Tilting at Windmills: Marion Maréchal in Carnac

Two years ago Marion Maréchal, Marine Le Pen’s niece, left the National Rally (RN) founded by her grandfather Jean-Marie Le Pen (the party known until 2018 as the National Front). She joined another far right party, Reconquête, founded in 2021 by right wing television personality Éric Zemmour. Its name, Reconquest, refers to “taking back” France from the influx of immigrants who have, in the past decade especially, entered French territory. [1] At the time this seemed as if it might be a shrewd move on her part. Marine Le Pen is 56; Maréchal is 34. “Inheriting” the party became less likely when Marine Le Pen plucked Jordan Bardella, age 23, out of relative obscurity to head her 2019 European election list. He has been spectacularly successful and (still only 28) he was recently elected president of the National Rally as Marine stepped down to head her caucus in the National Assembly. Éric Zemmour, on the other hand, is 65. He received about 7% in the presidential elections–actually not a bad score, for a new and fringe party–and she might have seen her role as vice-president in this new party as a stepping stone to leadership of Reconquête, and thus of her own party. Further, Reconquête, unlike the RN, has much more traditionally conservative/religious views on same-sex marriage (against), in-vitro fertilization (against), and homosexuality (against). This traditional conservatism is much more in line with Maréchal’s thinking. Both parties share hostility against Muslims, whether immigrant or not, and a desire to drastically decrease immigration in general.

This past spring, Maréchal headed the Reconquête list for the European Parliament elections, which were held on June 9. Marine Le Pen fielded a competitive list under the RN president, Jordan Bardella, which led the race throughout, finally ending with about 31%–a remarkable number, given that the Republicans, the Socialists, the Écolos, the Communist Party, La France Insoumise, and Macron’s party (which came in second, at over 14%) were also in the race. Reconquête edged above 5%, giving them 5 representatives in the future Parliament. During Marine’s 2017 presidential run, she had called for a “Frexit,” on the heels of the successful Brexit vote in the summer of 2016. Currently the strategy on the Right is to win enough seats in the EU parliament to dominate policy-making, and both the RN and Reconquête share that view.

In the contest for the European Parliament, Marion Maréchal took two early campaign trips to the small town of Carnac (pop. 4,200), in Morbihan, on the west coast.  The first one was in January, 2024. She spoke before a crowd of 600 people. Lucas Chancerelle, a member of Génération Nation du Morbihan, and on the RN list for the municipal elections, introduced her. A law student, he represents the recruitment policies of the RN–young, attractive, well-spoken, and well-educated. Maréchal described herself in the meeting as an “uprooted Breton” (Jean-Marie Le Pen was born in 1928 in Brittany). She claimed, according to a reporter, that Reconquête’s priority “is and should be identity, the defense of our civilization. . . [French identity] is a land, a people, a geography . . . a savior-faire, myths, legends.” She stated that there are certain issues that are “reversible, others that are “irreversible.” The economy is reversible; demography is not. Mankind has a responsibility to nature, she added, which should always be “beautiful,” and–in a rather awkward pivot–Macron and the écologists were promoting the ugly wind turbines, with 7,000 of them to be planted around France by 2050–which makes no economic sense, since 1500 wind turbines would be needed to replace a single reactor of the (aging) Fessenheim nuclear plant.[2]. The RN also supports nuclear energy. So does Fabien Roussel, head of the Communist Party.[3]

Maréchal’s second visit to Carnac was scheduled for April 11, at 7:30 pm, at a place to be communicated by mail 48 hours ahead of time to those persons who were signed up.[4]. She took questions after the meeting.

It was a friendly crowd. She bumbled a question about agriculture. She did better in regard to her opposition to euthanasia, earning several rounds of applause. She agreed with one of the audience members that the European Union charter should make clear that Europe has Christian roots. She asserted that the EU provides money for such groups as the Muslim Brotherhood, an issue that has been circulating for several years in the European Parliament.[5]

Carnac had recently been in the news for two reasons, neither of them good.  First, it had been home to a group of thirty-nine 7000-year old neolithic-era stones, placed deliberately in rows, that had recently been demolished to make room for a chain hardware store, Mr. Bricolage.  Fortunately there was a protected set of 3,000 stones nearby, but the smaller group had recently been the subject of an application for UNESCO World Heritage status.  Mayor Olivier Lepick, who is not an archaeologist, had given it as his opinion that there was nothing in the smaller group that was of “sufficient value” to justify blocking the building permit.  Marine Le Pen attacked this action as an example of a failure to protect French heritage, and the action even received harsh criticism from Artnews.[6]

Shutterstock; the large field that is preserved at Carnac, about 3 km away from the one that was destroyed; no archeological digging was done around the smaller field.

And here:

Shutterstock. This one is actually in Waterloo, Belgium, and is naturally larger than the one in Carnac.

The other recent event in Carnac had concerned a canceled concert of sacred music by the American organist Kali Malone.

 A determined band of about thirty people blocked the church door, reciting prayers and waving signs.  (The problem?  She uses an electric organ.)  The ringleader received a five month suspended sentence, and said he would do it again.[8] But the group is not a harmless collection of eccentrics but allied with the intégriste Catholic movement, Civitas, a strain within the Catholic Church that rejects modernizing within the Church and has links with extremist groups. In August, 2023, Gérald Darmanin, Minister of the Interior, began the process of official “dissolution” of the group. The initial reason had to do with an antisemitic statement by the leader, Alain Escuda, to the effect that France’s immigration problem had begun in 1791, when Jews were made citizens. The group is against secularism and the separation of Church and State, and in favor of the reestablishment of Catholicism as the state religion. They are against same sex marriage, which became law in France in 2013. Their conspiratorial tendencies went into overdrive with the arrival of Covid and the health measures against it. They had not openly supported Zemmour’s bid for the presidency, though they had seen in him a figure of “hope.”[9]

Why Carnac? And why two trips? The 2022 National Assembly elections showed that five out of six seats in Morbihan were taken by Macron’s Ensemble group, and in these five their second-round opponents were Nupes, the Left-wing coalition put together by Jean-Luc Mélenchon.[10] The strongholds of the Right, and particularly now of the RN, are in the north and south-east. But her trips may, in fact, have had to do with the wind turbines off the coast–a particular bête noir of the Right. The day after the Carnac speech, she went to La Trinité-sur-Mer, a village of just over 1,700, where Jean-Marie Le Pen was born. Though she made no formal speech, she returned again to the issue of wind turbines, an “ecological nonsense,” stressing the large carbon footprints created by each one; Forbes analyzed this issue in terms of the initial manufacturing–the release of carbon during the production of steel, for example–but suggested that the initial carbon usage would be “amortized” over time.[11].

Both Reconquête and National Rally are supporting nuclear power, the source for many years of most of France’s electricity, even allowing them to sell some of their output to neighbors. They are joined in this by Macron’s government, which has been demanding a “nuclear carve-out” from the European Union’s binding directive that 45% of Europe’s electricity come from renewables by 2030, the so-called Green Pact.[12]. And by the Communists.

Header image: Photo 19973731 | Wind Turbines France © Thierry Vialard | Dreamstime.com

1. Figures from Statista. https://www.statista.com/statistics/459838/accepted-asylum-applicants-france/
2. Marceline Galirel, “Retour sur la venue de Marion Maréchal à Carnac,” Breizh-Info, January 23, 2023.https://www.breizh-info.com/2023/01/23/214275/retour-sur-la-venue-de-marion-marechal-a-carnac/; and here, seen in a competition for plaidoiries, Lucas Chancerelle from October, 2019: https://youtu.be/AeFzmAFgsmA?si=bbPY4mdk3sx9JRbP
3. https://x.com/BardellaPM/status/1803776932019920935; Michel Revol, “Fabien Roussel,” Le Point, May 20, 2021. https://www.lepoint.fr/economie/fabien-roussel-je-suis-favorable-au-maintien-du-nucleaire-en-france-20-05-2021-2427383_28.php
4. “Européennes 2024: tête de liste de Reconquête!, Marion Maréchal va tenir un meeting dans le Morbihan,” Actu Morbihan, April 8, 2024. https://actu.fr/bretagne/carnac_56034/europeennes-2024-tete-de-liste-de-reconquete-marion-marechal-va-tenir-un-meeting-dans-le-morbihan_60919673.html
5. Two written questions, and their answers. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2022-000495_EN.html; and https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2021-004112_EN.html
6. Niamh Kennedy, “Ancient stones removed in France to build new hardware store,” June 11, 2023, CNN.com.
7. https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/10/europe/france-ancient-stones-carnac-intl/index.html; Daniel Cassady, “7,000-Year-Old Ancient stones in France Removed to Make Way for a New Hardware Store Chain,” Artnews, June 9, 2023.  https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/archaeology-ancient-stones-france-removed-hardware-store-mr-bricolage-1234670924/
8. “Civitas: cinq mois de prison avec sursis et une relaxe pour avoir empêché un concert à Carnac,” March 25, 2024.https://www.la-croix.com/france/civitas-5-mois-de-prison-avec-sursis-et-une-relaxe-pour-avoir-empeche-un-concert-a-carnac-20240325
9. “Qu’est-ce que Civitas, le mouvement catholique intégriste dont Gérald Darmanin a engagé la dissolution?”  Franceinfo, August 8, 2023.  https://www.francetvinfo.fr/societe/qu-est-ce-que-civitas-le-mouvement-catholique-integriste-dont-gerald-darmanin-a-engage-la-dissolution_5995748.html
10. Ministère de l’Intérieur website, under “elections.”
11. “Marion Maréchal de passage à La Trinité-sur-Mer,” Ouest-France, April 12, 2024. https://vannes.maville.com/actu/actudet_-marion-marechal-de-passage-a-la-trinite-sur-mer-_fil-6244066_actu.Htm; Christopher Helman, “How Green is Wind Power, Really?” Forbes, April 14, 2022. https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2021/04/28/how-green-is-wind-power-really-a-new-report-tallies-up-the-carbon-cost-of-renewables/
12. Sarah White et. al., France mounts battle for nuclear energy in Europe,” Financial Times, March 1, 2023. https://www.ft.com/content/f7a79b52-ff1a-4336-82c1-ed359df60173; and European Commission, “Renewable Energy Targets,” https://energy.ec.europa.eu/topics/renewable-energy/renewable-energy-directive-targets-and-rules/renewable-energy-targets_en.