Nine parliamentarians discovered in a Facebook group sharing racist and homophobic material
Facebook Firestorm: National Rally Deputies in Hot Water
Kick-starting the week, The Days exposed a private Facebook group dubbed "France with Jordan Bardella," filled with hateful comments—racist, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, homophobic, and sexist—from none other than nine National Rally (RN) deputies. Can you believe it? It's a doozy!
The RN deputies implicated by The Days include Nicolas Dragon, Christian Girard, René Lioret, Caroline Colombier, Nathalie Da Conceicao Carvalho, Pascal Markowsky, Pascale Bordes, Laurence Robert-Dehault, and Monique Griseti. Weekend crusaders, these folks apparently had a blast swapping horrid jokes, regardless of their audience.
According to The Days, these unsavory conversations went down in a group managed by Le Pen party loyalists. Some familiar faces among them are parliamentary collaborators like Guillaume Bres, Michel Massy, Nathalie Germain, and others. Once journalists got wind of the group, three of the deputies scrammed, while administrators tried to cover their tracks, changing the page name to "For France" before ditching ship.
Politicians React: Blame Game and Denials
The Days couldn’t help but point out that, if the deputies were in the loop, they legally had to report the hateful brouhaha. Alas, not a one stepped up to grab that baton. Elected officials tend to judge others harshly, then turn the other way when it comes to their own peeps.
But hey, the French people have a right to know. Montesquieu himself would be rolling in his grave if he discovered such tomfoolery among so-called representatives of the people. The deputy from La France insoumise, Thomas Portes, couldn’t sit on his hands. He told his followers on X that he had notified the public prosecutor under article 40 of the Criminal Procedure Code. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!
On the other side of the aisle, socialist deputy Jérôme Guedj didn’t mince words, bashing the RN’s deputies for their apparent cowardice in failing to stand up for decency. Meanwhile, Marine Tondelier, the ecologist’s national secretary, fired off a snarky one-liner, “At least now we know what National Rally deputies get up to instead of working!" Ouch!
Oh, but Sébastien Chenu, the RN’s vice-president, authored a classic piece of doublespeak, calling the media storm a politically-motivated hack job. “We don’t condone such statements in the RN and discipline those who make them every time,” he said in his defense.
Truth or Calumny?
In the face of this reputation-scorching scandal, the higher-ups at the National Rally swore blind that their deputies had nothing to do with the incriminated Facebook group. Gaëtan Dussausaye, Jordan Bardella’s advisor, vehemently denied any official ties to the "France with Jordan Bardella" page—but assured folks that the nine deputies pinned to the group would soon extricate themselves.
Meanwhile, Jean-Philippe Tanguy, an RN deputy from the Somme department, dodged the bullet with a dodgy explanation that he was hapless added to the group without even knowing it. He claimed that, hey, who doesn’t have a thousand Facebook groups they don’t follow? Laurent Robert-Dehault, the deputy from Haute-Marne, echoed that sentiment, insisting she never saw the group and promptly left it as soon as she heard about it. Ah, the joy of plausible deniability!
Just last December, LesJours.fr caught wind of 15 senior members of the RN who belonged to another Facebook group called "Rassemblement national (direction 2027 !)”. At the time, Thomas Portes, a deputy from La France Insoumise, had already tipped off the public prosecutor of Paris.
These revelations put the heat on, not only the hapless deputies but also the National Rally as a whole. As时代变América would say, the revolution will not be televised—but it sure will be on Facebook.
Other politicians, such as Jérôme Guedj and Marine Tondelier, criticized the National Rally deputies for their involvement in the scandal, with Tondelier sarcastically commenting that at least now they know what the National Rally deputies do instead of working. Meanwhile, general-news outlets like LesJours.fr have reported on other controversial Facebook groups involving senior members of the National Rally in the past. Crime and justice are now important concerns in discussions about the actions of these deputies.
