Under fire for allowing neo-Nazi rally, French Interior Minister Darmanin looks to ban them

Issued on: 09/05/2023 – 20:03Modified: 09/05/2023 – 20:37

“We will let the courts decide if case law allows these demonstrations,” Darmanin told the National Assembly, parliament’s lower house.

The march saw several hundred members of far-right groups marching with flags and chanting slogans to commemorate the 1994 death of a far-right activist, Sebastien Deyzieu. 

The rally passed through an upmarket Left Bank district of Paris and was authorised by city authorities, with police seen patrolling nearby.

Allowing the march drew a fresh round of criticism at a time when authorities have clamped down on people banging pots and pans or heckling members of the government at protests against President Emmanuel Macron’s pension reform.

Some regions even banned “portable noisemaking devices” to shield Macron from the noise. 

By Monday the Paris police force and Darmanin himself were facing questions over why a march of around 600 neo-Nazis through the streets of the capital was allowed.

Senator David Assouline of the Socialist Party called on Darmanin to “explain yourself”.

“It’s unacceptable to have allowed 500 neo-Nazis and fascists parade in the heart of Paris. Their organisations, the display of their ideology, slogans, insignias are as much an insult to the dead as an incitement to racial hatred,” he wrote on Twitter.

(FRANCE 24 with Reuters and AFP)