A prominent French far-right figure is backing out of a highly-anticipated speech to CPAC over after former Trump aide Steve Bannon ended his own remarks with what critics described as a Nazi salute.
Jordan Bardella, the 29-year-old far-right Frenchman making waves online, was slated to grace the American right-wing convention with a Friday speech on U.S.-France relations and the “recent electoral dynamic of patriot parties in Europe.”
But Bannon's gesture — which he denies was inspired by German fascism — crossed a line, Bardella said.
“Yesterday, while I was not present in the room, one of the speakers out of provocation allowed himself a gesture alluding to Nazi ideology. I therefore took the immediate decision to cancel my speech that had been scheduled this afternoon,” Bardella said in a statement, per France 24.
Bannon is the latest MAGA figure to throw the salute, joining billionaire Elon Musk and ex-Anglican priest Calvin Robinson, which some have defended as mere trolling.
But that defense is not flying in France, where Bardella is president of the far-right National Rally party, founded by Holocaust denier Jean-Marie Le Pen. Le Pen’s daughter, Marine Le Pen, spent a decade at the party’s helm trying to rehabilitate the party’s image by denouncing Nazism and the Holocaust.
Bardella’s party won a plurality of votes cast in France’s 2024 legislative election but was locked out of government when other parties formed a coalition to keep them from obtaining power.
Bannon, in response to the cancellation, called Bardella “unworthy of leading France," telling a reporter for France’s Le Point newspaper that he was a “boy, not a man.”
“I did that exact same wave at Front National [the former title of National Rally] seven years ago when I gave a speech to them,” Bannon said, denying the gesture was a “Nazi salute.”
Read more
about Steve Bannon