Who is Grégoire de Fournas, the openly racist deputy of the RN?

Freshly elected deputy of the National Rally for the fifth constituency of Gironde, Grégoire de Fournas presented himself to the press as a “child of the country”. The one who joined the National Front in 2011 knowingly omitted to specify his penchant for the worst xenophobic speeches. His social media posts, quickly deleted after the outcry caused by his racist remarks against MP Carlos Martens Bilongo, reveal the ordinary racism of the far right, undermining the alleged “demonization” of Marine Le Pen’s party.

On October 22, 2017, Grégoire de Fournas commented on a tweet from the right-hander Julien Aubert relating to a “third way” in terms of migration policy, or, according to him, “the Republic that welcomes all those who love France” (sic). “In Africa, they all love France and its allowances. We welcome all of Africa? !”choked the far-right elected official.

In response to “Herwan Bisca”, a regular Twitter user, he also wrote on September 17, 2019: “Does that shock anyone? Do I also have the right to ask myself if in Lormont [une commune du département de la Gironde, NDLR] , for example, there are still blanks left, because I don’t want to be the only one there? If Herwan wants to be with black people, he can go to Africa…”. And the list is still long.

Africa, migrants are at the heart of part of the speeches he has held since 2015 as elected opposition FN in the Gironde department. On a Twitter video (« We don’t want these migrants in the Médoc »he lets go, before calling to sign a petition launched by him, denouncing “the explosion in the number of unaccompanied foreign minors”.

Three years earlier, the frontist, this time hostile to the reception of 36 exiles, spits in the hemicycle: “When you see war refugees, we see above all illegal immigrants, who come to France for economic reasons because this departmental council, among many others, sets up real suction pumps that make this country a real El Dorado. social « relays Rue89 Bordeaux, March 17, 2017.

The same year, the online investigative media posted on its Youtube account [vidéo : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQlY2jpqVG0] a public intervention by Jacques Breillat, then president of the right-wing opposition group on the departmental council, reading aloud, with supporting screenshots, the racist and anti-Semitic comments of Grégoire de Fournas’ Facebook friends that he did not had not seen fit to delete. « It’s going to be disgusting, we’re going to be invaded by this shit » ; “Flight! I’m not angry the migrants will eat caviar at this rate”; “Let’s not mix up the questions please, now it’s the Jews imposing this detestable presence on us, they are very quiet, believe me.”

But despite these filthy comments, his openly xenophobic positions, he represented the FN in the 2017 legislative elections. At the time, he failed against the Macronist candidate Benoît Simian. Grégoire de Fournas was even invested as head of the list for the municipal elections in Pauillac. Rebelote, he loses. In 2022, he won the second round of the legislative elections under the beard of the Nupes candidate, Olivier Maneiro. During the interval between the two rounds, the Renaissance candidate Karine Nouette-Gaulain did not give any voting instructions between the left and the far right, thus participating in the victory of Marine Le Pen’s party.

Contacted by L’Humanité, Olivier Maneiro said he was hardly surprised by the racist remarks of the deputy RN Grégoire de Fournas: “It’s not new, we kept saying it during the campaign. I am amazed to see that people realize that he is racist, because he never hid it. Everyone who knows him well knows that he is part of the most right-wing fringe of the extreme right. ” The former Nupes candidate recounts a violent campaign: “He launched a campaign of disinformation and insults that I denounced several times in the media. On his profession of faith, there were insults towards me of the Islamo-leftist type, pro-burkini, anti-hunter. In short, only good facho insults and zero political program. ”

Nothing new with these xenophobic outings, for Stéphane Saubusse, former environmental adviser, who faced him, for six long years, at the Girondian departmental council. » It was hellish he remembers, contacted by L’Humanité. He constantly attacked unaccompanied minors. For him, the only solution was to send them home. The same goes for decentralized cooperation with countries like Senegal, Morocco or Serbia, he simply wanted to delete them.“For years, the speeches of the elected frontist did not arouse the indignation of anyone in the ranks of the RN. And, when Grégoire de Fournas started to shout »May he return to Africa!«from the benches of the far-right group, his colleagues formed a block behind him. Proof that racism is still part of the political DNA of Marine Le Pen’s party.

Lola Ruscio