Gaullist French presidential candidate endorses far-right “Great Replacement†conspiracy theory
-
Loading... - Morgan Web
- 01 Mar 2022
- 387 Views
- 0 Like
- 0 Comment
Valerie Pécresse, the presidential candidate for the Gaullist Republican Party (Les Républicains, LR) in the April 2022 French presidential election, has become embroiled in controversy after she opened her campaign by invoking violent neo-fascist conspiracy theories.
At a public appearance on February 13 at the Zenith stadium to launch her campaign, she said: “In ten years’ time, will we still be the seventh power in the world? Will we still be a sovereign nation or an auxiliary of the United States, a pawn of China? Will we be a nation united, or torn apart? Faced with these vital questions, we do not give up to blind fate. Neither to a great replacement nor a great loss of our rank. I am calling you to urgent action.”
Amid mounting controversy over her remarks, Pécresse has unconvincingly claimed her reference to the theory had been misconstrued. However, other parts of her speech also contained unambiguous appeals to the traditions of collaboration with Nazism. She said: “I want French people from the heart, and not just paper Frenchmen.” Pécresse also took aim at France’s multi-million Muslim minority, provocatively stating: “Marianne [the personification of France] is not a veiled woman.”
These are unambiguous appeals to political racism. The “great replacement” theory is championed by the far-right in Europe and internationally. It falsely asserts that the majority white population is the victim of “genocide” due to immigration from African, Middle Eastern, and Asian countries.
Most infamously, before he murdered 49 Muslims in the Christchurch terror attacks in 2019 in New Zealand, white supremacist Brendon Tarrant published a white supremacist manifesto, which he titled “The Great Replacement.”
The origin of the term “great replacement” is attributed to French author Renaud Camus. Camus is now a supporter of far-right presidential candidate Eric Zemmour, who was convicted of inciting racial hatred in 2011 and 2022, and of inciting hatred against Muslims in 2018. Camus’ theory asserts that “replacist elites,” who are often implied to be Jewish, aim to replace the white population with African and Arab immigrants, a process Camus calls “genocide by substitution.”
Pécresse’s attacks on “paper Frenchmen” also place her campaign speech unmistakably in the traditions of fascistic appeals to political racism. This term is forever associated in its use by anti-Semites, from those who supported the false conviction of Jewish officer Captain Alfred Dreyfus in 1894 to defenders of the Nazi-collaborationist Vichy French regime in World War II.
In 1894, far-right writer Charles Maurras, convicted of treason in 1944 for supporting Vichy French dictator Philippe Pétain, denounced naturalization papers as the “prey of any barbarian.”
The term “paper Frenchmen” became more widely used after the infamous Holy Union between Maurrassian far-right nationalists and social democrats to support World War I. After the October 1917 proletarian revolution in Russia and amid the French takeover of Alsace after the Allied victory over Germany, the term was associated with attempts to stir up French nationalism and divide the working class. In 1922, the nationalist newspaper Le Journal denounced naturalized Alsatians as “paper Frenchmen” with a “heart that remained German.”
Jean-Marie Le Pen, the father of National Rally (RN) candidate Marine Le Pen and founder of the modern French far-right movement, often counterposed the “real French” to those who received “naturalization of convenience.” Read More…
