French far-right figure Eric Zemmour wants to rid schools of ‘feminist, LGBT ideologies’
Eric Zemmour, who is running in the 2022 French presidential election, has vowed to stop the “brainwashing” of school students and focus on academic excellence instead.
“Over the past 40 years, our children have been indoctrinated,” Zemmour, an essayist and a political pundit, said on Monday.
“Schools can’t be a place where feminist, LGBT and decolonial ideologies brainwash our children.”
“There’s no prosperous nation without a school that transmits knowledge, and without a school that makes it possible to strive for excellence,” Zemmour said, promising to focus on teaching the French language and math in primary schools, and remove “politically correct propaganda” from textbooks.
He said school benefits should be suspended for parents of “seriously disruptive and truant” students, and children should return to wearing a smock in school as a “symbol of equality.”
“It’s a tragedy that since 1968 we’ve given up on civilizing generations of barbarians,” the candidate said.
Zemmour, who has been convicted of inciting hatred in the past, is a highly divisive figure in France.
He is known for making anti-migrant and anti-Islam comments, and is currently polling fourth in the election. Some of his campaign events have been met with protests.
The French will go to the polls in April.
