Worldwide, neo-Nazism is alive and well. After Elon Musk's Nazi salute, here comes Nazism glamorized by American singer and rapper Kanye West, who, unlike the South African-born billionaire and close associate of Donald Trump, is happy to loudly proclaim his convictions. In Germany, the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party, polling in second place in the February 23 federal elections, cultivates historical revisionism and maintains ambiguity by using slogans borrowed from the Third Reich. Neo-Nazi ideology is on the rise in the US – notably under the influence of the now-disbanded Atomwaffen Division terrorist group – in Germany, but also in the UK, where it is riding on the wave of anti-migrant violence of summer 2024, in Scandinavia and Eastern Europe.

France, on the other hand, seems to be escaping the trend, for now at least. It's a paradox that experts can't really explain: While far-right ideology is everywhere in French public debate and on social media; in the courts, the reality of this threat is declining. While the National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor's Office (PNAT) has opened an average of two investigations a year for this category since its creation (two in 2017 and then in 2018, three in 2019, one in 2020, four in 2021, three in 2022, two in 2023), it opened no new ones in 2024. Among the cases brought before the court, there was only one that came under the criminal court's jurisdiction: This was "Projet Waffenkraft," trialed in June 2023, where a group of four young men, including a former gendarme and a monarchist, wanted to target a mosque, a suburban train station, a French Communist Party office, the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions, etc.

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