It is a reversal made in the space of twenty-four hours. Fnac announced, Tuesday, November 29, to resume the sale of the board game Antifa withdrawn the day before from its shelves after criticisms formulated on Twitter, coming in particular from the far right. The trade sign finally estimated that the game did not include “nothing likely to justify a refusal to market it”.
“Not knowing the exact content of this game and pending a thorough verification, our teams have decided as a precaution to suspend the sale”, advance Tuesday the Fnac in a press release. But “Since yesterday, we have taken the time to thoroughly analyze the content of the game”said the distributor to justify its reversal.
The chain of stores has therefore “decided to lift the suspension and resume the sale of the game”, “in accordance with its mission as a cultural broadcaster that markets everything authorized by law, in the spirit that has always been its of freedom and diversity”.
Outcry on the far right
“This weekend, the Fnac teams were alerted by our customers about the Antifa game, which had not been referenced at group level, but which certain Fnac stores had decided to put on the shelves, as they have freedom”explains the distributor.
On Sunday, the Syndicate of Commissioners of the National Police (SCPN) had notably criticized Fnac, accusing it of “highlight the antifas, who break, set fire to and attack in the demonstrations”.
Several elected officials from the National Rally (RN) had also challenged the distributor on this game published by Libertalia editions. “Case 1: “I block a university”; Case 2: “I beat up a right-wing activist”; Box 3: “I am attacking an RN meeting”; Case 4: “I throw a Molotov cocktail at the CRS”. Fnac, aren’t you ashamed? », tweeted, Sunday, Grégoire de Fournas, deputy (RN) of Gironde, recently excluded from the National Assembly for fifteen days, after having made racist remarks there.
The chain of stores thus justified its decision to withdraw the game from its site by explaining that it understood that it could ” to hit “ certain audiences.
Imagined by La Horde, an anti-fascist collective that calls itself “edgy, unruly and supportive”the game was designed and used for two years as an activist training tool, before being released in September 2021, which had already sparked the indignation of a part of the extreme right. The first 4,000 copies sold out within a month, and Fnac sold 15% of the total, according to Libertalia.
Reissued at the beginning of November in a simplified form, it offers players the role of militants tasked with thwarting the “far right abuses” by opposing them “a resistance of equal or greater forces”. “At no time does the game glorify harm to people”, justified its author, who calls himself Hervé de la Horde, to the Monde Monday, refuting far-right accusations.
In any case, the case gave this little-known game a new spotlight, so much so that Libertalia indicated on Monday afternoon that the new edition of the game for sale on its site was sold out. The publisher said Tuesday on its site to have launched a reprint and be able to deliver new copies in January.