Gérald Darmanin wants to ban “ultra-right or far-right” demonstrations

Gérald Darmanin decided, questioned Tuesday, May 9 by the deputy Francesca Pasquini (EELV): he “gave instructions” to the prefects to issue in the future “prohibition orders” of demonstrations declared by “any ultra-right activist or extreme right, or any association or collective”.

The subject is broad, because it can potentially target the electoral far right, that is to say the National Rally of Marine Le Pen or “Reconquest! by Éric Zemmour, only ultra-right groups. “It will be up to the prefects to judge according to local contexts”, tempers an adviser to the Minister of the Interior.

Nationalist-revolutionary ultra-right

This decision comes in a double context. On the one hand, the precedent of the suspension, by the urgent applications judge of the Paris administrative court, of the ban on the “torchlight march” organized on January 7, 2023 by the association Paris Fierté, belonging to the identity movement . Gérald Darmanin also mentioned this failure to ban to recognize his powerlessness. “We will let the courts judge,” he concluded, resigned.

On the other hand, the organization of a demonstration, on Saturday May 6, in Paris, by the “Comité du 9 mai”. A few hundred participants, often dressed in black, masked or even hooded, brandishing black flags stamped with the Celtic cross and chanting the nationalist-revolutionary slogan “Europe, youth, revolution”. It is this march, described as “shocking” by Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne, which is at the origin of the controversy and the question of the deputy.

The May 9 Committee (C9M) was created in 1994 after the accidental death of an activist, Sébastien Deyzieu, on the sidelines of a nationalist-revolutionary demonstration. At the time, young Parisian Lepenists supported this unitary initiative. But the May 9 Committee is above all linked to the GUD, an acronym behind which several generations of ultra-right activists have been found since the 1970s. The May 9 Committee organizes a tribute to Sébastien Deyzieu every year, its thematic character making it possible to bring together supporters of several small groups behind a common banner.

Month of May and far-right demonstrations

This commemoration, since 1994, has been added to several far-right meetings organized at the beginning of May. Since 1909, the Action française, nationalist and monarchist, organizes in Paris a political procession, parallel to the Johannine cultural festivals of Orléans. In 1979, this event expanded with the unprecedented participation of two rival far-right groups: the National Front of Jean-Marie Le Pen and the New Forces Party, to which the GUD was then linked.

🧶 Why and since when does the far right demonstrate in early May? pic.twitter.com/mqzOs95p90

— Laurent de Boissieu (@ldeboissieu) May 9, 2023

With one exception in 1983, the entire extreme right will find itself until 1987 behind the common banner of Joan of Arc, beyond the ideological incompatibilities which oppose, for example, counter-revolutionaries and nationalist-revolutionaries. This meeting was a valuable thermometer of far-right militancy and the balance of power between the different movements. Becoming hegemonic on the far right and seeking to distance itself from the small groups, the National Front (now National Rally) nevertheless decided in 1988 to organize its own procession on May 1, between the two rounds of the presidential election.

Groupuscular, the rest of the extreme right maintains its parades the following weekends. This was again the case, on Saturday May 7, of the reactionaries of the Civitas Institute. This will be the case, on May 14, for two other mobilities. On one side, traditionally Action Française, place de l’Opéra. On the other, several nationalist groups (notably from the French Work, dissolved in 2013), Place des Pyramides. After the instruction of Gérald Darmanin, these two demonstrations now risk being banned by the Paris police headquarters.

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