As he had announced on November 28, in the wake of the clashes in a town in southeastern France, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin confirmed the dissolution of the far-right group Martel Division at the Council of Ministers on Wednesday, December 6. The neonazi group was accused of propagating "ideas justifying discrimination and hatred against foreign people or French people from an immigrant background" and organizing "punitive operations" against people from African or North African immigrant backgrounds, according to the decree.
Several of the group's militants were present in Romans-sur-Isère on November 25, where they had planned to attack residents of the Monnaie neighborhood, which is home to some of the young people suspected of being involved in the fatal brawl in neighboring Crépol on the night of November 18, when a teenager, Thomas, 16, was stabbed to death.
The Martel Division, which had been under scrutiny by French intelligence services for several months, is part of a burgeoning network of similar organizations, stemming from France's radical identitarians or extreme Catholics. These groups are believers of racist conspiracy theories, such as that of the "great replacement" of white, Catholic European populations by those from African and North African immigrant backgrounds, and they champion violence as the only means of winning this "race war" to which they aspire. The dissolution decree states that "the group organizes combat training" and "promotes the use of [non-firearm] weapons in the confrontations that it encourages."
'Confront the enemy'
Just a few dozen members strong, most of whom are based in Paris, the Martel Division – which was briefly called Légionnaires Paris – is partly the continuation of another group, Zouaves Paris. This organization was dissolved in January 2022 for the same reasons, notably following an attack on anti-racist activists at a December 2021 campaign rally by far-right pundit Eric Zemmour in Villepinte, just north of Paris. It is also close to the Paris branch of the Group for Union and Defense (GUD) in Paris, another violent far-right group that was very active in the 1970s, and which re-formed a few months ago.
Active since the autumn of 2022, the Martel Division used neo-Nazi symbols such as the Celtic cross and the slogan "Europe, youth, revolution", which skinheads would chant in the 1980s and 90s. In October 2022, a video was shared among nationalist circles, showing a number of militants, identified as members of the Martel Division, chasing young people who were portrayed as drug dealers, in a park in Rouen, Normandy, the hometown of the alleged Martel Division leader, Léo R.-P.
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