French Far-Right Leader Cancels CPAC Appearance Over Bannon’s Controversial Gesture

On 22 Feb­ru­ary 2025, RFI report­ed that Jor­dan Bardel­la, leader of France’s Nation­al Ral­ly par­ty, abrupt­ly with­drew from speak­ing at a major US con­ser­v­a­tive con­fer­ence after con­demn­ing what he described as a Nazi-like ges­ture by for­mer Trump advi­sor Steve Ban­non. The arti­cle begins:

French far-right leader Jor­dan Bardel­la unex­pect­ed­ly pulled out of the Con­ser­v­a­tive Polit­i­cal Action Con­fer­ence on Fri­day, con­demn­ing a ges­ture by Steve Ban­non that he claimed evoked Nazi sym­bol­ism. Jor­dan Bardel­la – pres­i­dent of France’s Nation­al Ral­ly (RN) – had been sched­uled to speak at the CPAC meet­ing in Mary­land on the rela­tion­ship between the Unit­ed States and France, as well as the rise of nation­al­ist move­ments in Europe. How­ev­er, after learn­ing of Ban­non’s con­tro­ver­sial salute ges­ture, he announced his imme­di­ate can­cel­la­tion. “Yes­ter­day, while I was not in the room, one of the speak­ers out of provo­ca­tion allowed him­self a ges­ture allud­ing to Nazi ide­ol­o­gy. I there­fore took the imme­di­ate deci­sion to can­cel my speech,” Bardel­la said in a state­ment. An advis­er con­firmed to AFP that Bardel­la was refer­ring to Ban­non, a for­mer advis­er to US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump…

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Key Points:

• Bardel­la’s with­draw­al high­lights ten­sions with­in the glob­al far-right move­ment despite recent efforts to build transat­lantic nation­al­ist alliances.
• Ban­non respond­ed angri­ly, call­ing Bardel­la “a lit­tle boy” and “unwor­thy to lead France” for can­cel­ing his appear­ance over the gesture.
• The con­tro­ver­sy comes as Marine Le Pen and Bardel­la have worked to dis­tance the Nation­al Ral­ly from its his­tor­i­cal extrem­ist associations.
• This inci­dent fol­lows a sim­i­lar con­tro­ver­sy when Elon Musk was crit­i­cized for mak­ing a ges­ture com­pared to a Nazi salute at anoth­er event.

The Con­ser­v­a­tive Polit­i­cal Action Con­fer­ence (CPAC) is an annu­al event orga­nized by the Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive Union (ACU) since 1974, serv­ing as a major gath­er­ing for con­ser­v­a­tive activists, pol­i­cy­mak­ers, and politi­cians. Orig­i­nal­ly focused on pro­mot­ing con­ser­v­a­tive prin­ci­ples and can­di­dates, CPAC has evolved into a glob­al plat­form with edi­tions held in coun­tries such as Hun­gary, Japan, and Brazil, aim­ing to unite con­ser­v­a­tive move­ments world­wide. The con­fer­ence fea­tures speech­es from high-pro­file fig­ures, includ­ing for­mer U.S. pres­i­dents, and dis­cus­sions on issues like immi­gra­tion and oppo­si­tion to social­ism. In recent years, CPAC has faced crit­i­cism for embrac­ing far-right pop­ulism and exclud­ing jour­nal­ists from main­stream out­lets deemed “left-wing.” It has also been accused of tol­er­at­ing extrem­ist views among some atten­dees, rais­ing con­cerns about its role in mod­ern con­ser­vatism. The CPAC con­fer­ences have recent­ly tak­en on a greater role in the Glob­al Nation­al Con­ser­v­a­tive Alliance (GNCA) in the same way as the Nation­al Con­ser­vatism Conferences.

Dis­claimer: This post was gen­er­at­ed using AI, with added con­text where pos­si­ble. Please ver­i­fy all infor­ma­tion before using. Images are also AI-gen­er­at­ed and are for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es only—they are meant to rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als con­cerned but should not be under­stood as “real world” photography.