French Presidential candidate Valerie Pecresse holds first campaign meeting

French right-wing presidential candidate Valerie Pecresse made a further turn to the far right on Sunday with her speech at an election meeting in the Zenith concert hall in Paris. "No to the great downgrade, not to the great replacement," Pecresse said, adopting the language of controversial far-right candidate Eric Zemmour. The theory of the so-called "great replacement" of the French people by a generation of migrants is a conspiracy thesis denounced by many and belonging to the lexicon of the extreme right. "For the first time the fate of the world could be written without us. In 10 years, will we still be the seventh world power? Will we still be a sovereign nation or will we be a frill of the United States, the bar and restaurant of China? Will we still be a united nation or will we be a nation blown to smithereens? Faced with these fundamental questions, there is no fatality. No to the great downgrade, no to the great replacement'.