Reconquête

Reconquête ([ʁəkɔ̃kɛt], English: Reconquest), stylised as Reconquête! (often shortened as R!), is a far-right political party in France founded in late 2021 by Éric Zemmour, who has since served as its leader. He was a candidate in the 2022 presidential election, in which he placed fourth with just over 7% of the vote as the best newcomer.

From September 2021, opinion polling for the 2022 presidential election showed a sharp rise in favour of far-right journalist and author Éric Zemmour in the months before he formally became a candidate. A series of opinion polls suggested that Zemmour might reach the presidential election's second round, competing against incumbent President Emmanuel Macron. Although there had been speculation about a possible run for the presidential nomination of The Republicans in the party's 2021 congress, Zemmour opted to put his name forward as the nominee of a new party.

Éric Zemmour formally announced his candidacy for the presidency on 30 November 2021 through a video posted on YouTube. It was seen by over 2.6 million viewers in three days.

Reconquête was launched on 5 December 2021; at the founding rally held in Villepinte, Seine-Saint-Denis, Zemmour proposed a "reconquest of the greatest country in the world" in front of 15,000 people. The party's name is direct reference to the Spanish Reconquista. Zemmour and Reconquête's campaign directors for the upcoming elections were announced as Court of Audit magistrate Sarah Knafo and former French Army major general Bertrand de La Chesnais. Reconquête's youth wing, Génération Z, which had been established to mobilise the youth around a possible presidential candidacy of Zemmour, entered the party structure ex post.

In December 2021, Joachim Son-Forget, elected to the National Assembly in 2017 for French residents overseas as a La République En Marche! candidate, was the first MP to support Zemmour. Former presidential candidate Philippe de Villiers also announced his support for Zemmour and the party. Zemmour made claims to the media of 40,000 members within days, 60,000 a few days later. In February 2022, Reconquête officially welcomed its 100,000th member.

In January 2022, the party gained its second member^{[citation needed]} of the National Assembly as Guillaume Peltier, previously elected as a member of The Republicans, as well as two Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) when Jérôme Rivière and Gilbert Collard from the National Rally defected to the party. Rivière had presided over the French delegation to the Identity and Democracy group in the European Parliament until he joined Reconquête. In early February 2022, the party gained a third MEP when Maxette Grisoni-Pirbakas defected from the National Rally, while MEP Nicolas Bay joined in mid-February. Stéphane Ravier became the party's first Senator after he left the National Rally in mid-February 2022, whilst Sébastien Meurant became the second Senator in March 2022. In May 2022 Myriane Houplain became the partys second MP.

Other notable people who have been involved around Zemmour's candidacy include former MPs Marion Maréchal, Christine Boutin, Nicolas Dhuicq, Jean-Frédéric Poisson and Jacques Bompard, as well as former MEPs Jean-Yves Le Gallou, Paul-Marie Coûteaux and Bruno Mégret.

In February 2022, a reporter embedded into the Zemmour campaign's online division discovered and reported on a covert online campaign targeting Facebook and Wikipedia. A "shadow army" was delegated to join a huge number of Facebook groups and post pro-Zemmour content to raise the candidate's profile as much as possible. Another group of the shadow online team is a task force called "WikiZedia" which is tasked with editing pages on Wikipedia, in particular the French article about Zemmour, which is the top viewed article on French Wikipedia. "WikiZedia" members are charged with promoting Zemmour's page and linking to it as much as possible at the online encyclopedia. A veteran editor of French Wikipedia who was one of its top contributors was identified as being part of the Zemmour shadow team, described as being "in charge of the Zemmour page on Wikipedia" and was blocked from editing by Wikipedia administrators, along with six other editors. As soon as they learned of the affair, Wikimedia France immediately alerted the French media online watchdog agency ARCOM, which tracks online piracy and manipulation of digital communications.