RN Congress in Orléans: around a hundred anti-fascist activists gathered despite the bans

Around a hundred anti-fascist activists gathered on Sunday in Orléans, far from the National Rally congress secured by the police, where Marine Le Pen is due to deliver her first major campaign speech in the afternoon. The prefecture had banned all gatherings on Sunday over a large area in Orléans, as well as in several surrounding towns. The demonstrators therefore gathered outside this area, in front of the administrative detention center (CRA).

Shortly after 1 p.m., these anti-fascist activists were gathered under the eyes of the police, about four kilometers from the Co'Met, the 10,000-seat arena where the boss of the RN, Marine Le Pen, intends to take a new step in her campaign for the presidential election. The procession chanted “R for racists, N for Nazis, down, down, down with the RN” or “It’s not the immigrants, it’s not the undocumented immigrants. It’s the fascists who need to be fired,” noted journalists.

Demonstration in peace

For Fleur, 29, "we cannot let a fascist party hold a congress as if nothing had happened, as if it were a classic and ordinary party." “We are in a place which is not part of the prefecture’s prohibited perimeter” which refused “seven proposals” for routes, declared Delphine, a member of the Ciao Fachos collective who did not wish to give her name. “We underwent checks and searches,” she lamented, the day after an anti-RN demonstration which peacefully brought together between 13,000 and 26,000 people depending on the sources. This undeclared gathering aims to “say that we will never let the National Rally and all the fascists come to any city in France, Europe and the whole world,” she added.

Since Saturday morning, 3,000 police officers and gendarmes have been deployed and traffic has been banned in Orléans, which looks like a city under siege. The mayor of Orléans Serge Grouard indicated on Saturday that he feared “excesses” on Sunday after “calls for unauthorized gatherings whose slogan is to get closer” to the place where the RN congress is being held.