Jordan Bardella, the leader of France's far-right National Rally party, abruptly canceled his Conservative Political Action Conference speech that was scheduled for Friday, citing the Nazi salute that Trump ally Steve Bannon made on stage the night before.
"At this podium, while I was not present in the room, one of the speakers allowed himself, as a provocation, a gesture referring to Nazi ideology. Consequently, I have taken the immediate decision to cancel my intervention scheduled for this afternoon at the event,” Bardella said in a statement to the French outlet Le Figaro.
Bannon made the Nazi salute during his speech at CPAC—a conference where Republicans appeal to their rabidly racist and xenophobic base—in which Bannon said that President Donald Trump should serve for a third term.
Bannon urged the audience to “fight, fight, fight," before lifting his arm to make the grotesque Nazi salute. When the crowd cheered following his despicable gesture, he shouted “amen!”
Bannon’s Nazi salute wasn’t the only display of racism on the CPAC stage.
Earlier in the day, Vice President JD Vance gave his own speech, in which he pushed the great replacement theory, a white supremacist belief that the “white race is under threat of extinction at the hands of Jews and other minorities,” according to the American Jewish Committee.
"We cannot rebuild western civilization, we cannot rebuild the United States of America or Europe, by letting millions and millions of unvetted illegal migrants come into our country,” Vance said, echoing the same racist trope that led Republicans to remove Steve King from his House committees in 2019.
“It has to stop. Thank God it stopped here, but it’s gotta stop there,” Vance said, referring to immigration in Europe.
Elon Musk doing a Nazi salute at the end of his Inauguration Day speech.
Ironically, Bannon spoke at the event directly after Elon Musk, Trump’s co-president who gave his own Nazi salute during an Inauguration Day speech.
Republicans tried to explain away Musk’s salute, claiming that he was just giving “a Roman salute” or sending his heart out to the audience—a barely believable excuse. And Musk never apologized, instead choosing to joke about it with despicable puns referencing Nazi leaders.
For Bardella—who leads France’s far-right party founded by Nazi sympathizer Jean-Marie Le Pen—to cancel a CPAC speech because of a Nazi salute is truly something.
It shows that CPAC, which is attended by run-of-the-mill GOP lawmakers, has become so virulently racist that it’s a liability even for one of Europe’s most racist parties.
)
English (US) ·