National Rally party leader Jordan Bardella will look to designate Antifa and related ultra-leftist groups as banned terror organisations in France should he and Marine Le Pen come to power at the presidential election.
Appearing on CNews alongside former government minister Philippe de Villiers, Mr Bardella warned that the far-left in the form of La France Insoumise (LFI/France in Rebellion) presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon are pushing the country towards “civil war” and that groups like Antifa serve as their “armed wing” on the streets to sow chaos and destruction.
Bardella, who has been tapped by National Rally presidential candidate Marine Le Pen to serve as her prime minsiter should she win the election to replace Emmanuel Macron next spring, said that if he becomes the head of government, he will call on the European Union to “include ‘Antifa’ militias and all far-left organisations on the list of terrorist organisations.”
He argued that it is necessary to curtail the ability of the far-left to foment violence on the streets in order to protect the right of “decent, law-abiding people to demonstrate calmly and peacefully.”
In addition to looking to proscribe Antifa and their radical fellow travellers, Bardella said that he would look to ban those on security watch lists from participating in protests, “much like football hooligans”.
“I call upon the French people to be wary of those who preach civil war, those who seek to erase France, and those who wish to replace its identity. We have seen this manifest in the streets of Paris: a convergence involving a proxy—an armed wing, if you will—consisting of the ‘ultra-left.’ This group, which maintains certain ties to deputies from La France Insoumise, ought to be classified as a terrorist organisation,” he said.
“The far-left has effectively become the armed wing of La France Insoumise, and the predators from the suburbs—whose desire for revenge against France is fuelled and stirred up by La France Insoumise. I am, therefore, extremely concerned about the conduct of this party. And let me tell you: Jean-Luc Mélenchon is highly intelligent; he knows exactly what he is doing,” Bardella added.
The National Rally leader also warned of the authoritarian impulses of the Mélenchonist party, citing recent calls from LFI lawmakers for conservative-leaning media, such as CNews, to be banned by the government for supposedly spreading racism.
Bardella also pointed to recent comments from Saint Denis Mayor Bally Bagayoko, who has called for the National Rally to be barred from speaking publicly. Bagayoko, who has likened himself to the architect of the Terror, Maximilien Robespierre, said last month that politicians should be censored “from the moment they make racist remarks.”
“We are looking at a political movement—one that could, in fact, reach the second round of a presidential election—that does not love France, that opposes anything even remotely associated with France, and that is driven by a totalitarian impulse. When one seeks to shut down a television channel like CNews, one is acting on a totalitarian impulse,” Bardella warned.
The National Rally leader has long warned about the convergence of La France Insoumise and radical Antifa-style groups, notably following the death of conservative university student Quentin Déranque earlier this year allegedly at the hands of an ultra-left group in Lyon founded by LFI lawmaker Raphaël Arnault, who are alleged to have beaten the 23-year-old to death on the sidelines of a protest at the Sciences Po university. Two former parliamentary assistants to Arnault were among those arrested in connection to the killing.
Following the apparent Antifa killing, Bardella called on all other parties to pledge to refuse to partner with the LFI, as President Emmanuel Macron’s faction did in 2024 to prevent the National Rally from taking power in the National Assembly.
Bardella is not alone in calling for the ban on Antifa, with Nice Mayor Éric Ciotti making the same demand following last month’s riots, which authorities said were stoked by around 5,000 hard-left activists and their co-belligerents from ethnic minority and often Muslim enclaves. Mr Ciotti warned that the country was facing a “French Intifada” backed by groups like Antifa and ‘narco-Islamist’ migrant crime clans.
Four Antifa groups in Europe were designated as terror organisations by the Trump administration in the United States last year, however, none of such groups were based in France.
