Experts say rising far-right violence in France is linked to escalating anti-migrant, nationalist rhetoric inside the country.
ADVERTISEMENTDeath threats and other forms of intimidation are becoming a common tool of xenophobic, far-right groups in France.
Their intention is to scare mayors and town officials away from implementing projects welcoming migrants into the community.
Yannick Morez, mayor of Saint-Brevin-les-Pins on the Atlantic Coast, hit the headlines last year, when he resigned, closed his medical practice and moved away after his house and two cars were set on fire. The arson on March 22, 2023, followed months of death threats from far-right extremists.
While migrants had been in the town since 2016, new protests were sparked by a decision to house them near a school. The relocation project went ahead thanks to Morez’s successor Dorothée Pacaud.
Anti-migrant campaigns fuelled by far-right groups in France did not stop at Saint-Brevin-les-Pins. They have spread across the country.
More than 240 kilometres north of the Atlantic coast town, the mayor of Callac, Jean-Yves Rolland, faced similar threats after deciding to take in a handful of refugee families to fill job vacancies in the village.
One of the letters he received accused him of being a “criminal,” while another reads: “I hope, Mr. Mayor, that your wife will be raped, your daughter will be raped, and your grandchildren sodomised.”
In January 2023, Rolland gave up the plan to host seven to ten refugee families after months of protests, with demonstrators coming from out of town.
“They were clearly threatening democracy,” he said, dumping a pile of written threats on his desk in the town hall. One referred to migrants as “Dealers, Rapists, Aggressors” who should be “returned to Africa.”
These intimidation campaigns, which include violence and disinformation, are often amplified by outside agitators.
France’s internal security agency, the DGSI, is increasingly worried about fringe movements and their potential for violence, both on the far right and the far left.
Why are intimidation campaigns becoming more common?
Far-right groups became more active after deadly attacks by Islamic extremists in 2015-2016.
One of their goals is to “precipitate a clash” over those viewed as outsiders, then-DGSI chief Nicolas Lerner said in a rare interview with Le Monde last year.
“The normalisation of a recourse to violence, and the temptation to want to impose ideas through fear or intimidation, is a grave danger to our democracies,” he said.
The violent views of the radical right in the US have spread to Europe and been amplified through social media, said Lerner.
Topics debated by political parties, like migration, tend to “channel energy,” he said.
Jean-Yves Camus, a leading expert on the far-right, said that the rise of violence from extremist groups in France is linked to the escalating anti-migrant, nationalist rhetoric in the country.
“Beyond those anti-migrant demonstrations there is a real political project, which is confronting the state,” he said.
ADVERTISEMENTWhile there is no tradition of suspicion of a “deep state” in France, Reconquête’s founder, Eric Zemmour, has emulated former US President Donald Trump, taking aim at elites and predicting the collapse of French society.
Zemmour, a French nationalist, has no personal connection to extremist groups, Camus said. “But he says, ‘If these people want to join me and my party, they can be useful.’”