“They Want Paris to Be Paris, Rome to Be Rome, and New York to Be New York”

By NicoElNino @ Adobe Stock

The inauguration of President Donald Trump has sparked celebration from patriots across the globe looking to encourage movements similar to the introspective MAGA movement in their own countries. In The Spectator, Freddy Gray discusses the reactions of Brits and Frenchmen to Trump’s ascendence to power in the U.S. He notes Éric Zemmour’s reflection on voters that “They want Paris to be Paris, Rome to be Rome and New York to be New York.” Gray writes:

The Special Relationship is dead, long live the special relationship. On Friday, at a “Stars and Stripes & Union Jack Celebration,” British and American right-wingers mingled gladly atop the Hay-Adams hotel, which overlooks the White House. Nigel Farage and co smoked cigarettes with their Republican brethren and shared Trump war stories. Dolled-up American girls took selfies with Liz Truss. And Steve Bannon showered Lord Glasman, the Labour peer, with admiration. The horseshoe theory has gone full circle. I bumped into Truss at the bar. “You’re a Gove shill,” she told me, in that delightful, easygoing manner of hers. How did she think Kemi Badenoch was getting on, I asked, trying to change the subject. “Kemi is a Gove plant,” came the firm reply. Truss’s charms seem to be working on the Americans. “She’s super-based,” said a bald young man. “I can’t believe she was prime minister,” added a star-struck girl called Mackenzie. No, Mackenzie, neither can we.

Emmanuel Macron, the French president, was not in town for the Donald’s Big Show. Neither was his likely successor, Marine Le Pen. Yet Éric Zemmour, leader of the Reconquête Party, and his influential partner Sarah Knafo were there. On Saturday, I met Zemmour in the lobby of his hotel. He wore a marvelously Gallic beige polo neck, and was rather sweetly boasting to his publisher, Diane Ouvry, about having already gone for a swim that morning. He seemed impressed that the public pools of Washington, DC are free at point of use. He then sat down and told me that Lafayette, the Frenchman who helped create Washington, was an “imbecile,” before describing, at some length, “the permanent reciprocal influences” between the French Revolution and the American one. He explained that Le Pen had shunned Trump because of her politically correct “de-diabatization” strategy. “For me, that means submitting to the dominant ideology of our day in order to be accepted by the system. If you do that and you win [an election], you won’t be able to govern afterwards because you haven’t prepared people for the paradigm shift.” Trump never compromises, he told me: “He is, like me, fighting this ideological battle. He rang me in 2022 and told me: ‘Don’t change, don’t give in, stay who you are.’”

Zemmour added: “You’re well aware that the ‘woke’ movement was born out of French theorists. But now, against that, there’s a big movement of peoples to defend their identity. They want Paris to be Paris, Rome to be Rome and New York to be New York. It’s all connected.”

Read more here.

Watch Zemmour below with an AI translation.