The French Far-Right On Telegram: Laundering Extremism Through Support For Political Activism

The popular success of the far-right political party National Rally in France has allowed for fringe views on immigration, race, and democracy to achieve some mainstream acceptance. National Rally poses an additional concern, however: it has deep ties to the French extreme right, including white supremacist movements like Génération Identitaire. Many of these groups appear to treat National Rally as a political Trojan horse of sorts to spread more violent, hardline, and ethnoseparatist views. In this paper, we explore the methods by which a specific far-right collective with a public Telegram channel use support and activism for National Rally to covertly spread beliefs in line with neo-fascist accelerationism.