It is one more example of the capacity of the French far right to generate controversies based on trifles and mark the political and ideological agenda. The National Regrouping (RN) of Marine Le Pen has called on his supporters to boycott stores in the FNAC in this Christmas period. The reason for it? The fact that the culture and leisure chain sells a anti-fascist board game.
Leaders of the extreme right have raised a cry to heaven in recent weeks for Antifaa board game in which the different participants must collaborate to set up an anti-fascist collective. “Racism, sexism, nationalism. Stop! Against the extreme right: let’s play”, was the motto of this product devised by the anarchist publishing house and bookstore Libertalia. Initially it had been devised as a training tool for leftist militants, but since the end of 2021 it was sold in conventional stores and large chains such as the FNAC. It had gone quite unnoticed. Until the extreme right decided to argue about it.
Criticism of a multinational founded by Trotskyists
“Aren’t you doing well at FNAC?” MEP Jérôme Rivière, from Éric Zemmour’s ultranationalist and xenophobic formation Reconquista, tweeted at the end of November, commenting on an image of the game on the shelves of a multinational store. “Box 1: block a university. Box 2: I beat up a right-wing militant. Box 3: I attack an RN rally. Box 4: I throw a Molotov cocktail at riot officers. Aren’t you ashamed in the FNAC?” denounced a few days later the lepenist deputy, Grégoire de Fournaswho had already made headlines at the beginning of November for having told a representative of the left with black skin to “go to Africa”.
Box 1: “I block a university”
Box 2: “I beat up a right-wing activist”
Box 3: “I am attacking an RN meeting”
Box 4: “I am throwing a Molotov cocktail at the CRS”The @Fnac you have no shame ? pic.twitter.com/wlSY6eJFam
— Gregory of Fournas (@gdefournas) November 26, 2022
Police unions related to the extreme right also joined the campaign against the game, “by vindicating the anti-fascist groups, which destroy, burn and attack police officers during demonstrations.” First, the FNAC gave in to the pressure of the extreme right and its campaign full of exaggerations or directly falsehoods about the content of the product. At the end of November, he announced that he was stopping marketing it.
That decision generated some stupefaction in France. On the shelves of the FNAC, you can not only find books of all kinds, from famous far-right works, such as the my fight de Adolf Hitler The great replacement from Reanud Camus to all kinds of essays from the radical left. He was also surprised because FNAC had been founded by former Trotskyist militantsAmong them, Max Théret, who fought in the international brigades in the Spanish Civil War.
Demonization of anti-fascism
The multinational finally decided to rectify and announced last week that it would continue selling Antifa. “I ask all responsible consumers to do not frequent those stores where the game is distributed”, reacted after that decision Louis Aliot, mayor of Perpinyà and number three of the RN. In reality, this boycott of the ultras has been the victim of a “Streisand effect”. He has released the controversial product, which has already sold out all its stocks for this Christmas.
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The shot backfired on Lepenism. This episode showed, however, the ability of the extreme right to generate noise from trifles in order to advance its ideological pawns. The lethargic summer news had already been enlivened in France by a totally banal controversy about a course of karting in a prison in the Paris region, an activity considered unacceptable by Le Pen’s party. The ultras also tried to use the heinous murder of a teenager in October to promote her xenophobic views.
following the donald trump wake, the French extreme right has worked in recent years to demonize anti-fascist groups. These left-wing groups, which sometimes clash with the police in demonstrations, are also harshly criticized by the Republican right and some sectors of Macronism. The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, tried in recent years to outlawThere were several leftist organizations, such as the Lyon Anti-Fascist Group or Nantes Revolté. Frustrated attempts by Justice.