“French, wake up! You are at home here!” The slogan, proclaimed in the streets of Lyon by young people dressed in black, smoke bombs in their hands, resonates familiarly in the ears of the frontists. During the presidential campaign, Marine Le Pen’s meetings regularly ended with the sound of “We’re at home!” chanted with one voice by his sympathizers. This time, the formula is taken up by hooded ultra-right activists, iron bars in hand, who take over the streets of several towns in France a few days after Thomas’ death on November 18, on the sidelines of a ball village in Crépol. A linguistic proximity noted by the left and the government, who accuse the National Rally of making inflammatory remarks.
“You want to contrast rural and quiet, Catholic and white France with the France of the cities, the Mohammeds, the Moulouds and the Rachids.” The diatribe, addressed to RN deputies, is signed Éric Dupond-Moretti. “Clean up. Drive out from your ranks the ‘gudards’, the identitarians, the nazillons, the racists, the anti-Semites who are hidden in your economic offices”, he declared this Tuesday in the hemicycle of the ‘National Assembly. Suspension of session. Outraged, the RN deputies left the benches. Marine Le Pen, out of control, assures that she will file a complaint against the Minister of Justice (to date, no complaint has yet been filed). A few minutes before, she came across him. And he blurts out: “You are a thug, you behave like a thug”. The RN, linked to the ultra-right? For years this companionship trial has embarrassed the ranks of the flame party and thwarted the presidential aspirations of its candidate.
“I know them, all these guys, it’s me who kicked them out of the movement”
This Tuesday, in a group meeting with her troops, Marine Le Pen repeated it: “We are political leaders, and there is no question of accepting, or justifying, what these idiots, probably manipulated, did, in Romans-Sur-Isère.” And added: “I know them, all these guys, it was me who kicked them out of the movement.” Two days earlier, invited to the France 2 set, Jordan Bardella had already hastened to distance himself from the attacks of the ultra-right. “We do not respond to violence with violence […]by punitive expeditions, by private justice or by vengeful slogans”, he declared. For years, Marine Le Pen has been trying to distance herself from these small groups, and to shed this cumbersome heritage, a vestige from the time when the GUD (a violent far-right organization) marched in concert with her father’s National Front. In December 2022, after violent raids against foreign people, the member of parliament for Pas-de-Calais had demanded the dissolution of “small extremist groups, whatever their profile” in a letter sent to Élisabeth Borne. Last May, after a neofascist demonstration organized in the streets of Paris, she distanced herself from one of the participants, Axel Lousteau, former GUD and long-time friend of Marine Le Pen, from the time she frequented Parisian nightclubs with him.
The boss’s message is clear: the RN of today is no longer the FN of yesterday, a government party cannot afford such promiscuity with these small groups. Most of the new frontist faces are also foreign to this ecosystem. Sébastien Chenu or Jean-Philippe Tanguy do not eat this bread, and are not stingy with condemnations concerning these radicalized activists – even if both did not balk when it came to working with certain of them. Especially since, thanks to the emergence of Eric Zemmour on the political landscape during the presidential campaign, the RN was able to relieve itself of certain cumbersome companionships. Exit Damien Rieu and former members of Génération Identitaire (small group dissolved in 2021 for provocation of hatred and discrimination); farewell to Philippe Vardon and others close to Marion Maréchal, all gone to swell the ranks of the identity polemicist. And while the radicals deserted, the RN, purged of its bulky elements, even allowed itself to mock the “Nazi entourage” gravitating around Éric Zemmour.
The porosity between young people and radicals
Today, executives who are constantly told that they would be “at the gates of power” have only one watchword: behave. No slippage will be tolerated until 2027. “There is a side of responsibility, says a frontist deputy. In the movement, everyone wants to win, so no one wants to do anything or see their collaborators or their RNJ leaders (the party’s youth movement, Editor’s note) will do anything.” Because everyone is aware of it: it is among young people that the main risks of porosity lie with this unsavory ecosystem.
Since Jordan Bardella established special ties with its founders, the Cocarde student union, which claims the identity and ethno-differentialist heritage of the New Right, has become a nursery for the frontist party. Pierre-Romain Thionnet, president of the RNJ and close to Jordan Bardella, was its general secretary. Around fifteen of its activists or former activists are now collaborators of elected officials, parliamentarians or MEPs, and are regularly received at the Assembly, like this last November 24 with the RN deputy for Oise Alexandre Sabatou to talk about housing. However, if the Parisian showcase of the Student Cockade is relatively smooth, the union is also associated with several abuses. In Besançon, at the end of November 2022, two of its members repainted a bronze statue of Victor Hugo in white, “to give it a beautiful white color, very French, very Bisontine, very 19th century”. In court, the two defendants assured that they had been pushed by a national cadre of the Cockade.
A guest from the RNJ close to Action Française
Last year, it was an elected official who found herself in the sights of Release for posing in front of Celtic cross flags and frequenting nationalist and anti-Semitic circles, while serving as parliamentary attaché to Vaucluse MP Joris Hébrard. In May, still according to Release, a member of the GUD and a former member of Génération Identitaire had been spotted in the premises of the National Rally at a conference given on Hungary. Even today, the conferences organized by the youth movement give pride of place to this ecosystem which gravitates between intellectual circles of the hard right and sympathizers of the ultra-right. On October 19, it was Rodolphe Cart, young author, aspiring star in the industry, who was invited to 114 rue Michel Ange in the premises of the RN… Before being received on November 1 at the Nouvelle Librairie, a popular meeting place of the heirs of the New Right, and on November 3 by Action Française, a Maurras royalist organization.
More than a pure ideological affiliation, these are common references and an ecosystem that these young radicals and the young frontists share. In Paris, they live in a small environment where everyone knows each other and spends time in the same places. From the Political Training Institute, the school where the rights come together, to the bars of the 6th arrondissement, like the Caves Saint Germain or the Chai Antoine, where it is not uncommon to come across a radical activist leaning on the counter with a young RN or Reconquest (Eric Zemmour’s party). A reality which, internally, annoys some… or indifferentes others. “For me, the Cockade, like all these small identity groups, should not be associated with our movement,” worries a frontist executive who does not want to see all his de-demonization efforts reduced to nothing. Others reassure themselves as best they can: “It’s true, young people are often excessive, but that will have no political outlet here, let them take it for granted.” Gilles Pennelle, former member of the small neopagan identity group Terre et peuple, today secretary general of the National Rally, can attest to this.
.