For two weeks, Gérald Darmanin has been implementing his promise to ban all ultra-right and far-right gatherings… Renaud Dély’s political editorial.
The Minister of the Interior made this commitment after the emotion aroused by the parade in the streets of Paris on May 6 of 500 activists dressed in black, gloved and masked, who paid tribute to one of their own, who died there. 28 years ago. Since then, Gérald Darmanin has asked the prefect of police, Laurent Nunez, to ban a good half-dozen demonstrations by various small groups.
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The latest, on Sunday, a tribute to a figure of the identity far right, Dominique Venner, who committed suicide ten years ago at Notre-Dame to urge Europeans to revolt against the fantasy of the “great replacement “. A gesture hailed at the time by Marine Le Pen who saw in it an attempt to “wake up the French people“. This comment illustrated her proximity to the most radical fringes of the far right that she is now trying to make people forget.
She doesn’t even recognize her “thirty-year-old friends” anymore
Because, for ten years, Marine Le Pen has changed. Or at least that’s what she’s trying to show. The bans decreed by the Ministry of the Interior sometimes give rise to legal action and may raise questions about respect for the freedom to demonstrate. But Marine Le Pen did not have a word to protest or to criticize Gérald Darmanin. She doesn’t even recognize her “friends of thirty yearslike Axel Loustau who took care of the financing of his campaigns until recently, who was elected RN until 2021, and who was seen in the ultra-right parade on May 6.
Monday, May 22, the spokesman for the RN group in the Assembly, Thomas Ménagé, called outright for the dissolution of the Union Defense Group, the famous GUD. It is however within this muscular organization that Marine Le Pen has tied, on the benches of the Parisian University of Assas, very strong friendships which have accompanied her throughout her political ascent.
All this is partly the consequence of the action of Gérald Darmanin. The initiatives of the Minister of the Interior are forcing Marine Le Pen to come out of ambiguity, to choose sides. And it’s not without risk. First, because some of these activists willingly turned to Eric Zemmour’s Reconquête party. And that others, angry at the ingratitude of Marine Le Pen, now prefer Jordan Bardella, the president of the RN, reputed to be more welcoming to the most radical.