The Minister responsible for the Fight against Discrimination, Aurore Bergé, attracted criticism even in her own camp on Thursday for having invoked “freedom of expression” on the subject of the far-right conspiracy theory of the “great replacement”, refusing to qualify it as “racist”.
Pressed on CNews on Wednesday to say whether this theory was, in her opinion, racist, the Macronist minister evaded the question several times, before responding: “No, I don’t think it’s a theory…”, leaving her sentence hanging.
She said she was “fighting” this theory, according to which mass immigration desired by the elites replaces the white and Christian population of Europe. It is “factually false”, “even false because it seeks to create a breeding ground of fear in our country”, she added.
Thursday, on franceinfo, she considered that the debate on this subject “is part of freedom of expression”. “And so I believe that classifying it as racist would mean that we do not have the right to debate it. Me, I prefer to fight,” she pleaded.
“In the same way that I do not comply with the false and misleading theories of the extreme right, I also do not comply with the injunctions of the extreme left which consider that public debate means the censorship of public debate,” she affirmed again Thursday afternoon at a press conference after the council of ministers, emphasizing that this theory “does not fall within the scope of the law”.
“A guilty complacency”
“Eh? Aurore Bergé, are you explaining that a racist theory is debated like a political opinion? Racism is an OFFENSE,” MP Prisca Thevenot, a member like her of the presidential Renaissance party, challenged her on the X network. “The ‘great replacement’ is not a debate: it is a conspiracy theory, which motivated terrorist attacks,” added this close friend of presidential candidate Gabriel Attal.
The reaction of the Attalist elected official sparked a wave of support… on the left.
“It’s rare. But, on this one, Prisca Thevenot is completely right. How can Ms. Bergé remain Minister of Discrimination while saying that the great replacement is not a racist theory?”, supported the coordinator of La France insoumise Manuel Bompard, still on X.
MP Aurélien Rousseau, close to social democratic presidential candidate Raphaël Glucksmann, also shared this “indignation”. “It is a guilty complacency to trivialize the pseudo theory of the ‘great replacement’ which is unvarnished racism,” he said.
Theory introduced in 2010
Investment banker Matthieu Pigasse, who is also considering a left-wing candidacy, warned that “by running behind the extreme right, they are trivializing its words, obsessions and now racism.”
Maud Bregeon, government spokesperson, deplored after the council of ministers a “very bad trial” against Aurore Bergé, who according to her “affirmed principles and values of great clarity” and “recalled the state of the law”.
The theory of the great replacement was introduced in 2010 by the French writer Renaud Camus, who claimed that “native” French people were being replaced by non-European peoples with the complicity of “the elites”.
This thesis is refuted by most scientists. In its 2022 edition, the CNCDH describes it as a “fantasy” and believes that “the term ‘great replacement’ has given the old xenophobic discourse new vigor, by combining it with identity arguments”.
