to change his schedule.

Photographs of an exchange of obscene gestures there with one protester did little to improve his image.

(with AFP)