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While France marked Victory Day on 8 May, Europe Day on 9 May, and the National Memorial Day for Slavery and Its Abolitions on 10 May, two types of activists were getting ready to march: one made up of neo-Nazis, the other of anti-fascists.
The former are members of C9M, or Comité du 9 Mai, who regularly demonstrate with racist slogans in Paris and other French cities. Established in 1994, it commemorates Sébastien Deyzieu, a militant from the now-dissolved ultra-nationalist group L’Œuvre française, who died during a police pursuit.
The latter wants to denounce the growing action from these fascists, like the collective Marche sur les Fachos. “The C9M has become a barometer of the resurgence of the ultra-right,” they wrote in their call to march last week. “Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of participants in the march has only increased.”
Repression
Last minute, on the evening of 9 May, French authorities decided to ban the anti-fascist march, while the C9M march went ahead.
Volunteers had worked for weeks to prepare and advertise the anti-fascist march, only to be forced to change location and downsize it to a static meeting at Montparnasse.
“With other activists, we produced platforms on social media,” one volunteer told Byline Times, remaining anonymous as the movement has no hierarchy. “We held meetings, called for a march, wrote a press release…” Some clashed with members of C9M or with the police.
Members of anti-fascist groups are convinced that inaction or silence in the face of fascist groups is the worst response, but they face increasing repression.
Jeune Garde (young antifascist guard) and Urgence Palestine are, for instance, under attack by the Interior Minister, Bruno Retailleau, who wants to dissolve them.
Founded by the elected MP Raphaël Arnault, it has managed to get far-right and neo-Nazi groups to disband in cities like Lyon and Lille. The collective named Action Antifasciste Paris Vanlieue also saw many of its marches banned, notably in 2024.
For Eric Fassin, a sociologist teaching at University Paris 8-Saint-Denis, who published two books on the matter in 2024 — State Anti-Intellectualism and the Politics of Gender & Race and Misère de l’anti-intellectualisme — it is a worrying trend that fuels the far right.
“We’ve seen more generally the demonisation of the left, which is the counterpoint to the de-demonisation of the far right,” he told Byline Times.
It is something that has been the strategy of the US for a long time, but it has also become the strategy of Macron’s government, of Macron himself and of his party. They argue that the left is the real danger to democracy
Eric Fassin, sociologist
Colonial Undertone
For the anti-fascist groups, it is not acceptable that fascists demonstrate so close to Victory day, or to celebrate the victory against nazism without recognising the role of the colonial soldiers and the crimes committed by French authorities at the time.
May 8 marks the 80th anniversary of Victory Day in Europe, but in Algeria it commemorates the massacres in Setif, Guelma and Kherrata — on the same day in 1945 — where the French army fired on indigenous Muslim soldiers, demonstrating to demand their war pension as a retribution of their effort in the fight with the French Liberation Army led by Charles de Gaulle from central Africa then London. Evidence-based assessments estimate that up to 45,000 might have been killed and wounded on that day in French Algeria, including children and mothers bombed in their homes.
“It is impossible to celebrate this eightieth anniversary of the victory over Nazism without seeking to rescue from oblivion what happened in Algeria on that same 8 May and in the following days in Setif, Guelma, and Kherrata,” wrote author M’hamed Kaki and historian Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison in a peition signed by more than 2,000 people from both France and Algeria, including politicians (including Paris’s senator, Ian Brossat, left wing MPs Eric Coquerel and Elsa Faucillion), trade unionists, university professors and journalists.
On 10 May, trade unions, NGOs and anti-fascist groups held a Village Antifasciste in place du Panthéon in Paris, to highlight the risks coming from violent far-right groups. It was also attended by Extinction Rebellion, Solidarité, Attac, Jeune Garde and the collective La Horde.
“Of course, in the spirit of the village, the fight against the far right only makes sense if it’s within a broader framework of fighting the values of the far right,” one member of La Horde told Byline Times, anonymously. “So, in that context, the memory of Sétif, of 10 May, and all the dates surrounding that period definitely resonates with us.”
These calls come at a time of high tension between France and Algeria, which dramatically deteriorated last summer. Algeria has been accused of all number of evils in French media, which are increasingly under the control of Catholic conservative owners like Vincent Bolloré and Pierre-Édouard Stérin. Regular magazine covers and debates on their television channels, like CNews, accuse Algerians of spying, of being anti-French, of not being able to create a democracy at home, of being France’s eternal enemies and comparing them with the model former colonised people, Moroccans. Similar reports have appeared in weeklies, like Le Point and Challenge.
On 25 February, journalist Jean-Michel Aphatie compared on national radio the massacres of the hundreds of villagers by French soldiers in Algeria in the 19th century to that of Oradour-sur-Glane in France by the Nazis in 1945. He has since been harassed by the far right, by members of the hard right, and decided to quit his role at the radio station, RTL.
Aphatie was referring to the period when France colonised what is now Algeria, between 1830 and 1847, when brutal methods were used not only against the resisting army of Emir Abdelkader but against civilians, including burning villages and forced displacements. These crimes are less known in France than the torture and violence used during the decolonial war, between 1954 and 1962.
According to the historian Alain Ruscio, author of The First Algerian War, Aphatie has only