Exclusive video interview with Eric Zemmour: "hunters are great ecologists" the weekly newsletter of CHASSONS.COM

After meeting Michel Barnier, Philippe Juvin and in the continuity of our meetings with the candidates for the 2022 presidential election, Eric Zemmour, "undeclared candidate" accepted our invitation. The latter wanted to meet us outside Paris, near the forest of Marly-Le-Roi. Role of hunters in the wild, traditional hunts, dogmatic approach of the left on this theme, Eric Zemmour spoke with us with an open heart!

Eric Zemmour, why did you choose Marly-Le-Roi to talk to us about hunting?Marly is for me a literary memory, I am madly in love with the Memoirs of Saint-Simon which I have read from the first to the last line. I have an affectionate memory since it was my mother who gave me the beautiful editions of the Pléiade (this book is the story of the reign of Louis XIV at the court of Versailles). It happened regularly to the latter to say: "today, let's go hunting in Marly". There was a revolution of people who dreamed of being invited.

Marly, you know it's the myth of Louis XIV deciding in the morning a little as if we were saying today, "we're going to have a coffee", "let's go hunting". This place is therefore linked to Saint-Simon, to Louis XIV, a kind of French way of life mixing the most extreme refinement with hunting and nature. There is not this dichotomy that there is in our somewhat sketchy modern minds. They mixed the two.

But precisely, what image do you have of the world of hunting and hunters? You have understood that my image is primarily literary, I am not a hunter, I am a city rat, not really a field mouse, I'm not going to put on costumes that would fit me too big. I spoke to you about Saint-Simon, I can speak to you again about the Glory of My Father, I see Pagnol's book again, with little Pagnol who goes hunting with his father and his uncle who is vain as it is not allowed which recounts all his so-called hunting exploits. You see, hunting is what it starts with. And then, in fact, as for me, literature is life, in fact, what is hunting?

It's not just shooting animals, it's incidental, well, it seems to me. I am not a professional hunter, I will not speak for them. But what seems important to me, conviviality, is the hunt, it's seeing your friends in the morning, leaving early, laughing, discussing, transmitting, taking your son, his grandson, the Glory of My Father in short . It is for me the very French fraternal conviviality and this anchoring of nature.

You talk about transmission, 5 years ago, we interviewed Yannick Jadot on the subject of hunting, he told us about his grandfather. He had told us that hunting was his grandfather's favorite pastime on the weekends and yet ten days ago, in an about face, he proposed to ban hunting on weekends and during school holidays. You know Yannick Jadot has a big problem, he won the Primary very narrowly against Sandrine Rousseau, so he will be forced to defend his ex-opponent's program. It's a partisan classic, I was a political journalist for years. I pity him because he will have to say the opposite of what he really thinks.

It is in any case stupid, as if the hunters were only retired and unemployed and did not work, even though 65% of hunters are active. In truth, banning hunting on weekends, hunting is prohibited.

Do you think that hunters have an important role to play for nature? They are for me the major defenders of nature. They monitor the condition of the places where they walk, monitor the paths. And let's be cynical for a moment. Hunters want game. For there to be game, there has to be. They have every interest in protecting biodiversity, the wealth of this nature. This is the opposite of what environmentalists say. I would say that hunters are great ecologists, they are the ones who manage nature on a day-to-day basis, like breeders, farmers, all those enemies of ecologists.

Hunters are said to be ecologists, but ecologists are not, of course, but neither is part of the political class. We talked a lot about traditional hunts, it was said of President Macron that he cajoled the hunters in the direction of the hair. However, the latter has put in place two ministers for Ecological Transition who are particularly anti-hunting. What do traditional hunts and Emmanuel Macron's "at the same time" posture evoke for you? First, to tell you about Emmanuel Macron's "at the same time", it applies to all the domains. It was taken at first as the mark of a somewhat subtle mind that can understand that a subject does not have a single solution and that can have nuances, I can understand intellectually. It has become the pretext for permanent inaction and procrastination.

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When it comes to traditional hunts, even I got caught. I'm telling you this because I've discussed it with hunters and I understand how people get indoctrinated on all subjects. For the subjects that I know well, I don't get fooled, but for the subjects that I don't know, like that of traditional hunts, we hear the media noise, "we say to ourselves, it's cruel and stupidly we repeat it is cruel”. So I thought the famous slime hunt was cruel.

They explained to me, it's stupid, in truth, there's nothing cruel about it, it's a traditional, archaic hunt that is the product of human inventiveness. Caught birds are systematically released, it is a bait, they are released, it has existed for thousands of years. Environmentalists are very strong, they are leftists from the 1970s, we shouldn't call them environmentalists by the way, we should call them leftists! It's the same for hunting.

We can clearly see what is behind it, we can clearly see the fantasy, we go to Marly, it is the fantasy of Louis XIV, of the aristocracy, of beautiful costumes, etc. There too, I inquired and I believe there is deer hunting, this is what we are aiming for, it is 65 crews out of 300 (in fact 35 out of 400).

Hunting, as they say, there is nothing more natural, ancient, there are no shots fired, it is the dogs running after an animal, the predator running after another predator, it's nature. In addition, to think that it was a privileged few, not at all, it's a popular show, we come as a family, we see that, and I believe that one in four animals is taken, this animal is tired, sick, it's natural selection. Besides, it seems to me that Tony Blair in England, who had banned it, regretted it.

It’s a nice popular show. Hunting is very interesting, it is very revealing of what has become of the left. We must not forget that hunting is the first claim of the French Revolution. In the notebooks general, precisely in 1789, in the notebooks of grievances, people say we want to hunt like the aristocrats. The first claim of 1789 is the right to hunt for all, it is deeply revolutionary and republican. On school, homeland, assimilation, the left takes the opposite view of these revolutionary and republican ancestors.

Another subject is debated in France, it is the problem of the wolf. There are more and more wolves, the breeders do not feel helped, what would you like to do for the breeders? It seems to me that to reintroduce the wolf in France, why not? But breeders must be allowed to manage this proliferation of wolves. Breeders should be privileged. This is the problem of contemporary ecology, it wants to deny man, it's the whole development of vegan, animalist theories, etc... We have the impression that man must be rid of the planet, it's is their unconscious goal, in any case, unsaid, it's terrifying. The wolf, why not, the breeder first.

You told us that you were surrounded by hunters, you listened to them, what did they tell you about the wishes they had for their passion?They explained to me that hunting had evolved a lot. The hunting license is much more demanding, people are more and more serious, accidents have decreased considerably. I think there are ten fatal accidents a year, that's not even a car day! We could imitate certain practices and make more use of the product of hunting in short circuits, as in certain Scandinavian countries.

European models that actually work?Exactly. We can always improve but we must stop devoting ourselves to slander. It is in a global framework, the greens are at the forefront of this fight there but the whole camp which claims to be progressive is in the same bag. They want to destroy all French and popular traditions. There is a contempt for the people, a hatred of France which shines through in all these actions. I remind you of the nonsense of the green mayors who criticized the Tour de France, the Christmas tree. You see, we took it for folklore, it's nonsense, it reveals their mentalities. They hate everything the people love.

Precisely, this is the theme of our last question. For several years, hunters, fishermen, butchers, people who eat meat, have been attacked by antispecies currents that have foreign funding. What is your approach to these currents?Philosophically, these people are to be fought, they are the enemies of humanity. They want to eradicate humanity. Their enemies are humans. We can very well be sensitive to animal suffering, but here we are in the anti-species ideology which considers that the animal is a man like any other. No, he is not a man like any other because he does not care about our fate, whereas we care about our fate. There are no colloquies of animals on the fate of men.

Moreover, politically and economically, these militants are often violent, which is absolutely scandalous. It is the useful idiots, even the agents of the chemists who finance the synthetic meat, so it is not a coincidence. We must fight these currents in the name of our art of living.

We come back to your second question, hunting is conviviality, the table, French gastronomy. You know, when I was young, I read a famous book by Roland Barthe called Les Mythologies which described the great contemporary French myths (General de Gaulle's famous DS, the Tour de France) and it said that the French had invented a very special way of life made of conviviality around a good table in a beautiful restaurant, a truly unique French way of life that the whole world looked on with admiration.

It is this way of life that the Greens want to destroy, there is a desire to eradicate it, like the very French relations between men and women, marivaudage, gallantry, courtesy, everything that the 'we want to destroy in the name of gender theory, etc. There is a desire to destroy the French way of life, hunting is obviously the first target.