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.