PARIS — The National Rally, the party of French far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, fired a volunteer security official on Wednesday after body camera footage emerged showing the individual, a municipal police officer, making racist remarks. The clip, published by local daily Midi Libre, showed a group of local police officers in the southern city of Carcassonne — which the National Rally took control of during the French local elections in March — using racial and homophobic slurs and uttering a series of hateful comments about minorities, migrants and women. The individual was not named and appears blurred in photos and video.
In a statement, the city said the clip was from 2025 — before Mayor Christophe Barthès took office— and that Barthès unequivocally condemned the remarks. The Carcassonne local police did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. The National Rally said in a statement that the volunteer was “immediately removed” from his role and “expelled” from the party after its leadership learned of the video.
The prosecutor’s office in Carcassonne told the news agency it had opened an investigation on the basis of the footage. But the party’s opponents said the incident was evidence of the National Rally’s inability to fully extract itself from its racist, xenophobic and antisemitic roots. Le Pen’s father founded the party, then known as the National Front, alongside a ragtag group of political misfits and Nazi collaborators.
The elder Le Pen was repeatedly convicted for hate speech, including downplaying the Holocaust. Marine Le Pen kicked her father out of the party in 2015 as part of her years-long effort to clean up its image. The National Rally today enjoys unprecedented support, and most polls show Le Pen is the current favorite in the race to replace Macron in the spring of 2027.
Yet her party has frequently been forced to address offensive remarks made by lower-ranking officials and members, especially during election cycles. Olivier Faure, the leader of the center-left Socialist Party who is vying for his party’s backing in the presidential race in a primary contest, said on X that voters should not give the National Rally “the keys to France.”
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