Talking about the ultra-right threat in France, “it’s giving credence to a threat that doesn’t exist”according to Marion Maréchal, the head of the list of Eric Zemmour’s Reconquête party in the European elections of June 2024, guest on franceinfo 8:30 a.m. Tuesday December 5.
🔴 Ultra-right violence ➡️ “We don’t care!”, says Marion Maréchal. It is “a threat that does not exist. How many murders, attacks, rapes, gratuitous attacks outside a nightclub coming from the ultra-right? Zero.” #8h30franceinfo pic.twitter.com/OmUaWmtr1u
— franceinfo (@franceinfo) December 5, 2023
“How many murders? How many attacks? How many rapes? How many gratuitous attacks when leaving a nightclub or for a cigarette? Zeroshe assures. There you go, the reality is that it’s zero”she insists again.
Really ?
Federico Aramburu, Clément Meric… Several deaths attributed to the ultra-right
What Marion Maréchal says is completely false. The ultra-right threat does exist. It is even the second largest terrorist threat in France, after jihadism, according to the intelligence services and as Vrai ou Faux already explained last June. At the end of 2023, around 3,000 people belong to the ultra-right movement in France, of which 1,300 are on S file.
And there are examples. Starting with the assassination of former Argentine rugby player Federico Martin Aramburu, killed by five bullets in front of a Parisian hotel on March 19, 2022. According to a source close to the investigation, the main suspect is Loïk Le Priol, a former member of the Union Defense Group, more commonly known as GUD, a far-right student organization renowned for its violent actions. Another member of the ultra-right, Romain Bouvier, and Loïk Le Priol’s partner, Lyson Rochemir, are also indicted.
According to the first elements of the investigation collected at the time by franceinfo, it all started around a story of a cigarette in a bar, precisely, contrary to what Marion Maréchal said when explaining that there had never been “gratuitous aggression when leaving a nightclub or for a cigarette”. The three members of the ultra-right had started to insult a young person who had come to ask them for a cigarette or a few coins. Martin Aramburu intervened. The small group then replied that they were at home, “on their soil”. A fight had broken out. Martin Aramburu then entered a hotel to ask for ice cubes to relieve the blows he had received in the face. The three members of the ultra-right are suspected of having waited for him outside the hotel to shoot him.
We can also cite the death of Clément Méric, a young anti-fascist activist killed by skinheads in June 2013 in Paris, launching a wave of indignation across France. This led to the dissolution of five ultra-right organizations, “Troisième Voie”, the “Revolutionary Nationalist Youth”, “Envie de rêve”, “Œuvre française” and the “Nationalist Youth”. Two former skinheads, Esteban Morillo and Samuel Dufour, were sentenced on appeal, in June 2021, to five and eight years in prison for intentional violence resulting in death, as reported by AFP at the end of the trial.
And that’s not counting the murders committed by sympathizers of far-right ideas even if they are not necessarily linked to the ultra-right movement, like the killings on rue d’Enghien in December 2022 in Paris which caused the death of three Kurds – the main suspect, William Malet, admitted his hatred “pathological” foreigners – or the indictment for murder in May 2022 of Martial Lanoir, far-right sympathizer and conspiracy theorist.
Assaults and acts of violence
It is also possible to talk about the attack on student members of the Solidaires union on the Nice campus in September 2020. France 3 Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur reports that six masked young people beat them up before leaving shouting “Nationalists!”
Or the storming of a public meeting in favor of the Palestinian cause in mid-November 2023, a month after the Hamas terrorist attack in Israel and the start of the Israeli response in the Gaza Strip. According to France 2, around fifty people, almost all masked, sometimes armed with baseball bats and fireworks, carried out a real “surge of violence”, injuring three people. Action claimed by the ultra-right of Lyon, where attacks are frequent.
The clashes between ultra-right activists and anti-fascists during a demonstration against the relocation of a reception center for asylum seekers near a school in Saint-Brevin, in Loire-Atlantique, are also worth noting. be mentioned. The mayor of the town said he had received threats from far-right activists, supported by Eric Zemmour’s party, to the point that France Terre d’Asile spoke to franceinfo of a “organized and violent strategy of the extreme right aimed at terrorizing elected officials who are involved in welcoming foreigners”. The mayor ultimately resigned after his house was burned down. The case is still ongoing.
And the list is not exhaustive.
12 ultra-right attack plans foiled since 2017
Furthermore, according to information from franceinfo, 12 plans for ultra-right attacks have been foiled over the last six years, since 2017, including two in 2023. And here too, this is counting without the other violent projects which are not not considered attacks.
We can cite the planned assassination of the President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron in 2018 and other planned attacks against elected officials, migrants or mosques, fomented by members of the small ultra-right group Barjols. Four people were convicted by the Paris criminal court in February 2023. Nine others were acquitted but the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office (Pnat) appealed the acquittal of seven of them.
The Pnat also requested a trial for 16 members of the anti-Muslim group Action of Operational Forces (AFO), suspected of having prepared violent actions targeting Muslims, and in particular of having wanted to poison halal food to kill those who would eat it.
Four members of the neo-Nazi movement were also sentenced last June to sentences ranging from one year in prison to 18 years of criminal imprisonment by the special assize court for minors in Paris for planned actions against mosques, the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (Crif), the International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism (Licra) or even against the leader of rebellious France Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
There were also several members of Zouaves Paris, a small ultra-right group since dissolved, suspected of having wanted to commit violence against Moroccan supporters during the semi-final of the Football World Cup between France and Morocco at the end 2022. Among them, Marc de Cacqueray-Valmenier, a well-known figure of the ultra-right. The legal proceedings were canceled due to irregularities, particularly in the arrests, and the merits of the case were therefore not judged.
The latest Europol report on the state of the terrorist threat in the European Union updated in October 2023 also speaks of two ultra-right terrorist attacks foiled in May 2022 with the arrest of a young man in Bourg- Saint-Andéol in Ardèche and in September 2022 with the arrest of another young man in Bouzonville in Moselle, who sometimes made racist comments, sometimes anti-LGBT comments.
And here again, as with the homicides and attacks cited above, this list of thwarted attacks by the ultra-right is not exhaustive.