The leader of the right-wing Les Républicains (LR), who allied himself with the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) last week causing his party to try to oust him, on Wednesday, June 18, disowned one of the candidates he had nominated after it was reported he had posted hateful comments online.
Eric Ciotti said he no longer supported Louis-Joseph Gannat, who had been running in a northeastern district of Meurthe-et-Moselle using his wife's surname Pecher. "Several social media accounts used under a pseudonym attributed to him include anti-Semitic, homophobic or foul-mouthed remarks," Ciotti said.
The website StreetPress reported that Gannat on Wednesday confirmed that he was behind an account on X, deleted the day before, that published such comments.
"The union of the right that we are calling for (...) must precisely block torrents of hatred, anti-Semitism and violence carried by the hard left," Ciotti said. The parties "are withdrawing their support and mobilizing all legal means to sanction this individual," he added.
Earlier on Wednesday, the RN also withdrew support from a candidate who wrote an anti-Semitic post in 2018 about the Holocaust.
Macron on Wednesday denounced the "scourge of anti-Semitism" after authorities charged two 13-year-old boys with the gang rape of a 12-year-old Jewish girl in a Paris suburb. The attack, suspected to have been motivated by anti-Semitism, has shocked the Jewish community and added to tensions ahead of the snap election that could bring the RN to power for the first time.