Who is the “Furie Française” small group in Toulouse?
The mayor of Toulouse, Jean-Luc Moudenc, announced on Tuesday that he was breastfeeding ask the Minister of the Interior to dissolve the small group “Furie Française”
. This small group presents itself on the social network Instagram as a “militant collective”, “a community youth movement, Toulouse and rooted”. It has less than 3000 subscribers.
The movement changed its name in November 2021, “La meute” is renamed “French Fury”, the collective was born nine months after the dissolution of the far-right group Génération Identitaire. This small group participated in the sticking of stickers against the sanitary pass in particular, denounced through banners “wildness, scum”, in September 2022, it filled the fountain of the Public Garden at the Grand Rond with red dye for state the innocuousness, deposit leaflets in the mailboxes of university residences at Paul Sabatier, but difficult to know who composes it, how many are there, or who finances them.
Reminiscence of the identity ultra-right
The former Toulouse figure of Generation Identity, Thaïs d’Escufon, is she one of them? Thomas Portes, LFI deputy for Seine-Saint-Denis, originally from Tarn, president of the National Observatory of the far right, asks himself the question. “Furie Furieuse is reminiscent of Génération Identitaire, as we are seeing in other cities in France at the moment reconstitutions, under other names, of small groups, of ultra-right movements.
The MP tabled a motion for a resolution for a commission of inquiry into far-right groups in the country. He wants us to identify who is behind these small groups and who feeds them and finances them. Toulouse’s Thaïs d’Escufon was the former spokesperson for the ultra-right Generation Identity movement, dissolved in May 2021. The young activist was given a suspended prison sentence for her anti-migrant actions. She had received support from presidential candidate Eric Zemmour on Twitter.
These small groups seem to address the youth and advocate the values of virility, patriotism, claim Christian roots, patriotism. They seem geared towards the idea that the race war has begun and that we must organize to resist.
Pierre Lacaze, elected communist opposition in Toulouse recalls that the far right is present and for a long time in Toulouse, in different forms, and that it must be taken very seriously. According to him, “Furie Française” is close to the Manif pour Tous, the Conservative Movement (ex “common sense”). “We must not forget that not so long ago, a journalist from France Television was attacked during a demonstration in Civitas. Fundamentalist Catholics configured against a show that had been programmed at the Théâtre de Garonne.
the political scientist Jean-Yves Camus mentions to him several far-right movements, whose presence has been noted in Toulouse depending on the era: L’Œuvre française, an ultra-nationalist far-right French political movement founded in 1968; the GUD (Groupe Union Défense), a far-right French student organization renowned for its violent actions; nationalists with the Toulouse lawyer Pierre-Marie Bonneau, activist and lecturer, as a central figure. He denounces in Toulouse, the fact that “cvery year, people pay homage in the municipal cemetery of Terre-Cabade to the former Toulouse magistrate Pierre Lespinasse. He was under Vichy at the head of a special section responsible for sending to the guillotine Marcel Langer, Polish Jewish internationalist, one of the figures of the resistance.”
In the early 2010s, the former “Bloc Identitaire” was active in Toulouse with a local. One of the members, Mathieu Clique, was convicted in 2017 of assaulting a young Chilean student in 2012 during clashes between Bloc Identitaire and anti-fascist activists in the Arnaud Bernard district.
The equivalent in the Tarn of “French Fury”: Patria Albiges
In the Tarn, LFI MP Karen Erodi she asks for the dissolution of the far-right group Patria Albiges. This small group also seems to come from Génération Identitaire. Several attacks, racist tags are attributed to him. The members of Patria Albiges are present on social networks only in the demonstrations. “I asked the prefect of Tarn for the dissolution of this group“explains Karen Erodi, “but he replied that there were not enough complaints for rather serious acts against them, even if the authorities remain attentive. I asked that we monitor the exit of schools, because their members recruit young people, meet in bars for all to see.”
The members of Patria Albiges were accused of having tagged a high school in Albi, swastikas and Celtic crosses in front of the entrance to the Bellevue school complex. Following the aggression of two student unionists, in the Tarn prefecture, in 2021, the former LREM deputy Marie-Christine Verdier-Jouclas had already demanded the dissolution of this same group from the Ministry of the Interior. A renewed request after the participation of the small group in an identity procession during a demonstration in Paris against the health pass. Journalists had been attacked.