More than 1,100 Antifa protesters descended on Lille on Saturday to disrupt a scheduled rally in support of French conservative presidential candidate, Éric Zemmour. Violent protests began outside the Grand Palais in Lille where Zemmour was making a speech to more than 8,000 supporters.
REMIX News Footage circulating on social media showed masked Antifa activists firing flares at French police deployed to “prevent any risk of excesses and clashes,” according to a police source. Authorities responded in kind, using tear gas to keep activists intent on shutting down the event at bay.
Martine Aubry, the socialist mayor of Lille, was also in attendance supporting the far-left protesters. She urged the French electorate to reject Zemmour, who she described as a “character whose only engine is hatred.” Protesters brought banners which read “Frame Bloc — Bring them to their knees” and chanted “Everyone hates Zemmour.”
Thousands attended the rally in support of Éric Zemmour, who delivered a rousing speech behind a backdrop with the slogan: “Impossible is not French.”
The presidential candidate, battling it out to be the main contender to dethrone the incumbent Emmanuel Macron, vowed to reform France’s immigration, healthcare and social housing policies, including a pledge to reward French mothers with a €10,000 grant for each baby born in rural France to encourage a rise in the birth rate of the indigenous French population.
“As soon as we come to power, we will stop taking from the French the billions of euros devoted each year to the reception and maintenance of the millions of foreigners who live on our soil,” Zemmour promised the vast crowd, prompting a chorus of cheers.
Zemmour’s conservative rival Marine Le Pen held a similar rally on Saturday, with her presidential campaign’s official launch taking place in the eastern city of Reims.
Le Pen, who remains ahead of Zemmour in the polls, pulled no punches in her criticism of Macron, who she described as “despicable and depressing,” and vowed to “be the president who will give security back to France.”
The French head to the polls for the first round of the presidential election campaign April 10.
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Andrew+Blackadder says
When I see a bunch of wee spoiled rotten soy boys all dressed in black, acting like, dressed like, and sounding exactly like, The Black Shirt Fascist Brigade in Italy during the 1930s in the time of Mussolini and yet these wee pricks call themselves anti fascist when they would do well to look in the bathroom mirror.
But instead some of them scream about freedom of speech while shutting others down that they disagree with.. I hope whoever wins, he or she, cracks some serious heads when they get into a position of power and start unmasking these wee pricks and throwing them in a dungeon with a bowl of Rice a day for years on end, any money they have in a Bank Account will pay for the rice and if they have no money then arrest and secure the money from their parents.
Drastic times calls for drastic measures.