Anti-pass demonstrations in Lyon: 50 shades of the far right
According to its spokesperson, the Lyon pour la Liberté collective – which organizes the main anti-pass demonstrations in Lyon every Saturday – is an apolitical group. However, we find in its processions a large part of the galaxy of the radical far right in Lyon.
“We are apolitical. “We are a citizen collective”, “We are unitary and a-partisan”. This is basically how Thibault Pillet describes his collective, Lyon pour la Liberté, in numerous interviews given in the Lyon press. Since the end of October, every Saturday, the young leader of the collective has organized the main demonstration in Lyon against the health pass – now the vaccination pass – declared in the prefecture. At the beginning of 2022, its processions bring together between 1,000 and 2,000 people according to the Rhône prefecture and between 3,000 and 4,000 according to the organizers.
However, on closer inspection, the apolitical qualifier seems to apply badly to both the Lyon pour la Liberté collective and the demonstrations it organizes. In fact, we find in its processions almost the entire galaxy of the radical far right in Lyon.
A former executive of Lyon’s identity with a megaphone
“Neither one, nor two, nor third dose”, at the head of the anti-pass procession, grabbing the megaphone alongside Thibault Pillet, we find Gérald Pichon. He is no stranger to Lyon street politics. At the end of the 2000s, he was one of the main executives of “Rebeyne”, the Lyon extension of Identity Youth (an organization that preceded Génération Identitaire). We still find traces of the passage of this forty year old at La Traboule on the old site of the identity bloc of Lyon. In 2013, he presented, in the local identity of Lyon located in Old Lyon, a book on “anti-white racism”. In the tweet below, he’s on the far right of the large photo.
“I don’t know the CVs of all the people who are in the demonstration. Mr. Pichon came to help me, he found a good atmosphere, that’s why he uses the megaphone. He never spoke to me about identity and there are no identity slogans in our demonstrations ”, is indignant Thibault Pillet contacted by Rue89Lyon, who does not wish to say more on the subject.
In a previous article, we also noted the presence of Adrien Lassale, another executive of the now dissolved radical far-right association Génération identitaire alongside the Lyon pour la Liberté collective, which was not yet an organizer of the main anti-pass demonstrations (see box).
Several anti-pass demonstrations in Lyon
If, today, the anti-pass demonstration organized by Lyon for freedom is the biggest, this has not always been the case. The collective that historically organized these demonstrations was the collective “Contre la Coronafolie”, close to Florian Philippot. He finally got outdated by Lyon pour la Liberté, as we told them in this article. This collective still manifests itself in Lyon but only brings together a few dozen people each Saturday. Anti-pass demonstrations organized by collectives of the left and yellow vests also existed in Lyon. They took on a few colors at the start of the year, bringing together several hundred people on January 8.
The Guignol Squad as an unofficial order service
In a previous report, we noted the presence of an official order service within the January 22 anti-pass demonstration. The young men who made it up wore, unlike most of the demonstrators, surgical masks, neck warmers, even for some – more rare – balaclavas. As the demonstrators monopolized the road, they marched on the sidewalks and watched for potential attackers at every corner.
It was the Guignol Squad, as will be indicated, the next day, a photo and a message posted on the Telegram group “Ouest Casual” – a channel which gathers more than 14,000 followers and disseminates identity and neo-Nazi propaganda as well only assault videos.
Formed during the Yellow Vests, the Guignol Squad is an informal grouping of neo-fascist, identity and hooligan activists, which claims strong actions, particularly against activists deemed anti-fascist. It is the latter who are also targeted in the Telegram post.
“This Saturday, mobilization against the health pass. […] After an afternoon at [les antifas, ndlr] search in the Part-Dieu district and on the peninsula, a group will finally be spotted in the middle of Bellecour. Fortunately for them, they will flee in the direction of a police car when they see us arrive, Wednesday’s lesson seems to have been integrated. Run as long as you can, we will never be done hunting you down”.
Questioned on the subject, Thibault Pillet did not wish to answer our questions concerning the presence of the Guignol Squad within his demonstration.
The Student Cockade: procession in the Lyon anti-pass demo
Distinctly separated from the rest of the demonstration by a banner “health dictatorship, refractory youth”, the Lyon Student Cockade was also present within the Lyon anti-pass demonstration in the January 22 demonstration.
This far-right student association, particularly close to Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, claims to fight “cultural leftism” in universities and prides itself on being the only student organization to be involved in the anti-pass fight. Some of these members also is part of the security service of Eric Zemmour during his meeting in Villepinte.
In the megaphone, on Sinisha Uroŝ, young candidate in the Crous elections for the Lyon student badge. Placed in front of the banner, he animated a group of about twenty people with a lot of slogans and smoke bombs.
The fundamentalists of Civitas: regularly in the anti-pass demos in Lyon
Also note the presence of the fundamentalist Catholic political party Civitas within the demonstrations of Lyon for Freedom.
In the Lyon anti-pass demonstrations, unlike the Cocarde, the members of Civitas do not form visible processions and their presence is more punctual. And for good reason: the manager of Civitas Rhône-Alpes, David Brossard, is based in Villefranche-sur-Saône.
However, he is regularly found at the head of the anti-pass processions of Lyon for Freedom. In August, he took part in a fight with anti-fascite militants, which had earned a trial for seven of them.
Within the Lyon anti-pass demonstration, Civitas activists sometimes carry signs with the name of their organization. One of them, already pinned in the press, represent several political figures such as Emmanuel Macron, Olivier Véran, or Edouard Philippe, overlooked by the figure of Bill Gates. An image that expresses a conspiratorial vision of French politics, led by an American elite.
Despite all these elements, Thibault Pillet refuses to recognize that his anti-pass collective may have any connection with the radical far right in Lyon. At the conclusion of our exchanges, he also declared that he no longer wanted to communicate with Rue89Lyon, describing our articles as defamatory.
Lyon for Freedom will demonstrate again on Saturday January 29 in the streets of Lyon.
