by Maxime Gauin
Paris-Moscow-Washington: The French far right from a transnational perspective
Marine Le Pen in front of portrait of Donald Trump, herself and Vladimir Putin. 2017
The Alaska summit has re-ignited the controversies about the decades-long relationship between Donald Trump and Russia. The Washington meeting has seen Emmanuel Macron leading the European movement of support for Volodymyr Zelensky, including in his complicated relationship with Mr. Trump. He did so because he managed to defeat the Russian-supported far right in 2017, 2022 and 2024. These obvious observations are sufficient to understand the relevancy of the transnational perspective. This article analyzes the French far right in its relationship with Russia and America.
This is not a short article, because the international audiences, and particularly the American one, do not know always the networks, the ideas and international imbrications. First, we will provide the definition of the far right and its families, then the historical background of the triangular relationship, then the electoral far right today, and its financial supporters, and eventually the radical far right today.
Definitions
The notion of far right emerged in France during the 1820s, the far rightist being defined by his hostility towards the ruling elites, his fear of a revolution, and his will to wipe the slate clean in order to re-establish the traditional, legitimate and stable order.[i] Two centuries later, this definition fits many far rightists of various countries.
Since the end of 19th century, the dominant tendency in France is National-Populism, incarnated in 21st Century by Jean-Marie and Marine Le Pen. Precursor elements existed during the first half of 1880s, but it became a mass movement in 1886-1890, with the rise and fall in politics of General Georges Boulanger (1837-1891). National-Populism presents the nation as endangered by corrupt elites, and to be saved by a savior, who will defend the popular masses, the public order and the borders simultaneously. Anti-Semitism is optional (Boulanger was absolutely devoid of anti-Jewish prejudice and his main advisor, Alfred Naquet, was himself from a Jewish family) but frequent (plenty of Boulanger’s supporters were anti-Semitic). National-Populism is always authoritarian, but not necessarily for a dictatorship: A strong but elected leader who consults the people directly is often considered by the National-Populists to be the best kind of regime.[ii]
During the 2000s, like in other European countries, National-Populism experienced what has been called the neo-Populist mutation, namely a focus on the rejection of the Muslim immigration, the National-Populists presenting themselves as the real shield for women, LGBTs—and why not Jews.
National-Catholicism also has its roots at the end of 19th Century, more precisely during the Dreyfus affair (1894-1906). As the name suggests, it is religious-inspired nationalism, rejecting the secular and liberal ideologies as alien and hurtful. Anti-Semitism has been for a century a structural element of National-Catholicism,[iii] but in 21st Century, emerged National-Catholics who see Israel as a natural ally against Islamism and who are quiet on the Jews of their own country. Two far rightist billionaires of this kind are discussed below: Vincent Bolloré and Pierre-Édouard Stérin. The last important movements were active during the 1960s and 1970s.[iv] The daily Présent, established in 1975, disappeared in 2022. Regardless, National-Catholics—mostly Messrs. Bolloré and Stérin—remain important as owners of more mainstream media.
As their name suggest, the neo-Fascism want to renovate the legacy of Mussolini and other Fascist leaders, often in incorporating ideas of the German Conservative Revolution, the non-Nazi far right of the Weimar Republic (1918-1933). The main difference between Nazism and neo-Nazism is the transition from Aryanist supremacism to white supremacism, the end of racism between Whites, except the Jews of course. These two categories have a very small militant basis but they are over-represented in the parties, because they provide efficient officials, while most of the National-Populists have a low education level and a limited capacity to manage a party.
Since 1972, the National Front/Rally practices the “nationalist compromise,” namely the grouping of the different tendencies of the far right in one party, based on a minimal program. This strategy was also used by the British National Front and the Italian Social Movement (MSI, neo-Fascist) during the 1970s.
Background
Since the 1950s, neo-Nazi and neo-Fascists have organized international congress and tried to establish European and even transcontinental structures, not only to coordinate their actions, but also because they saw Europe or the West (including Americas and Russia) as the horizon, the supranational patria. The most famous is the congress of Malmö in 1951. One of the main differences with today was the absence of funding by any state: In the name of realism, Spanish dictator Francisco Franco refused to help these transnational initiatives, and gave money to the MSI only, and solely for propaganda in favor of his regime. American neo-Nazi Francis Parker Yokey was one of the most active proponents of such international organizations, with an explicitly white supremacist perspective. He worked (among others) with Sir Oswald Mosley, former leader of the British Union of Fascists, René Binet, a former French SS, and White Russian émigrés. Yockey saw the popular uprising of the Russians in 1917 as positive in itself, but blamed “Jewish Bolshevism” like Hitler and the Russian far right. Eventually Yockey became an admirer of Stalin, in the name of anti-Semitism and anti-liberalism. [v]
Yockey’s Russian tropism was made easier to accept by the neo-Fascists, especially in Germany and Switzerland, by their reading of the authors of the German Conservative Revolution, the non-Nazi far right of the 1918-1933, perceived as an excellent reference for this milieu, given the fact the majority of the Conversative Revolution’s authors were mercilessly repressed by the Third Reich after 1933: So, they kept all the essential elements of a Fascist doctrine without the shadow of Auschwitz. One of the currents of the Conservative Revolution was the National-Bolshevism, which advocated an anti-democratic and anti-Western alliance with Stalin and saw this alliance as the best way to accelerate the Russian nationalist evolution of the USSR.[vi] Most of Yockey’s ideas (except his view of Stalin) were praised by the main French neo-Fascist, Maurice Bardèche.[vii]
Bardèche’s review Défense de l’Occident (open to all the families of the French-speaking far right) looked with grand interest at the American far right, especially during the 1960s, and regretted only the recurrence of isolationism.[viii]
This interest for America was similar, if not even not even more important, during the first 16 years of the National Front (1972-1988). Beside his curiosity for Fascists in America,[ix] François Duprat, the main ideologue of the party from 1974 to his assassination, in 1978, remained pro-American by anti-Communism. He even represented in France the Canadian League for the Liberation of Ukraine. Jean-Marie Le Pen, by wish to show a more respectable façade, but also by a sincere anti-Communism, claimed Ronald Reagan as a reference. For obvious reasons, the relationship did not exceed a brief shake hand between the two men, in 1987. A member of the Moon Church, Colonel Bo Hi Pak, had obtained an invitation for Jean-Marie Le Pen and President Reagan did not know very well who this member of the European Parliament was.[x]
The change was remarkably quick. It was due to the deterioration of the relationship with the Moon Church after the elimination of Jean-Marie Le Pen as early as the first ballot of the presidential election of 1988 and his repeated anti-Semitic provocations (1987, 1988, and 1989[xi]). An even more important reason was the replacement, as the second man of the party, of Jean-Pierre Stirbois (deceased in 1988 in a car crash) by Bruno Mégret, who invited the radical far right even more than before and the collapse of the Eastern Bloc in 1989.
This becomes easily understandable in knowing that Mr. Mégret was also a prominent member of the Groupement de recherches et d’études sur la civilisation européenne (GRECE), a hard-core far rightist think tank nurtured by the books and articles of the German Conservative Revolution and vehemently hostile to American liberalism, both in the political and economic sense of the word.[xii] The National Front became defiant vis-à-vis the American policy, the European construction and the West in general. This does not mean, however, that the National Front stopped looking at the other side of the Atlantic. Patrick Buchanan and Jean-Marie Le Pen never made secret their mutual respect and admiration. The GRECE’s publications are often loved by the American alt-right, and even if it is not reciprocal,[xiii] an important dissident of the GRECE, Guillaume Faye (1949-2019), adopted during 1990s a strongly transatlantic point of view, publicly claiming the mutual influence between him and his white supremacist American friends, such as Jared Taylor. Not unlike the GRECE, Faye continued to defend the “Euro-Siberia” idea (a common territory for the white Europeans), but in including the USA. Faye visited Russia in 2006 and his writings started being translated into Russian the next year. He praised Vladimir Putin several times, including to justify the invasion of Crimea and of a part of the Donbas in 2014.[xiv] In 2012, he delivered a lecture in Moscow, spread by Sputnik.[xv]
Meanwhile, Jean-Marie Le Pen developed his personal and political friendship with Russian ultranationalist leader Vladimir Zhrinovski. In 1996, he dared to call him “a center-right man” (sic) and found understandable that “the Russians view with suspicion the Western military organization [NATO] approaching their borders.”[xvi] Nine years later, he warned that Russia could invade Ukraine if this country turned to the West completely. Alain de Benoist, the main leader of the GRECE, met Alexander Dugin for the first time in 1992, and they organized a joint press conference. Mr. Dugin has copied even the title of Mr. de Benoist’s review (Éléments) for his own (Elementy).[xvii]
Regardless, during the 2000s and until 2011-2013, the Ukrainian radical right, Svoboda, was quite effective in its relationship with the National Front. A delegation of the Front was welcomed by Svoboda in 2004 and the two parties signed an agreement in 2009. Svoboda seems to have been quite successful with Bruno Gollnisch, in charge of the international affairs in the National Front from 1994 to 2011. The election of Marine Le Pen—against Mr. Gollnisch, the other candidate at the presidency of the party—was the beginning of the end and the last top meeting took place in 2013.[xviii] In that sense, they were more efficient than the late Zhirinovski: His ego prevented him from establishing a far rightist International together with his friend Le Pen.[xix]
The electoral far right today
When she became president of the National Front, Marine Le Pen selected an Eurasianist, Emmanuel Leroy, as advisor for the international affairs. He was replaced in January 2014 by Aymeric Chauprade, a firm supporter of Vladimir Putin,[xx] and who even recruited Elizaveta Peskova, the daughter of Mr. Putin’s spokesman, as an intern.[xxi] From 2010 to 2015, Christian Bouchet had official positions in the party, yet Mr. Bouchet is the publisher of Mr. Dugin in France. Alain Bonnet, aka Alain Soral, described below, played an important in the lobby of the National Front from 2005 to 2017, yet, he is even more pro-Putin than all the previous ones. I could not find a significant and direct connection between Frédéric Chatillon (a neo-Nazi in charge of the communication of the National Front/Rally until 2024) and Russia, but he has been notoriously linked to the Assad regime, by ideological and financial ties, until its collapse in December 2024,[xxii] yet this regime was the main ally of Moscow in the Middle East.
The mutual support between Russia and the National Front peaked in 2014-2015, and, not surprisingly, it was largely about money. In 2014, the National Front obtained a loan of 9.4 million euros from the First Czech Russian Bank; Cotelec, a satellite of the National Front, established to facilitate the funding of the party, obtained another loan, of 2 million.[xxiii] Jean-Luc Schaffhauser, the negotiator of the loan, received € 140,000 for his “work” as go-between and € 255,998 for his foundation. The money was sent by Russia through the Latvian account of a Luxemburgish company, West East Communication Group. The company is notoriously linked to Spencerdale Limited, settled in the British Virgin Islands. There are more simple and more transparent financial circuits. Anyway, Mr. Schaffhauser showed no ingratitude: As a National Front member of the European Parliament, he visited the occupied part of the Donbas in 2014, and, naturally, he defended the Russian point of view. He did the same in the European Parliament itself, in 2015 for example.[xxiv]
Written messages exchanged between advisors of Mr. Putin and published by Russian hackers belonging to the opposition prove that the counterpart of the loans was a vocal support for the Russian illegal annexation of Crimea[xxv]—a conquest violating the UN Charter, the Helsinki Final Act (1975), the Alma-Ata Declaration (1991), the Budapest Memorandum (1994), the Russian-Ukrainian Friendship Treaty (1997), the Russian-Ukrainian Border Treaty (2003) and the Russian-American Joint Statement of December 2009, which reaffirms the validity of the Budapest memorandum. This annexation was actually justified by the National Front in 2014, and Marine Le Pen reiterated her position as late as 2023, during her interrogatory by the investigative committee on the foreign interferences.[xxvi]
Several European MPs of the National Front visited the occupied territories by 2014. One of the persons accompanying them is Tamara Volokhova, a dual French-Russian citizen, who worked for the far rightist group at the European Parliament. She began as an assistant of Mr. Chauprade (this world is small).[xxvii]
Another element of context is the establishment of the Pushkin Circle by a future member of the National Front, in Paris, in 2015: Pierre Gentillet. GRU officers are used to attend the circle’s meeting until 2022. Prudently, the circle’s web site has disappeared after the general invasion of Ukraine. Another top member is Xavier Moreau, a dual French-Russian citizen, whose predictions quickly contradicted by the facts, regarding the war of aggression against Ukraine, are so numerous that a Twitter/X account has been created solely to compile them.
The Russian funding is vital for the National Front/Rally for two reasons. First, the French legislation: The donations by an individual are limited to € 7,500 per year and the donations by companies are, since 1995, purely and simply prohibited; the state funding is significant, but it is largely dependent on the number of deputies obtained by a party, yet, until 2024, this number was limited for the National Front/Rally.
That having been said, the statute of Moscow’s favorite is not something natural for the National Front. After the failure of the far rightist party to win even one region in 2015 (the voters of the mainstream parties voting for the one in the best position to defeat the National Front at the second ballot), Moscow preferred to bet on François Fillon, the conservative candidate at the presidential election of 2017. This is only after the “Penelopegate” ruined Mr. Fillon’s chances[xxviii] that Mr. Putin meets with Ms. Le Pen for the first time.[xxix] This meeting is particularly remarkable, given the modesty of Ms. Le Pen’s results in her international connections from 2011 to 2017. For example, Nigel Farage rejected her offer of cooperation in 2014. Her visit in Québec in 2016 was a fiasco. The Swiss party UDC/SVP coldly refused her extended hand in 2017. Before 2019, the Danish People’s Party never accepted the offers of the National Front/Rally. Viktor Orban himself did not meet with Ms. Le Pen until 2021 and did not form an alliance with her party until 2024. Until today, the Belgian party N-VA and the Polish PiS refuse any contact with the French far right.
And there is more than this symbolic recognition. About three weeks before the Putin-Le Pen meeting, two groups of hackers working for the GRU, the Russian military intelligence service, including APT28, the group which cracked the email boxes of Hillary Clinton in 2016, cracked those of Mr. Macron’s staff.[xxx] However, the operation is without measurable effect, as they are simple exchanges between members of staff campaign, who have no particular obligation of security.
By 2022, the relationship with Moscow became more problematic. A survey made in March 2022 found that 54% of the National Rally voters wished to see the sanctions against Russia to be tightened, but Ms. Le Pen criticized these same sanctions the same month.[xxxi] Meanwhile, Mr. Macron’s supporters mocked “les trois Moscoutaires” (Marine Le Pen, Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Éric Zemmour) on the social media. This was a pun on mousquetaires/musketeers and Moscoutaires, a pejorative word to designate a person subservient to Moscow, especially during the Soviet period.
Mr. Macron used, without this wording, the same argument during his debate against Ms. Le Pen: “When you meet Vladimir Putin, you do not meet a political leader but your banker.” Under the pressure of the half of its own electorate, the National Rally eventually started supporting the deliveries of “defensive” weapons but blamed those of Scalp cruise missiles, in July 2023.[xxxii]
Yet, an Elabe survey released on 4 March 2025 shows that 86% of the Frenchmen have a negative image of Mr. Putin, including 82% of Ms. Le Pen’s voters, while 65% have a positive image of Mr. Zelensky, including 52% of Ms. Le Pen voters. 64% of the interviewed persons want the French military aid to continue at the current rhythm or to increase (it was 55% in June 2024). At the end of the same month, Ms. Le Pen is sentenced, for embezzlement by fictitious employments, to four years in jail, including two suspended and two under electronic bracelet, a fine of € 100,000 and she is banned from public office for five years, with provisory execution of the ineligibility sentence. It means that she is banned from public office by the day of the judgment, in spite of her appeal, and until further notice. The appeal trial will take place in 2026. This is probably not a coincidence if the pro-Ukrainian minority of the National Rally, led by Pierre-Romain Thionnet (a member of the European Parliament), now is louder than ever. In March 2025, Mr. Thionnet “deplores” the suspension of the U.S. military aid, and denounces those who wish a Ukrainian defeat, as “the Ukrainian capitulation […] would be certainly not a peace, or the return to a more stable order on the [European] continent.” These words are far from being welcomed by Ms. Le Pen, but she is now weakened by her sentence.
The situation is not always easier with the MAGAs. In November 2016, Donald Trump’s victory was welcomed with a visible and sincere pleasure by the National Front, but Ms. Le Pen’s visit in New York, in January 2017, including at the Trump tower, ended without any meeting with Mr. Trump.[xxxiii] The situation seemed to improve in 2018, when Stephen “Steve” Bannon went to Europe, took part to a meeting with Ms. Le Pen and was applauded by the crowd. In February 2025, after the return of Mr. Trump at the White House, Jordan Bardella, Ms. Le Pen’s second man, is invited as a speaker at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC); but at the last minute, he decides to cancel his speech, because of Mr. Bannon’s “salute to the crowd.” In the flowered language that characterizes him, M. Bannon calls Mr. Bardella “a pussy” and adds: “Fuck him! […] There’s no chance he’ll lead France. Zero chance.”[xxxiv] The current American tariffs do not ease the situation.
The Cash and the Cross: National-Catholic Billionaires
Does it mean that the Ukrainians and their Western supporters should simply stay in a corner with a box of popcorn with the hope that the National Rally explodes soon or late, as a result of Ms. Le Pen’s sentence, and that Mr. Thionnet establishes a French counterpart of Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy? Not exactly. Because there is still another factor: The far rightist billionaires, Vincent Bolloré and Pierre-Édouard Stérin. For decades Mr. Bolloré was, or at least seemed to be, a mainstream conservative businessman. In 2012, he became the main shareholder of Vivendi, which controls TV channel such as i-télévision and Canal +. For three years, the changes were modest, but in 2016, he imposed a drastic shift to i-télévision. The journalists retaliated by a strike. The majority eventually quitted in protest and was replaced by ultra-conservatives and far rightists; the channel was rebranded as CNews, an explicit reference to Fox News.
In 2025, the license of CNews was renewed, with a warning, due to the series of fines and sanctions imposed for misinformation and hate speech (another Bolloré channel, C8, has lost its license, the series being even longer). Just after this success, CNews started spreading what can be called at best pro-Russian narratives. For example, Xenia Fedorova, the former editor-in-chief of RT France, is regularly invited, including for his book (published by a house owned by Vivendi) where she presents herself as a victim of censorship.[xxxv] A peak is reached on 18 August 2025, with a “debate” on CNews among Ms. Fedorova, Garen Shnorokian and Régis Le Sommier. Mr. Shnorokian is an editorialist at the pro-Russian, far rightist magazine Frontières and Mr. Le Sommier has worked for RT France in 2021-2022 after having lost his job at Paris Match… The only moment of disagreement is when Mr. Shnorokian dares to affirm, with the language of a schoolboy in the playground, that the shells are useless at war. Mr. Le Sommier feels forced to correct him. This grotesque incident is worth mentioning, as the shells and cannons are precisely one of the fields where the European (in the broad sense: EU, UK, Turkey and Norway) supplies and the Ukrainian production now are sufficient to make the U.S. aid dispensable, even more as the war has proved the French CAESARs and the Swedish Archers (self-propelled) to be more resilient than the American M777s (towed).
A similar situation is the one of the Journal du dimanche (“The Sunday’s newspaper”), bought by the Bolloré group in 2023. The staff has been almost entirely renewed after a strike. Especially this summer (2025), this weekly publishes more and more calls for “peace” on Russian terms, praises the Putin-Trump meeting in Alaska (much less the American deliveries of ammunitions) and vituperates European Commissioner Kaja Kallas for her firmness vis-à-vis Moscow. A difference with CNews is the decrease of the sales of the Journal du dimanche: 111 496 copies a week in 2024, but 142 744 in 2021. Moreover, for decades, this weekly was less important for the absolute number of sold copies than for the fact that various mainstream politicians and even more journalists read it because of the quality of the information, the moderation of the analyses and the diversity of the op-eds. Among them, the reputation of the newspaper collapsed quickly, these characteristics having almost disappeared.
Mr. Bolloré’s alter ego, Pierre-Édouard Stérin, has been much less successful, so far, in the media, but he is not less active to defend far rightist ideas. He does not hide to see Elon Musk and even more in Peter Thiel as inspirations. He advocates a strict economic liberalism, but internally only, as he favors high external tariffs. After he has been introduced to the Heritage Foundation (in its MAGA version), he started working on the creation a similar think tank, but the results are limited for the moment.[xxxvi] More remarkable are the written exchanges between Mr. Stérin and Paul Manafort, director of Donald Trump’s campaign in 2016, about how to make a modern and efficient political campaign.[xxxvii] Yet, in 2016, too, Mr. Manafort shared information with Russian intelligence agent Konstantin Kilimnik (who happens to be a business associate of Mr. Manafort) about poll data and the Trump campaign’s strategy against Hillary Clinton. He also exchanged with Mr. Kilimnik about a “peace plan” for Ukraine, which would give the control of the Eastern part of that country to Russia.[xxxviii]
That having been said, there are some limits to the activities of these billionaires. The first is their religiously reactionary stance, in a largely secularized country, where the average Marine Le Pen voter is even less likely than the standard voter to go to the church on a regular basis. In 2025, the Ifop survey finds 59% of negative responses to the question: “Do you believe in God?” (51% in 2021, 44% in 2011). Another survey, also by Ifop, in 2022, on abortion, finds that 83% of the interviewed persons call “a good thing” the current laws on abortion (79% in 1995); even more remarkably, they are 86% among the Marine Le Pen’s voters, something unthinkable for the Donald Trump’s voters. Economically, the all-free-market line is in contradiction with the wishes the popular electorate attracted by Marine Le Pen since 2010-2011 with statist proposals and the current situation of the American economy hardly pleads in favor of a combination of high tariffs externally and full deregulation domestically. Internationally, as it has been already seen, Mr. Putin is not popular at all among Ms. Le Pen’s voters.
The last problem for the Bolloré-Stérin duo is the judiciary investigation on dubious loans to the National Front/Rally (distinct for the affair of fictitious jobs), where Mr. Stérin is particularly scrutinized. The law is more flexible for the individual loans to political parties than for individual donations, but any loan of this kind must reimbursed in five years at most and loans cannot be provided “on a regular basis.” At this stage of their work, the investigators see less a strategy of the National Rally’s leadership than an initiative of Mr. Stérin and his partners to bypass the law.[xxxix]
The radical far right today
The connections between small, violent groups of neo-Nazis and neo-Fascists would deserve at least a long article, but such an article has been already published in 2024,[xl] and there is not many things to say about the last twelve months. Anyway, these are modest groups. I shall take here one relevant example, because it is a way to expose in detail the really significant elements of the French radical far right and their international connections, particularly in the U.S. and Russia. This example seems merely laughable, but is not: The conspiracy theory presenting Brigitte Macron (née Brigitte) Trogneux, as a transgender person, a former man, that her brother Jean-Michel and her are in fact one person. No matter how absurd it is, Candace Owens’ videos have made millions of views, she has about 7 millions of followers on Twitter/X and she has been invited by podcasters such as Joseph “Joe” Rogan. Neglect for the social media was one of the reasons for the defeat of the Democrats in 2016 and their relatively modest presence among the podcasters partly explains their electoral failures in 2024.
This conspiracy theory is not without precedents: Michelle Obama, and New Zeland Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern were accused to be transgender persons hiding the “fact” that they were born men.[xli] Except an obscure Spanish blog in 2017, the fake news really emerged in 2021 during a chat on YouTube between Amandine Roy, a “spiritual medium” and Natacha Rey, who sometimes claims to be a “journalist” but never worked for a newspaper, a radio or a TV channel. YouTube has deleted the video. The rumor rose slowly, until it was spread by Faits et Documents.
Faits et documents is a confidential letter established in 1996. Until his accidental death in 2015, the editor was Emmanuel Ratier. Ratier was incontrovertibly anti-Semitic, anti-Masonic and an adept of conspiracy theories, but he always preferred allusions, insinuations and half-truths, substantiated by a real (but tendentiously utilized) documentation, to utter lies and crude disinformation. For two more years, Faits et documents continued to be a soft-core far rightist publication, but in 2017-2018, Alain Bonnet, aka Alain Soral, took the control of the letter, with the help of Frédéric Chatillon, previously mentioned.
Mr. Soral is a Fascist-styled agitator, sentenced more than twenty times since 2013 for defamation, Holocaust denial, contempt for the court and hate speech. The publishing house he owns has an Anthology of Hitler’s speeches (edited by a self-described neo-Nazi, Vincent Reynouard) on its catalogue. His website (1.9 million visits in July 2025, not only from France) supports the conspiracy theory according to which John F. Kennedy was assassinated by the Mossad and articles on this theory are prepared in coordination with the American far rightist Unz Review. Mr. Soral is a huge supporter of Vladimir Putin. He called him on 14 June 2014 “someone who represents Aryan (even if Slavic) virility” (sic). Until today, he loves wearing t-shirts where it is written: “Putin, quick!” Needless to say, his web site constantly defends and promotes the Russian propaganda against Ukraine and its European allies. He sells a book of Russian propagandist Xavier Moreau (previously mentioned in this article), entitled Ukraine: Why Russia Won (sic), self-published in February 2024.
The man who particularly spreads the fake news on Ms. Macron is Xavier Poussard, the editor of Faits et Documents until the end of 2024. Mr. Poussard claims to be a disciple of Henry Coston (1910-2001). Professional anti-Semite, working for the Nazi World Service as early as the 1930s, ardent collaborationist during the German occupation, Coston was arrested in Austria (where he had fled) in 1946, then was sentenced to life-long hard labor. He was released in 1952, for medical reasons.[xlii] His doctors were surely excellent, as Coston died 91 years old. Such a claimed ideological legacy proves one more time what kind of persons promote this obviously false story.
At the end of 2023, Mr. Poussard started translating his articles into English, and proposed them to various podcasters and influencers of the American Alt-Right, without success initially. After some months, he found the person he was looking for: Candace Owens—and this is reciprocal. Indeed, after having moved from the Democrat Party to MAGA, Ms. Owens made her anti-Semitic coming in Autumn 2023, denying the medical experiments by Dr Josef Mengele in Auschwitz (in spite of the doctors’ trial organized by the United States in 1947), alleging that the Jews kill children for religious purpose, claiming that the U.S. are like “held hostage by Israel” and that American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) was behind the assassination of John Kennedy (the President who literally created the U.S.-Israeli military alliance). So far, few direct links between Ms. Owens and Russia can be proved: She has been praised by more than 30 articles of the Kremlin-controlled media RT since 2018 (a disproportionate figure for a simple podcaster) and she retweets Alexander Dugin. But she is immerged in a staunchly pro-Putin milieu (Tucker Carlson, Alexander “Alex” Jones and Charles “Charlie” Kirk, for example) and statements like those on Auschwitz, on Kennedy and Ms. Macron are congruent with the Russian operations of destabilization.[xliii]
Correspondingly, Ms. Owens is linked since 2019 (at least) to Marion Maréchal Le Pen,[xliv] the niece of Marine Le Pen, member of the Parliament from 2012 to 2017, and member of the European Parliament since 2024. Ms. Maréchal-Le Pen is even more pro-Putin than her aunt (at least until 2022), visited Crimea in 2019 and is connected, at least since 2018, to the MAGA world. Ms. Owens, married to a wealthy British citizen, is also in excellent terms with a warmly pro-Russian British politician, Nigel Farrage. The agreement between Paris and Kyiv about the deliveries of guided bombs AASM is concluded at the end of 2023 and is implemented since January 2024 (about 60 per month in 2024; about 120 in 2025), causing immediately a vituperative reaction (“militarist frenzy”) from the Kremlin. What is equally sure is that Ms. Owens’ anti-Semitic coming out has provoked her firing by the Daily Wire in 2024 and made necessary to find another source of revenues, just at the moment when she embraced the conspiracy theory about Ms. Macron. The Daily Wire has indicated that Ms. Owens’ last podcasts for them were those who obtained the biggest audience, yet they were all about Ms. Macron.
Now, it is time see Ms. Owens’ allegations themselves. She was informed in 2024 by the French presidential staff that an announcement was published in a regional newspaper, Le Courrier picard, on the birth of Brigitte Trogneux.[xlv] This is a scanned copy of the announcement:
This text itself is enough to prove that the conspiracy theory is a fraud and that Ms. Owens knew before starting her series of new podcasts, “Becoming Brigitte” (published after her departure from the Daily Wire), made in collaboration with Mr. Poussard.
Ms. Owens claims that Mr. Macron was a subject of experiments by the CIA’s MKUltra program, devoted to mind control. Beside the fact that she provides no evidence, and that no available source suggests that it was ever implemented in France, this program was stopped in 1964, 13 years before the birth of Mr. Macron![xlvi] Ms. Owens makes the same claim about Kamala Harris, who is born in October 1964, roughly when MKUltra was terminated.
Equally absurd, but less original, is the attack against the Rothschild family. It is true that Mr. Macron has worked several years for Rothschild & Cie Banque, but Ms. Owens is far from limiting herself to this factual observation: She alleges—without proof—that the Rothschild family, the Macron family and the Trogneux family are blood relatives. The Rothschild name appears more than 150 times in the main book of Édouard Drumont (“the pope of anti-Semitism”), entitled La France juive (1885). This name is also used 205 times in The Secret World Government or “the Hidden Hand”, a book published in New York in 1926 by an obsessively anti-Semitic White Russian aristocrat, Arthur Cherep-Spiridovich, who also worked as a ghost-writer for Henry Ford’s The International Jew. The allegation of incest among the Jews, because this is precisely what Ms. Owens claims, is not more original, but a standard allegation of the anti-Semitic literature.
One of the most egregious claims of Ms. Owens is that the death of an obscure influencer, Isabella Ferreira, in March 2022, was a murder, perpetrated because Ferreira was investigating the Macrons. Yet, the videos of the surveillance cameras show she was always walking alone the day of her death; the autopsy found water in her lunges, a proof that she died by drowning, but discovered no trace of violence by a third person; and no number of any journalist was found in her mobile phone, contrary to the claim that she was on the verge of making sensational revelations. Testimonies of family members describe her as psychologically unstable.[xlvii] The claim is also self-refuting: If it was true, why are Mr. Poussard and Ms. Owens alive?
In such conditions, this is not a surprise if the Macrons decided to sue Ms. Owens in 2025. Mr. Poussard has preferred to move to Italy in order to restrict the possibilities to be sued. Mr. Soral has discretly dismissed him from his position of editor of Faits et Documents, probably fearing a loss of the tax statute of information newspaper (a loss that happened in 2022 to the far rightist, Soral-friendly weekly Rivarol after more than twenty sentenced for hate speech and Holocaust denial[xlviii]).
Conclusion
The triangle Paris-Moscow-Washington is probably more stable for the radical far right than for the electoral, National-Populist far right. Ms. Le Pen now is facing a dilemma between her financial links with Russia and the demands of at least the half of her own voters. She is also facing another dilemma regarding the natural attraction for the MAGA world which won in 2024 and the desire to appear as a respectable party, ready to rule and defending the national interest against anyone. Her judiciary issues do not make the fixing of these dilemmas easier.
That having been said, and even if their ways are more limited than the ones of the American far rightist tycoons, the French far rightist billionaires should not regarded as negligible survivors of a declining tendency of the French far right.
A decisive element for the future of this triangle will be the moment of the collapse of the Putin regime and the scope of the catastrophe for Russia, yet the attitude of the Trump administration will not be a marginal factor in this regard.
[i] Nicolas Lebourg, “ׅDéfinir l’extrême droite,” Après-demain, n° 75, 2025/2, pp. 8-11.
[ii] Pierre-André Taguieff, “La rhétorique du national-populisme. Les règles élémentaires de la propagande xénophobe”, Mots, October 1984, pp. 113-139 ; Bertrand Joly, Aux origines du populisme. Histoire du boulangisme (1886-1891), Paris : CNRS, 2022.
[iii] Pierre Birnbaum, « Affaire Dreyfus, culture catholique et antisémitisme », in Michel Winock (ed.), Histoire de l’extrême droite en France, Paris : Le Seuil, 1993, pp. 83-123 ; Vicki Caron, “Catholic Political Mobilization and Antisemitic Violence in Fin de Siècle France: The Case of the Union Nationale,” The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 81, No. 2 (June 2009), pp. 294-346.
[iv] Joseph Algazy, L’Extrême droite en France de 1965 à 1984, Paris : L’Harmattan, 1989, pp. 231-243.
[v] Joseph Algazy, La Tentation néofasciste en France, de 1944 à 1965, Paris : Fayard, 1984, pp. 293-321 ; Nicolas Lebourg, Les nazis ont-ils survécu ? Enquête sur les internationales fascistes et les croisés de la race blanche, Paris, Le Seuil, 2019, pp. 93-141 ; Anthony Mostrom, “America’s’Mein Kampf’: Francis Parker Yockey and ‘Imperium’”, Los Angeles Review of Books, 8 August 2020.
[vi] Abraham Ascher and Guenter Lewy, “National Bolshevism in Weimar Germany,” Social Research, Vol. 23, No. 4, Winter 1956, pp. 450-480; Stéphane François, « Qu’est-ce que la révolution conservatrice ? », Fragments sur l’histoire des temps présents, 24 août 2009 ; Nicolas Lebourg, Le Monde vu de la plus extrême droite, Perpignan : Presses universitaires de Perpignan, 2010, pp. 14, 40, 45, 48, 54, 56-57, 61-64 and passim. The first standard book on the Conservative Revolution in Armin Möhler, The Conservative Revolution in Germany, 1918-1932, New York: Radfix, 2018, 1st edition (in German), 1950. Möhler was a Swiss citizen and an ex-Nazi, who looked after 1945 for a Fascism without extermination camps. His spite of his views, he was able to distinguish his scholarly work from his political activism.
[vii] Nicolas Lebourg, Les nazis ont-ils survécu ?, p. 104.
[viii] Serge Wolmer, « Le courant national aux USA », Défense de l’Occident, No. 65, September-October 1967, pp. 21-34.
[ix] François Duprat and Alain Renault, “Fascismes américains”, special issue of Revue d’histoire du fascisme, 1975.
[x] “Enquête sur une photo — M. Le Pen a bel et bien ‘rencontré’ M. Reagan”, Le Monde, 26 February 1987.
[xi] “French far rightist belittles gas chambers,” The New York Times, 16 September 1987, p. A3.
[xii] Anne-Marie Duranton-Crabol, Visages de la Nouvelle droite : le GRECE et son histoire, Paris : Presses de la Fondation nationale des sciences politiques, 1988.
[xiii] J. Lester Feder and Pierre Bruet, “The Man Who Gave White Nationalism A New Life,” Buzzfeed, 27 December 2017.
[xiv] Stéphane François and Adrien Nonjon, “Guillaume Faye (1949-2019): At the Forefront of a New Theory of White Nationalism”, Journal of Illiberalism Studies, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2022, pp. 17-30.
[xv] Nicolas Lebourg, Les Nazis ont-ils survécu ?, p. 253 and 310.
[xvi] Christiane Chombeau, “M. Le Pen justifie ses liens avec M. Jirinovski,” Le Monde, 20 February 1996.
[xvii] Tamir Bar-On, “The French New Right’s Quest for Alternative Modernity,” Fascism, 1, 2012, pp. 19-21.
[xviii] Nicolas Lebourg, “Comment le FN est devenu si pro-russe”, Slate.fr, 30 mai 2018.
[xix] Marlène Laruelle, “Entre le Rassemblement national et la Russie, une longue lune de miel,” Sud Ouest, 21 April 2022.
[xx] Nicolas Lebourg, “Comment le FN…”
[xxi] “Une fille du porte-parole de Poutine stagiaire d’Aymeric Chauprade au Parlement européen”, Nouvelobs.com, 25 February 2019.
[xxii] Marine Turchi and Karl Laske, “Les liens financiers et politiques d’un proche de Marine Le Pen avec le régime Al-Assad,” Mediapart, 9 December 2024.
[xxiii] Marine Turchi and Agathe Duparc, “Le mystère s’épaissit autour du prêt russe du Front national”, Mediapart, 18 May 2018.
[xxiv] Marine Turchi, “En marge du prêt russe au RN : 255 000 euros ont été versés en échange de positions pro-Poutine,” Mediapart, 27 June 2024.
[xxv] Agathe Duparc, Antton Rouget et Marine Turchi, “La vraie histoire du financement russe de Le Pen,” Mediapart, 2 May 2017.
[xxvi] David Basso, “Marine Le Pen persiste sur le fait que la Crimée serait ‘russe’”, Euractiv, 25 May 2023.
[xxvii] Anton Shekhovstov, “Moscow using far right to infiltrate EU parliament,” EU Observer, 5 May 2021.
[xxviii] The affair was revealed by Le Canard enchaîné in its issue of 25 January 2017. Mr. Fillon was indicted on 14 March of the same year. Later, he bas been sentenced.
[xxix] On the visit: Max de Haldevang, “A glamorous young Russian nationalist is leading her country’s love affair with Trump and Le Pen,” Quartz, 2017.
[xxx] Martin Untersinger, “Les preuves de l’ingérence russe dans la campagne de Macron en 2017”, Le Monde, 6 décembre 2019.
[xxxi] Ivanne Trippenbach, “How French far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen has kept a low profile on Ukraine war,” Le Monde in English, 4 April 2022.
[xxxii] Clément Guillou, “France delivering long-range missiles to Kyiv is ‘irresponsible,’ says Le Pen,” Le Monde in English, 13 July 2023.
[xxxiii] “Marine Le Pen’s Visit to New York: Trump Tower, Not Trump,” The New York Times, 13 January 2017.
[xxxiv] Piotr Smolar, “After canceling his Washington speech, Jordan Bardella is called a ‘pussy’ by Steve Bannon,” Le Monde in English, 22 February 2025; “Jordan Bardella insulté par Steve Bannon après avoir annulé son intervention à un rassemblement conservateur”, BFMTV, 22 February 2025.
[xxxv] Isabelle Mandraud, “The new regular in French conservative media? Xenia Fedorova, former head of RT France,” Le Monde in English, 26 March 2025.
[xxxvi] Clément Guillou, “Pierre-Edouard Stérin et François Durvye, les hommes d’affaires qui aimantent la droite et le RN”, Le Monde, 28 February 2025.
[xxxvii] Kenneth P. Vogel, Kim Barker, Constant Méheut and Michael Schwirtz, “After Trump’s Pardon, Paul Manafort Is Back and Looking for Foreign Work,” The New York Times, 12 January 2025,
[xxxviii] Robert S. Mueller,Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election, 2019, pp. 129-141.
[xxxix] Abdelhak El Idrissi and Clément Guillou, “Billionaire investigated for alleged illegal funding of Le Pen’s RN party,” Le Monde in English, 10 July 2025.
[xl] Nicolas Lebourg and Olivier Schmitt, “L’attirance de l’ultra-droite française pour la Russie de Poutine,”
[xli] “Disinformation, potent weapon against powerful women,” AFP, 5 January 2022.
[xlii] Pierre Assouline, “Henry Coston, itinéraire d’un antisémite”, L’Histoire, October 1991, p. 57 ; Olivier Biffaud, “Henri Coston”, Le Monde, 2 août 2001.
[xliii] Natasha Anderson, “Candace Owens is eviscerated for ‘despicable and dangerous’ denial of Nazi holocaust atrocities including SS ‘Angel of Death’ Mengele’s horrific experiments on twins at Auschwitz,” Daily Mail, 11 July 2024; Jack Elbaum, “Candace Owens Claims Star of David Originated From Child-Sacrificing Pagan Deity,” Algemeiner, 2 August 2024. On Kennedy and Israel, see Warren Bass, Support any Friend. Kennedy’s Middle East and the Making of the U.S.-Israel Alliance, Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
[xliv] Alexandre Sulzer, “Candace Owens, invitée de Marion Maréchal : ‘Macron n’est pas un leader fortֹ’”, Le Parisien, 21 September 2019.
[xlv] Complaint of the Macrons, 2025, pp. 31-32.
[xlvi] Project MKUltra, The CIA’s Program of Research in Behavorial Modification, Washington: Government Printing Office, 1977, pp. 4, 6, 8-9, and 11.
[xlvii] Pierre-Antoine Lefort, “Ce que l’on sait de la noyade d’Isabelle Ferreira, proche des gilets jaunes, à Saint-Malo,” Francebleu.fr, 25 March 2022. This article was published years before Ms. Owens’ podcasts.
[xlviii] « L’hebdomadaire d’extrême droite “Rivarol” n’aura plus le droit aux aides à la presse », Lemonde.fr, 26 May 2022.
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