One day after French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen removed a leading member from her party after leaking info to rival election candidate Eric Zemmour, a reporter who infiltrated Zemmour's presidential campaign affirms to have witnessed a casual racism culture and a covert online campaign.

In his book Au Coeur du Z (At the Heart of Z) published on Thursday, Vincent Bresson, 27, relates how he spent more than three months as a trusted member of Zemmour's young supporters' club, "Génération Z." He affirms overhearing racial comments from both volunteers and senior officials.

“In reality, it seems some Zemmourists will always see you as ‘less French’. And these are supposedly the more moderate, publicly acceptable faces of the campaign. I think it poses serious questions about promises of equal treatment for all under a Zemmour presidency,” said Bresson.

Zemmour is dubbed the "Trump of France" for his anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant views which hectically warns France that it is bound to its doom as he described in one of his books, The French Suicide. Zemmour raises the alarm about the "colonization" of France by immigrants, and reminisces over the 'good old days' when, according to him, Vichy France "protected French Jews" rather than what they actually did: Collaborate with Nazi Germany.

Although he denies being racist, he has so far been convicted of two racist hate speech offenses and is appealing a third.

He is competing for third place in the polls with right-wing Les Républicains candidate Valérie Pécresse, less than two months before the first round of voting, behind far-right National Rally leader Marine Le Pen and incumbent president Emmanuel Macron.

According to Bresson, he opted to infiltrate Zemmour's campaign because "there was at least a chance he could be president," as he stated in an interview.

Bresson added that he had targeted Génération Z as the effortless way into Zemmour’s campaign because as a “young, white, university-educated man called Vincent – a name in the Christian calendar – and brought up a Catholic, I looked like a plausible recruit”. If elected president, Zemmour has stated that he would prohibit families from giving their children non-French first names, implying that they would no longer be able to call their kids Mohammed "but would be permitted to use it as a middle name."

“I was astonished at the lack of security,” Bresson said. “I changed my surname and invented a job in PR, but never once was my ID checked. Often, I could have searched Zemmour’s desk, for example – though I never did. I’m a journalist, not a spy.”

Bresson also joined Zemmour's very sophisticated covert internet campaign, which was administered by the candidate's director of digital strategy, Samuel Lafont, through encrypted Telegram chat groups. "This isn't open to the public at all; it's a secret operation," he explained. "This isn't political campaigning in the open."

“They’re asked to pile in, as many as possible, posting pro-Zemmour content – articles, videos, links to his supporters’ website – and asking what people think of him. Flooding Facebook, commenting and reacting as much and as often as they can, constantly raising their candidate’s profile,” Bresson said.

“They can copy-paste material from a central campaign site; they can post exactly the same content across 20 different groups. It’s about creating an impression of huge numbers of people, of a massive online movement.”

Another unit, known as "WikiZédia," is in charge of revising Wikipedia entries about Zemmour, particularly the polemicist's personal page, which was seen 5.2 million times in 2021, making it the most consulted page in France on the online encyclopedia.

WikiZédia's efforts were "unprecedented" for a political party in France and violated the website's fundamental principles of objectivity and neutrality, Bresson quoted a prominent French Wikipedia administrator as saying.

From concept to publishing, Au Coeur du Z took six months. Its draft was in the hands of one of France's top media attorneys until late last week.

Geoffrey Le Guilcher, one of the book's publishers, said that while Zemmour's legal action against the book was a possibility, the company was convinced that Bresson's 300-page narrative contained "absolutely nothing incorrect or unsubstantiated."

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