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GI

LYON, France — It was 11pm on Saturday night and around 200 young French nationalists had gathered at La Traboule, a bar in Lyon's old town known for hosting the city's far-right youth.

The formerly fringe National Front party was holding its convention nearby, and as the night went on, several key figures would make an appearance.

Around 30 young people stood at the bar at the top of a staircase, smoking and chatting. Three activists with the nationalist youth group Generation Identitaire, once the youth wing of the anti-immigrant Bloc Identitaire and now a movement in its own right, easily identifiable thanks to their distinctive yellow jackets, worked the door.

It’s 11pm and the party is barely getting started, but the place, which was opened in April 2011 by French nativists, those who want greater rights for “native inhabitants” over immigrants, is quite full. At the back of the bar, activists have set up stall to sell merchandise — amid the T-shirts with Génération Identitaire branding, a well-known figure among the alt-right in the US takes the center stage: Pepe the Frog.

Among the young people stand three people in their 60s, who have made the trip to Lyon from Paris to attend the National Front’s convention, as proved by the passes which they proudly wear around their necks. Together, they recall their youth in the GUD, far-right student group that included several French lawmakers from the center-right Republican party as members.

“At that time, I went to exterminate the rats in Africa!”

One man among them wasn’t in the GUD – “at that time, I went to exterminate the rats in Africa!” he tells his companions, referring to France’s attempts to end Algeria’s bid for independence. The trio laughed, then left to go to bed early in order not to miss the second day of the convention, when Marine Le Pen, the head of the party, was due to give her speech.

Among the close to 200 people we counted on Saturday night, at most twenty of them were women. The average age inside the bar that night was around 25 — the youngest there were no older than 18. We struck up a conversation with T and F*. The former is a tax officer in the Lyon area and a member of the National Front; the latter is Irish, but lives in Rhône, studying for a professional degree. The two hit it off fast.

“But I see it every day,” T says of his daily life as a tax officer. “Among those who pay the least amount in taxes, of course there are French people. But well, the great majority, they have Arabic names. It’s not Emmanuel ‘Macrouille’ who’s going to get us rid of them!” he insisted, mocking Emmanuel Macron, the independent candidate competing for the presidency from the left.

F agrees; according to him the situation “is the same” in Ireland. He complains about the “10,000 Muslims whom come to Ireland.”

“We dare not talk of extermination, so we say remigration!”

”Everyone hates Arabs. Nowadays, we dare not talk of extermination, so we say remigration!” F continued.

“Ha, turns out Stalin's methods weren't all bad!” T said, punctuating his sentence with a brief Nazi salute. The gesture is brief, nobody has noticed it. But the arm and the hand are well stretched out.

An hour later, the tax officer made a revelation to three colleagues who are listening to him while they smoke a cigarette: “Six generations back, I have a Jew!”

“Oh yeah?”

“Holy shit!”

“He is going to ask you for five cents!” one of his compatriots yelled. “European Jew, now!” T chides.

“Yeah, but on the mother's side?”

“Um, yes it is on the mother's side,” he acknowledged.

“But always on the mother's side?”

“Always.”

“Oh shit, then you are sick!”

“To the oven!”

The group laughs. In his outburst of laughter, T spills some of his beer. One of his friends replies in a flash: “Be careful, he's going to ask you for money!”

On the left, Nicolas Crochet (in black) and Frédéric Chatillon (in beige), on the right, Axel Loustau.

Paul Aveline / BuzzFeed News

It isn’t just the young at the party that night — high-level members of Marine Le Pen's close-knit inner circle make an appearance. At around midnight Frédéric Chatillon and Axel Loustau arrive. Chatillon is one of Le Pen’s closest friends, having helped paved the way for her presidential run in secret; he’s also tight with some of France’s most prominent anti-Semites. Loustau is now a member of the Paris region’s local parliament. Both are under investigation for irregularities in the the party’s 2012 campaign financing.

They are accompanied by Nicolas Crochet, a close friend of Chatillon who was named in the Panama Papers scandal via his connection with the Riwal company, a provider of electoral material for the FN. (Crochet never spoke out to confirm or deny these accusations.) They shake hands, chat, laugh and drink.

“Ah, they came!” shouts a young activist, holding a beer. They are joined a bit later by Damien Rieu, former leader of the Generation Identitaire. Rieu now works for Marine’s father, and founder of the National Front, Marion Maréchal-Le Pen. They seem at home at the bar, judging by the handshakes they dole out.

Damien Rieu

Paul Aveline / BuzzFeed News

In a corner, Arnaud Delrieux, the current president of Generation Identitaire was excitedly telling the people around him that that the date for his trial should be set soon. Delrieux — whose fellow Generation Identitaire members occupied the roof of Poitiers mosque in 2012 as part of the fight against what they call the “islamization of France” — has been indicted for “complicity in theft, degradation and incitement to racial hatred.”

“The civil parties are the UOIF [Union of the Islamic Organizations of France] and the CCIF [Collective Against Islamophobia in France] of Marwan,” he explained to his audience. “It's perfect, the sons of France against the Muslim brothers! That's a great platform for us!”

In the bar, the speakers are playing French music. Politically active singer Renaud’s voice echoes onto the stone walls. T, the tax officer, despite being fiercely “anti-leftist,” listens to Renaud with pleasure.

“Renaud, it's like [singer Jean] Ferrat,” he told his friends. “Politically, it's unforgivable, but musically it's magnificent. Just as some hate Céline [Dion]. Except that for Céline, there is nothing to forgive.”

He and his friend don't understand the “leftists’ obsession with multiculturalism.”

One of T's friends explained his opinion, with the air of one announcing a self-evident fact: “You don’t need five million Arabs to eat couscous! You buy chicken, semolina and there you go! Just like you don't need five million Japanese at home to eat sushi.”

“Although if I had to choose, I prefer millions of Japanese,” the young man said. ”At least they are a great people.”

Contacted by BuzzFeed News, Damien Rieu simply indicated that he no longer held any responsibilities with Génération Identitaire. A source close to the group assured BuzzFeed France, agreeing to speak on the condition of anonymity, that such behavior is not usually tolerated by Génération Identitaire. Neither Axel Loustau or Génération Identitaire responded to requests for comment from BuzzFeed France.

On Sunday night, La Traboule's management finally responded to BuzzFeed France. “We condemn the potential provocative behaviors which are not a part of the culture in nativist establishments and of the nativist movement,” the email read.

“It is possible that the two misconducts noted by your fake participant escaped the vigilance of La Traboule's leadership team, which is unfortunately not equipped with an Orwellian surveillance system for conversations. When such facts are noted, the definitive exclusion from the premises is systematic. That was by the way unfortunately the case for three external visitors this weekend, that is a tiny minority, which would therefore certainly not represent the totality of the participants in the party nor its organizers.”

*We have modified both persons' names. The sound present in the video were recorded thanks to a discreet microphone.

This post was translated from French.

Listen to some of what BuzzFeed France overheard in the original French here:

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