Kangaroos rescued from bombed Ukrainian conservation park

Feldman Ecopark in Kharkiv said some animals had been killed by Russian bombing

A kangaroo looks at the camera in Hangzhou Zoo, eastern China, in 2015. Getty

Robert Tollast
Mar 27, 2022

A mob of kangaroos has been rescued from a zoo in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Sunday.

The city, which had a prewar population of more than 1.5 million, has been under heavy Russian artillery and air bombardment since Ukraine was invaded on February 24.

The animals, from the city’s Feldman Ecopark, were driven out of the area in the back of a van.

The ministry said on Twitter that the kangaroos’ “enclosures were repeatedly shelled by Russian Armed Forces. Now kangaroos are safe.”

Oleksandra Matviichuk, a Ukrainian activist and lawyer, posted video footage of eight kangaroos being put into the back of a van.




A statement on the park’s website on Saturday said cash was urgently being raised to rescue as many animals as possible amid heavy shelling.

“We work daily to evacuate our animals from the territory of the Ecopark, but, alas, we cannot avoid tragedies,” the statement said.

“Four fallow deer and three Welsh goats became victims of another barbaric shelling. The list of victims of aggression among our pets is growing – it already includes large cats, primates, ungulates, marsupials, birds … Feldman Ecopark has been on the line of fire for a last month.”

The park describes itself as “a multilateral project that combines animal care and assistance, therapy for children with special needs, rehabilitation, research and educational facilities, as well as leisure for those who love nature”.

In pictures: Kangaroos around the world








Two kangaroos in their enclosure at the zoo in Lodz, central Poland. EPA
Updated: March 27, 2022, 9:28 AM

After Son Enlists To Fight In Ukraine, Mother Goes From Backer To Critic Of Putin's War

March 27, 2022
By Idel.Realities
Tony Wesolowsky

People in Kazan protest against the war in Ukraine on February 24.

Polling suggests most Russians back President Vladimir Putin's decision to invade Ukraine, and Lore counted herself among that majority.

The 55-year-old mother of two from Kazan, the capital of the Russia's Tatarstan region, said Russia was merely defending itself in remarks to RFE/RL at the beginning of March.

She said her main source of information on what Putin has described as a "special military operation," came from official state-run media, which is forbidden from describing the invasion as a "war."

Live Briefing: Russia Invades Ukraine



RFE/RL's Live Briefing gives you all of the major developments on Russia's invasion, how Kyiv is fighting back, the plight of civilians, and Western reaction. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war, click here.

Ordinary Russians can face up to 15 years in prison for questioning or contradicting the Kremlin's war narrative, with thousands detained so far by police nationwide for speaking out.

"War is horrible, but we are defending ourselves. If we didn't attack now, they would have attacked us. This is America. The West would have bombed us. Is that normal? We are only defending ourselves," Lore said, echoing much of the Kremlin's narrative that is amplified by state-run media and dominates in Russia, as nearly all independent voices have been silenced by Putin's government.

However, Lore, who requested her last name not be used for fear of official reprisals, had a radical change of heart a few weeks later once her own son Vyacheslav joined Russia's armed forces and was due to be sent off to fight in Ukraine. He was following in his father's footsteps, who, according to Lore, had once fought in Chechnya and more recently in Syria.

The Russian invasion, launched in the early hours of February 24 and described by U.S. defense officials as the largest conventional attack since World War II, has forced nearly 4 million Ukrainians to flee the country, according to UN data.

The UN says at least 1,000 civilians have died, although the actual figure is feared to be much higher.

SEE ALSO:
Escape From Mariupol: 'The Dead Were Buried In The Yards'

What Kremlin officials had hoped would be a quick military victory has turned into a nightmare, with much of its forces bogged down or even in retreat in some areas.

Russian officials, including Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, have said since the beginning of Russia's invasion of Ukraine on February 24 that the goal of the wide-scale attack was to demilitarize and "de-Nazify" Ukraine and topple its democratically elected government.

Despite all attempts to take over Ukraine's main cities, including the capital, Kyiv, Russian armed forces have been unable to do so during one month of intensive fighting. Battle lines near Kyiv have remained frozen for weeks, with the two main Russian armored columns stuck northwest and east of the capital.

With its forces no longer advancing, the Russian Defense Ministry on March 25 indicated that it had scaled back its goals in Ukraine, with the focus now on taking over Ukraine's eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk, commonly known as the Donbas, parts of which came under separatist control after Russia illegally annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in 2014.

SEE ALSO:
Russian Military Official Shifts Rhetoric, Says Army Now Focusing On 'Liberation' Of Eastern Ukrainian Regions

During the last month of fighting, the Defense Ministry has only twice released figures on Russian casualties in Ukraine, the second time being on March 25, when it said 1,351 Russian servicemen had died. That number is likely much higher. A NATO official, quoted by The Washington Post on March 24, said that between 7,000 and 15,000 Russians soldiers had been killed.

Komsomolskaya pravda, a pro-Kremlin newspaper, on March 20 reported that almost 10,000 Russian troops had been killed in Ukraine, before quickly deleting the numbers and later claiming the site had been hacked.

SEE ALSO:
Pro-Kremlin Newspaper Blames 'Hackers' For Russian Military Death Toll Report

According to Lore, Vyacheslav decided to sign a military contract to serve in Ukraine on March 6.

"'I'll go and serve the motherland. I want to do this,' is all he said," Lore recounted, adding that her 30-year-old son, who had served a year in the Russian Airborne Forces, was leaving behind a wife and a newborn child in Kazan to go fight in Ukraine.

"I told him that only thugs and mercenaries were being sent to fight," Lore said, expressing fear her son was unprepared for what awaited him despite his military service.

"Well, he sat in the forest for a year in a military uniform, jumped [from a plane] with a parachute, and twice they let him use an old machine gun. F**k, what is he doing with such training in a war?"

Army conscripts receive their uniforms at the Yegorshino regional assembly station before departing for service with the Russian military in April 2021.

Lore suspects it was less patriotic fervor but rather economic necessity that prompted her son and others like him to sign up, lured by the relatively generous financial benefits.

"50,000 rubles ($505) is the pay; then you can get a mortgage, and the wounded can get up to about 3 million ($30,300)," Lore explained, adding that local job prospects with Russia facing unprecedented Western sanctions for its aggression in Ukraine were especially bleak.

"A lot of my friends have headed off to the war because they couldn't find work. There are no jobs here and prices have risen; there's simply nothing to live on."

"And my fool lost his job too and is eagerly going off to war in order to somehow survive," Lore continued. "After all, he needs to support a child and there are no maternity leave payments. Because of the hard times, there were fights; he was also arguing with his wife. So, a 30-year-old guy voluntarily wants to go to war; just running away from everyday life."

The dead bodies of Russian soldiers are seen in military vehicle on a road in the town of Bucha, close to the capital, Kyiv.

At the time of interview, published on March 24, Lore said her son had not left yet for Ukraine, but worried whether he would return alive or seriously wounded once he did deploy.

"They're bringing back lots of them. Some of them don't have legs, some don't have arms. Basically, these are fresh contract soldiers -- that is, guys who just joined the military before leaving for Ukraine. They are young, many who've just graduated," she said. Lore was recounting what she had been told by a friend who works at a military hospital in Rostov, near the border with Ukraine and where many of Russia's wounded are reportedly brought.

Once a believer in Putin's war, Lore is now angrily anti-war as she faces the prospects of seeing her only son sent off to fight.

"How many wars have there been? How many people died? But no one remembers why our people went to fight in Chechnya, Afghanistan, or Syria," Lore said.

"How many people died in vain in a foreign land. I wish I knew what they were fighting for. But we will only know the truth in 30 years."
Written in Prague by Tony Wesolowsky based on reporting by RFE/RL's Idel.Realities

Mayor Of Town Where Chernobyl Workers Live Says Three Died In Protests Against Russian Occupation

Smoke And Gunfire In Slavutych As City Protests Against Russian Occupation

Russian forces took control of the Ukrainian town where workers at the decommissioned Chernobyl nuclear plant live and briefly detained the mayor, sparking protests in which three people died, the mayor of the town has said.

Russian forces took control of Slavutych and took Mayor Yuriy Fomichev hostage on March 26. Fomichev later told AFP by phone that he had been released.

The military administration of the Kyiv region, which covers Slavutych, announced earlier that Russian troops had entered the town and occupied the municipal hospital.

Residents took to the streets carrying a large blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flag and headed toward the hospital, the administration said. Russian forces fired into the air and threw stun grenades into the crowd, it added.

The administration shared on its Telegram account images in which dozens of people gathered around the Ukrainian flag and chanted "Glory to Ukraine."

Fomichev posted a video on Facebook later on March 26 saying that at least three people had died, without elaborating.

"We haven't yet identified all of them," he added, but said that civilians were among the dead. While they had defended their town, they were up against a larger force, he said.

There was no immediate comment from Russia about Slavutych.

The town sits just outside a safety exclusion zone around Chernobyl, site of one of the world's worst nuclear power plant accidents in 1986. Ukrainian staff have continued to manage the site even after Russian forces took control of the plant on February 24, the day that Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine.

The Chernobyl plant is located north of Kyiv and close to the Belarusian border. Its nuclear reactors are enclosed in a giant steel and concrete sarcophagus and are not operating.

Although the plant is decommissioned it needs electricity to power cooling systems for the spent nuclear-fuel-storage facility and other systems. Tons of waste at the plant must be constantly cooled to keep radiation from leaking.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) expressed "concern" earlier this week after Ukraine informed the organization of Russia's bombardment of Slavutych.

The IAEA said in a statement on March 26 that it was monitoring the situation and expressed concern about the ability of staff to rotate in and out of the plant.

With reporting by Reuters and AFP

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for CHERNOBYL 

BYE BYE BOLSONARO
Bolsonaro Launches Reelection Bid Complicated by Weak Economy

Gabriela Mello, Daniel Carvalho and Simone Iglesias 

(Bloomberg) -- Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro lashed out at recent polls showing him trailing leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in the run-up to October’s elections as he kicked off his bid for re-election on Sunday.

© Bloomberg Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil's president, center, speaks during a re-election campaign event in Brasilia, Brazil, on Sunday, March 27, 2022. Bolsonaro is seeking a second term amid growing economic challenges that will potentially determine the outcome of this year's election.

“A deceiving poll published a thousand times will not turn someone into the President of the Republic,” he told supporters during an event hosted by the Liberal Party in Brasilia, recasting the 2018 messianic discourse that drove him to power.

The right-wing leader, who’s seeking a second term amid growing economic challenges that will potentially determine the outcome of this year’s election, framed the upcoming runoff as a fight against an internal enemy.

“It’s not a fight of the left against the right, but of good against evil,” the president said at the event, which also saw Citizenship Minister Joao Roma and Science Minister Marcos Pontes affiliate with the party.

Defense Minister Walter Braga Netto, whom Bolsonaro may tap as running mate, is expected to join the party at a later date. According to Brazilian law, candidates for the October vote will only be considered official when they register with electoral authorities in August.

Bolsonaro was elected in 2018 on a conservative, anti-corruption platform that resonated with Brazilians outraged by a series of graft scandals plaguing the 13-year rule of the leftist Workers’ Party. But economic problems have returned to the forefront since then: Inflation and unemployment are both above 10% in the wake of the pandemic, the economy is expected to grow only 0.5% this year, and poverty has returned to levels last seen in 2010.

It’s a difficult economic situation that has weighed on the president’s popularity and boosted the chances of his main challenger -- Lula, the former president and leader of the Workers’ Party whom many Brazilians associate with a period of economic bonanza that was largely supported by a global commodities boom.

Lula, who was behind bars and unable to run in the 2018 election, would now receive 44% of the votes in a first-round vote, while Bolsonaro would get 26%, according to a XP/Ipespe poll published Friday. He would defeat Bolsonaro with 54% of the votes in a second round, the same poll found.

Yet Lula’s lead over Bolsonaro could shrink as the incumbent rolls out a package of social spending that will inject 165 billion reais ($34.8 billion) into the economy, on top of a program of cash handouts he’s been paying since the beginning of the year.
Old Strategy

So far Bolsonaro has insisted on a rhetoric not very different from the one that got him elected four years ago, warning voters against the threats of corruption and communism that he says Lula and the Workers’ Party represent.

While that still resonates with his most radical supporters, it does little to win the backing of poor Brazilians who have suffered the most during the Covid-19 crisis, or women who in their majority disapprove of the president’s handling of the pandemic and his often sexist remarks.

He’s been trying to plug in those gaps by considering fuel subsidies or larger cash handouts to the poor, while trying to appeal to female voters by showing up in public events accompanied by First Lady Michelle Bolsonaro.

Besides his wife, Bolsonaro was also joined at Sunday’s event by Agriculture Minister, Tereza Cristina, who took the floor before the president’s speech.

Yet he’s unlikely to depart much from his original platform, according to Deysi Cioccari, a political science professor with the Pontifical Catholic University of Sao Paulo.

“He will likely use the same strategy of 2018: talking about corruption, communism, guns,” she said. “And it works for him.”

(Updates throughout with Bolsonaro’s remarks during pre-candidacy event)

People who haven’t had Covid yet probably have no friends, a Korean doctor says

Doctor later deleted comments following backlash

A South Korean doctor has faced a backlash after suggesting people who are yet to catch Covid-19 probably do not have friends.

“The adults who have not yet been infected with Covid-19 are those who have interpersonal problems," Ma Sang-hyuk, who is vice-president of the Korean Vaccine Society, wrote on Facebook.

He reportedly deleted the 16 March post.

Cuba's most popular beach resort aims to boost tourism before high season ends

CGTN

A couple walks on a beach in Varadero, in the province of Matanzas, Cuba, on July 15, 2020. (Xinhua/Joaquin Hernandez)

Sitting on a bench in Havana's Central Park on Saturday, Italian tourist Mateo Ricci was waiting for a bus to Varadero, Cuba's most popular seaside resort.

The 32-year-old was eager to participate in the 2022 International Varadero Half Marathon, scheduled to take place on Sunday, which will involve more than 2,000 runners.

"We are not professional runners, but we want to enjoy the atmosphere," he told Xinhua. "Sports, pure air, sun, and beach are a perfect combination."

The marathon is part of the Cuban government's efforts to boost tourist activity across the country before the high season ends in April.

Located in the western province of Matanzas, about 140 km east of Havana, Varadero has seen an increase in hotel bookings over the past few months.

New construction projects in the area include a boulevard, shops, and a replica of Havana's famous Floridita bar-restaurant, which is partly inspired by late American Nobel Prize-winning writer Ernest Hemingway, a resident of Cuba for almost 20 years.

Varadero resident Maria Varona, 42, told Xinhua that the increase in tourist numbers will help revitalize the local economy amid the COVID-19 pandemic and the U.S.-led economic sanctions on the island.

"The more tourists visit the country, the better the economy will perform," she said. "Tourists bring hard currencies. Everybody is happy when they are around."

Meanwhile, Varadero's 43 hotels with 17,000 rooms are also gearing up to host Cuba's 2022 International Tourism Fair in May.

Ivis Fernandez, tourism delegate for Matanzas, said that tourists have been arriving in Varadero as expected since the start of the high season on Nov. 15 last year.

"We have seen a growth in the number of tourist arrivals from Canada, which is our main issuing market," she said. "As to Europe, we are receiving visitors from Germany, England, Spain, Belgium, Poland, and Italy, who are very familiar with this destination."

Varadero receives more than 40 percent of the international tourists arriving in Cuba, the tourism ministry said.

At present, the provincial government of Matanzas is taking steps to improve digital connectivity in Varadero as maintenance and other construction projects continue in the area.

Matanzas Governor Mario Sabines said that local authorities are working hard so that national and international tourists feel more comfortable in Varadero.

"We are committed to increasing tourism flows. If the tourism industry grows, economic activity will strengthen," he told Cuban state TV.

The Caribbean nation, which received nearly 500,000 international visitors in 2021, is projected to welcome 2.5 million vacationers this year, according to official estimates.

On Saturday, Cuba registered 957 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and one death, bringing the total number of cases to 1,086,361 and the national death toll to 8,509.

Source(s): Xinhua News Agency

MY NEPHEW JUST RETURNED FROM VACATION IN CUBA HE LOVED IT

VENCEREMOS!

FAKE CAPITALI$M
Museum raises $174,000 from auction of Nelson Mandela’s arrest-warrant NFT

By Loni Prinsloo
March 28, 2022 — 
t
A non-fungible token created from Nelson Mandela’s original arrest warrant raised 1.9 million rand ($174,000) in an auction to help fund a heritage site that documents South Africa’s struggle for democracy.

Mandela, the anti-apartheid activist who emerged from 27 years in prison to become South Africa’s first black president, was arrested in 1962 for conspiring to overthrow the white-minority government.

Nelson Mandela in 1970.CREDIT:FAIRFAX MEDIA

NFTs have soared in popularity in recent months, with caricatures of monkeys and lions commanding prices in the millions of dollars.

Sports clubs, prestige automakers and even pop stars are among those getting into the nascent trading business, which uses blockchain technology to authenticate unique ownership tokens attached to otherwise easily reproducible digital goods.

Proceeds from the sale of Mandela’s arrest warrant will go toward the Liliesleaf Museum Heritage Site, which received the original document in 2004 as a donation, said Ahren Posthumus, chief executive of Momint, the marketplace for NFTs that sold the Mandela item.

Nelson Mandela’s original arrest warrant.

Last year the museum received about $US50,000 following an auction of a NFT of a pen gun owned by fellow freedom fighter Oliver Tambo.

This helps the “museum sites stay afloat,” Posthumus said in an interview.

“They have been badly affected by the lack of tourism due to COVID. So this is a way to revitalise their flow and keep history alive.”

Mandela was released from prison in 1990 and the first multiracial election was held four years later.

The buyer of the NFT will have exclusive access to the original document at Liliesleaf Museum, Posthumus said.

“The ink is visible through the paper” of the high-definition scan, he said.

Liliesleaf farm, then on the outskirts of Johannesburg, was used as the secret headquarters of the African National Congress from 1961 and was where Mandela and other party leaders hid from authorities. Leading activists were arrested there during a raid by police in 1963.

Bored Apes Yacht Club NFT was also sold at the auction at $US310,000 said Posthumus.

Radical Robbie Burns, Peoples Poet

In Kharkiv, sandbags pile up to save Ukraine national poet’s statue

By AFP
Published March 27, 2022

Taras Shevchenko is Ukraine's national poet, the country's foremost nineteenth bard and one of the first to write in Ukrainian - 

Copyright AFP Hector RETAMAL

Hervé BAR

In Ukraine’s second city of Kharkiv — under daily Russian bombardment that has damaged or destroyed 1,000 buildings — work has begun to erect sand barricades to protect its statues.

The most symbolic of them all sits enthroned in the heart of the town centre in a vast park filled with century-old trees: Taras Shevchenko, Ukraine’s national poet, who was the country’s foremost nineteenth-century bard and one of the first to write in Ukrainian.

Since the country’s independence in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union, not a single Ukrainian city has been without its own Shevchenko Avenue or Square. The country’s largest university in Kyiv is named after him.

Workers with lifting equipment busy themselves around the imposing black cast-iron statue.

At 16 metres (52 feet) high, it is the biggest in Kharkiv since the statue of Lenin on a nearby esplanade was taken down in 1994.

“We must protect the city so that future generations know it as we have known it,” says Petro, a 72-year-old retiree sporting a leather cap and gold teeth, who is taking part in the operation.

Put up in 1935, the statue of Shevchenko is a mixture of socialist realism and baroque Stalinism, with the central character surrounded by revolutionary soldiers at his feet.

It’s an example of Ukrainian patriotism long suppressed by “brother” Russia during the Soviet era.

The sandstone plinth and the Stalinist fighters have now disappeared beneath sandbags that are already up to the poet’s waist, obscuring his conquering gait, but not yet his fierce gaze and drooping moustache.

“It seems a bullet ricocheted off his head during World War II,” says one of the council workers with a smirk.

“Back then, the city was devastated, but the centre was relatively well-preserved, not bombarded like now,” says Volodymyr.

Since the start of the Russian invasion on February 24, Kharkiv in northeast Ukraine has, along with southern Mariupol, been the most bombed Ukrainian metropolis.

From just a few kilometres (miles) away, Russian artillery has bombarded the north and east of the city daily, as well as its historic centre, targeting in particular administrative buildings.

– ‘Another 1,000 years!’ –

More than a thousand buildings have been destroyed or damaged in a city emptied of around a third of its 1.5 million inhabitants, according to local authorities.

A city of culture and history, Kharkiv has around 50 important monuments which will be protected with sandbags, according to the town hall.

“We hope that these monuments will last another thousand years!” it said.

As the protective wall surrounding the Shevchenko statue nears completion, dozens of town hall employees and volunteers turn their attention to the positioning of sandbags around the independence monument, a goddess brandishing the laurels of victory, celebrating Ukraine’s proclamation of independence on August 24, 1991.

For the moment, one can still read, engraved in the Cyrillic alphabet, the slogan that one now hears everywhere in this country at war: “Glory to Ukraine.”

“At the moment, we mainly collect branches and trees brought down by rockets. This year we will not plant anything, there will be no flowers,” says council worker Ilona Kalashnikova who normally tends the city’s green spaces.

“These sandbags are a symbol of our attachment to our city. We can rebuild destroyed houses, but not historical monuments,” she adds.

SEE 

Tuesday, January 25, 2005

Radical Robbie Burns, Peoples Poet

A'hae toast ya laddie with a wee dram.
It is Robbie Burns Day around the world.

A day to celebrate the common man, the common poet, of the common people; Robbie Burns. It's a day where we all become Scot's for a moment, drinking a wee dram of the namesake liquor in a toast to that countries greatest lover, poet and radical. Around the world there are Robbie Burns dinners and celebrations.

This unique popularity of Burns as the voice of the common people is not shared by any other poet. Other poets of the common people and their struggles, are not celebrated internationally by men and women of all nations as one of their own. As great a voice for their people as they may be.

The great Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko is known as the Robbie Burns of the Ukraine. Some would say this is idle boasting but compare this final verse from Shevchenko's poetic eulogy, Zapovit (My Testament) with the last lines of Burns immortal; Scots Whae Hae, they both ring with eternal truth, that stirs the heart and brings a lump to the throat. A clarion call to revolution, and the fight for social justice for all.

Zapovit
Oh bury me, then rise ye up
And break your heavy chains
And water with the tyrants' blood
The freedom you have gained
And in the great new family,
The family of the free
With softly spoken, kindly word
Remember also me


Scots Whae Hae
Lay the proud usurpers low!
Tyrants fall in every foe!
Liberty's in every blow!
Let us do, or die!

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Radical Robbie Burns, Peoples Poet (plawiuk.blogspot.com)

Six organizations sue French presidential candidate for denying gay Holocaust victims

Far-right candidate Eric Zemmour said it's just a "legend" that gay men were deported to concentration camps. LGBTQ organizations say that's illegal Holocaust denial.

By Alex Bollinger 

Sunday, March 27, 2022

The monument to gay victims of Nazi Germany in Sitges, Spain

Six LGBTQ organizations in France are suing a far-right presidential candidate for denying that gay people were targeted by the Nazis during the Holocaust. The lawsuit is the first in France to address Holocaust denial specifically as it relates to LGBTQ people.

According to the organization Holocaust Memorial Day, somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 men were accused of homosexuality and sent to concentration camps during the Holocaust, and tens of thousands more were arrested and jailed in police prisons. Others were castrated and subjected to “gruesome medical experiments.” Others were killed.

Related: French fascist tells American conservatives to oppose ‘individuals without gender’

That, though, is a “legend,” according to Eric Zemmour, who is running for president of France. He got national attention with his 2014 book The French Suicide (Le Suicide français), where he said that France has been in decline for decades due to immigration, feminism, and egalitarianism. In that book, he claimed that Vichy France – the authoritarian French regime during World War II that collaborated with the Nazis – actually protected Jews, despite Vichy’s mass arrests of Jewish people in France who were sent to concentration camps.

Last year, Zemmour published a campaign manifesto entitled France Has Not Said Its Final Word (La France n’a pas dit son dernier mot), in which he called it a “legend” that gay people were targeted in France during the Holocaust.

“The deportation of homosexuals from France because of their sexual orientation is a legend,” he wrote. Around 500 men accused of being gay were arrested in France during World War II.

Now, six LGBTQ organizations – Mousse, Stop Homophobie, Inter-LGBT, Adheos, SOS Homophobie, and Quazar – have filed a lawsuit against Zemmour. France, like many other European countries, bans Holocaust denial. These laws have been passed out of fear that denying the Holocaust would be a precursor to it happening again. France’s law was passed in 1990 in order to fight anti-semitism.


The organizations published an op-ed in the French LGBTQ magazine TETU that notes that French authorities themselves did not acknowledge the gay victims of the Holocaust until 1995, refusing to let LGBTQ activists participate in official remembrance ceremonies. And it wasn’t until the 2010s that acknowledging the gay victims was normalized at local ceremonies.

In 2011, Rudolf Brazda – a French man deported to a concentration camp for being gay – was made a knight in the Legion of Honor in recognition of his role as a witness.

“Eric Zemmour’s Holocaust denial is a veiled call to hatred,” the op-ed states. “In denying the crimes committed during the Second World War against gay people, Eric Zemmour minimizes homophobic violence that is still happening today. That is, in in order to understand and fight against homophobia, we have to face up to it, in its historic and everyday reality.”

The French presidential elections will occur on June 12 and the runoff – if no candidate gets over 51% of the vote, no one is expected to – will take place on June 19. Zemmour has generally polled in third or fourth place this past month.

French Far-Right Candidate Vows to Fight for Identity as Prospects Fade

Éric Zemmour, a far-right pundit, tried to revive his flagging campaign Sunday in a place that is familiar to hopefuls of his ilk.

Éric Zemmour drew a large crowd at a rally on Sunday in Paris, but his campaign for the French presidency has stumbled in recent weeks.

Credit...Julien De Rosa/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

By Constant Méheut
March 27, 2022

PARIS — With its immense forecourt opening onto a breathtaking view of the Eiffel Tower, the Trocadéro Plaza in Paris offers an ideal setting to revive a flagging campaign for the French presidency. Twice in the past decade, tens of thousands of people have flocked there, responding to calls from embattled right-wing contenders looking for support.

A third attempt came on Sunday, when Éric Zemmour, the far-right pundit turned presidential candidate, held a massive rally at the Trocadéro designed to halt his slide in the polls, exactly two weeks before the first round of voting.

“I will fight to reconquer our identity, I will fight to regain our prosperity,” Mr. Zemmour told tens of thousands of supporters who waved a sea of French flags under a blazing sun.

Sunday’s rally, one of the biggest of this year’s elections, had all the trappings of a last-ditch attempt to revitalize a campaign that started with a bang and then gradually stalled, as Mr. Zemmour, 63, got bogged down in controversies and struggled to broaden his voter base.

He entered the presidential race last fall, putting his prolific career as a polarizing far-right writer and television star behind him and promising to shake up French politics with his hard-line views on immigration, Islam’s place in France and national identity.

Many people at Sunday’s rally were drawn by support for Mr. Zemmour’s conservative positions on immigration. The placard reads, “So that France remains France.”

Credit...Julien De Rosa/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

And shake it up he did. For months, through his active presence on social and news media as well as his frenzied rallies, he shaped the public debate by pushing it further to the right. He popularized the concept of the “great replacement” — a racist conspiracy theory stating that white Christian populations are being replaced by nonwhite immigrants — rewrote some of the worst episodes from France’s past and promoted divisive ideas such as a proposal to force parents to give their children “traditional” French names.

His meteoric rise in the polls — he briefly ranked second in mid-February — turned him into an unexpected runoff contender and a serious threat for Marine Le Pen, the longtime leader of the far right, and Valérie Pécresse, the candidate of the mainstream right.

But his ratings have gradually slipped for a month, putting him in fourth or fifth place, after the war in Ukraine exposed two of his biggest flaws: his past sympathy for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and his neglect of the issue of economic inequalities.

In a 2018 interview, Mr. Zemmour said he “would dream” of a French equivalent of Mr. Putin, praising his attempt to restore the grandeur of “an empire in decline” — words that have haunted him since Russia invaded Ukraine, severely denting his credibility on international affairs. The candidate also provoked an outcry after he first opposed welcoming Ukrainian war refugees, saying it would further “destabilize France, which is already overwhelmed — I do say overwhelmed — by immigration.”

Ukrainian evacuees crossing the border into Palanca, Moldova, this month. Mr. Zemmour provoked an outcry after at first opposing an influx of Ukrainian refugees.

Credit...Mauricio Lima for The New York Times


But it is his failure to respond to the economic hardship created by the war that has most affected his standing. Mr. Zemmour has long defended liberal positions on the economy, which have done little to allay voters’ fears about rising energy prices. By contrast, his competitors, Ms. Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a far-left candidate, have benefited from this concern, having long campaigned against economic inequality.

“He has focused so much on identity, immigration and security,” said Bruno Cautrès, a political scientist at the Center for Political Research at Sciences Po university in Paris, “that it has prevented him from embodying anything else in the eyes of the voters.”

In the fall, Mr. Zemmour had pinned his hopes on his ability to appeal to “the patriotic bourgeoisie and the working classes.” But attendance at Sunday’s rally suggested that he mainly attracted bourgeois voters.

“Sovereignty, grandeur, identity — this guy thinks exactly like me,” said Benoît Bergeron, a 68-year-old Zemmour supporter wearing a tweed jacket, who had crossed the Seine from his upscale Left Bank neighborhood to join the rally.

Mr. Bergeron said the last time he had joined a demonstration was to support La Manif Pour Tous, a large movement opposing same-sex marriage that upended France in 2013. Several supporters in the crowd said Mr. Zemmour was the best representative of a conservative generation that emerged after that movement.

Mr. Cautrès said Mr. Zemmour had a limited voter base and scored well mainly among segments of the upper middle class, the elderly and conservative Catholics. “It’s not something that propels you to the second round of the presidential election,” he said.

Against a backdrop of sinking poll numbers, Mr. Zemmour has tried to refocus the debate around immigration by toughening his already polarizing stance. Warning that France will become “a Muslim country” by 2060 if current migration levels persist, he promised last week to create a “Ministry of Remigration” and deport 100,000 “undesirable foreigners” each year, if elected.


Marine Le Pen, the longtime leader of the far right, is now polling at 20 percent in voting intentions, about twice the level of Mr. Zemmour.

Credit...Johanna Geron/Reuters

But the proposal only caused further controversy and accentuated his image as an extreme politician. “He didn’t run a campaign to bring people together, but he ran one that was more divisive, more provocative every day,” said Robert Ménard, a French radical right-wing mayor and longtime acquaintance of Mr. Zemmour who supports Ms. Le Pen.

At the rally, Mr. Zemmour’s speech was filled with populist overtones, with attacks against the news media and the elites, who he said where trying to undermine his candidacy. “Nothing and no one will steal this election from us,” he told the roaring crowd.

The candidate’s radical messaging has also had the unexpected effect of sanitizing the image of his direct far-right competitor, Ms. Le Pen, a goal she has long been pursuing. Ms. Le Pen is now polling at 20 percent in voting intentions, about twice the rate for Mr. Zemmour, and appears on track to reach a runoff with the incumbent, President Emmanuel Macron.

“He has normalized Marine Le Pen,” Mr. Ménard said.

Perhaps the biggest impact of Mr. Zemmour’s campaign will be its lasting effect on French politics, which have increasingly lurched to the right. Polls show that two-thirds of French people today are worried about the “great replacement.” Depending on his performance in the first round of voting, Mr. Zemmour may also force a complete reshuffle of the French right. Several leaders of Ms. Le Pen’s and Ms. Pécresse’s parties have already joined his campaign.

Several supporters at the Trocadéro on Sunday said they did not trust the polls. “We’re at a turning point,” said Stéphanie Vitry, a company manager, who was convinced Mr. Zemmour would come out ahead in two weeks. Otherwise, she said, “it’s the end of France.”

But some did not hide that they had largely given up hope that the far-right candidate would reach a second round.

“I confess that I’m not very optimistic,” said Oxana Herbeth, 23, a former Le Pen voter who had turned to Mr. Zemmour, attracted by his tough line on immigration and security.

It did not help that the Trocadéro has also been symbolically associated with the downfall of the French right. The past two presidential candidates of the center-right party Les Républicains held big rallies there — before being defeated on Election Day.

“To gather the right at the very place where it has failed,” Mr. Ménard said. “Strange idea.”

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Constant Méheut reports from France. He joined the Paris bureau in January 2020. @ConstantMeheut

A version of this article appears in print on March 28, 2022, Section A, Page 15 of the New York edition with the headline: Fading Far-Right Candidate Vows Fight for French Identity. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe