three questions on the “Celtic cross” that an MP wants to ban

While this symbol was once again seen in the ultra-right demonstration on Saturday in Paris, a socialist elected official is calling for legislation to strengthen the law and ban the exhibition of the Celtic cross.

Should the Celtic cross be banned? This is the proposal of the socialist deputy for Calvados Arthur Delaporte the day after the parade of 600 ultra-right demonstrators on Saturday May 11 in the streets of Paris.

This demonstration was initially banned by the prefect, but ultimately authorized by the administrative court. As a result, we could see hundreds of individuals described as “neo-Nazis” or “neofascists” parading through the streets of the capital, with masked faces, dressed all in black, chanting “Europe, youth, revolution” and carrying in the wind flags flanked by a cross described as “Celtic”, a symbol which regularly appears in ultra-right demonstrations and which the socialist deputy therefore wishes to ban.

Where does this cross come from?

Originally, “the Celtic cross is an Irish cross from the early Middle Ages which we will also find in Wales and in Brittany from the 5th^e to the 9th^e century”explains Erwan Chartier, lecturer in the Celtic studies diploma at Rennes 2 and editor-in-chief of Poher Hebdo. “It is a symbol which is widely used in the Irish, Welsh, Breton and Scottish nationalist and regionalist movements at the end of the 19th century.^e and at the beginning of the 20th century^ehe continues, and which appears in the French extreme right at the time of the Algerian war in the 1960s but which is not a cross, it is rather a target.”

How did she become a symbol of the ultra-right?

“It’s Pierre Sidos [figure de l’extrême droite pétainiste] who has always prided himself on having invented it in 1948 for the Young Nation movement”, explains Nicolas Lebourg, researcher specializing in the far right. “It also fit into a context of the interwar period where there was a whole theme among the French extreme right of searching for the ancestor, the ancestral people,” he elaborates.

This symbol will then be “reinvented in the 1960s by the most radical small groups, the main one of which, at the time, was the West. The Celtic cross was their rallying sign. explains Erwan Lecœur, sociologist specializing in the far right. “Behind Ouest, other groups have taken up the Celtic cross, notably the GUD in the 1970s, he continues. The Celtic cross today is once again used by the most radical identity groups as a kind of emblem.”

Can we ban it?

Nowadays, “the demonstration on Saturday, you cannot do it with a symbol of a group which was condemned by the Nuremberg tribunal, it is prohibited in French law”, explains Erwan Lecœur. In fact, the article R645-1 of the penal code forbidden “to wear or display in public a uniform, a badge or an emblem reminiscent of the uniforms, badges or emblems which have been worn or exhibited either by the members of an organization declared criminal in application of article 9 of the statute of the international military tribunal annexed to the London Agreement of August 8, 1945, or by a person convicted by a French or international court of one or more crimes against humanity.

The socialist deputy Arthur Delaporte therefore proposes “to prohibit any symbol used by associations recognized as unconstitutional and contrary to the principle of friendship between peoples”, he revealed to Release. “By changing the law, we could in particular prohibit the use of the Celtic cross since it was the emblem of several small groups dissolved in France”he explains in the columns of the newspaper. But adding the Celtic cross to the list of these bans could pose a problem, according to the researchers. “Some may argue that it is a very ancient symbol which brought together the Breton tribes”says Erwan Lecœur. “What surprises me is that we want to ban a symbol, but that the government is not capable of banning a demonstration of the most radical far right”the researcher asks instead.