The conservative student union La Cocarde étudiante is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year. Ten years of hard work for a group of intrepid students who decided to strike a blow at the heart of French university education—a bastion occupied by the militant organizations of the Left and far Left.
From its very beginnings, the union has had a threefold ambition: “activist action on the ground, camaraderie and intellectual combat.”
The union has its origins in a group of friends studying law: Pierre Gentillet, Pierre-Romain Thionnet and Maxime Duvauchelle. Since then, Pierre Gentillet has become one of the leading advocates of the conservative and national cause on CNews television, while Pierre-Romain Thionnet heads the Rassemblement National (RN) youth movement at the same time as being elected to the European Parliament last June.
To mark its tenth anniversary, La Cocarde étudiante organized a day-long conference in Paris, with the aim of giving the floor to leading figures from the conservative Right. European deputy Marion Maréchal, president of the new Identité Libertés party, and European deputy Sarah Knafo, member of the Reconquête party founded by Éric Zemmour, were present and took the podium, demonstrating a union of the right in action. A RN senator and a Les Républicains (LR) mayor were also there. Knafo was keen to salute this ability to unite forces: “I’m here today because La Cocarde is a youth movement that I’ve seen come into being, that I’ve watched grow, and which today has the strength to bring together people from all the parties on the right,” the MEP told Le Journal du Dimanche.
We were able to meet Édouard Bina, the union’s current president, who was kind enough to answer a few questions.
A student at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques (Sciences Po) in Lyon, Bina explains his involvement with his desire to provide a backbone and a responsible framework for right-wing students. In French universities, the vast majority of students represent an inert, uncommitted mass, leaving the field open to a handful of extremely determined left-wing and far-left activists, who give the impression of embodying the only possible political option.
The Left has brought into the university issues that are external to it (Islamism, wokism) and is taking students hostage with noisy demonstrations and blockades of the premises, hindering the normal running of courses and exams whenever it can.
In this barren landscape, the conservative student is often content to remain silent, or to be an isolated provocateur. According to Bina, the presence of La Cocarde helps to “give him hope”, by urging him to “come out of the closet” with a legible, framed, and responsible project, enabling him to build something in his faculty, and not limit himself to pure provocation. Dialogue with the university administration is one of the key elements of his action: the aim is to send a signal to the hierarchy that there are students who are not troublemakers and who intend to preserve the quality of their training while defending the values of the common good.
Traditionally, right-wing involvement at university is reserved for a handful of students from a few specific courses—law being the most prominent. Bina’s credo is that “everyone should be able to be an activist”, and La Cocarde strives to reach out to students with profiles outside the norm: literature and architecture students, for example. This diversification of profiles is one of the key factors in the success of the group’s structure as, for a long time, right-wing student union involvement was associated with a few fields of study known for their willingness to be radical and tumultuous, such as the Assas law faculty in Paris, which in the past was the breeding ground for numerous far-right groups now disbanded, such as the GUD (Groupe Union Défense) or Occident.
In 2024, the union presented lists in half of the CROUS (Centre Régional des Œuvres Universitaires et Scolaires) for student elections. In 2021, only two lists had been submitted for the entire territory. The seats were won overwhelmingly by the Left, which mobilized its voters to fight against “the danger of the extreme right.” But while La Cocarde didn’t win a single seat, it did score a major success, breaking the Left’s “single party” effect in this election.
We asked Bina about his diagnosis of the current state of the French university and its politicization. The picture is mixed. In some places, left-wing formations are regaining momentum, while in others they are declining, or—apparently—accepting dialogue more readily. Radicalization is at work around new struggles such as defending Hamas and the Palestinian cause, or minority rights. The latest episode, the intimidation of Prof. Balanche by students supporting the Islamist cause, is revealing of this trend and of the way left-wing activism operates in higher education. In this case, Bina is rather pessimistic. Professor Balanche is certainly in for endless harassment, which is likely to end in his departure due to a lack of genuine, committed support from the university leadership.
The Left’s preferred modus operandi remains intimidation. La Cocarde has, in spite of itself, already been involved in a dozen fights since the start of the academic year. As recently as three weeks ago, three distributions of leaflets on campus resulted in unrest. This is no cause for celebration. One of La Cocarde’s watchwords must be “responsibility,” insists Bina. The movement’s credibility depends on it. Young students who join the union can not be confronted with violence if they want to feel confident and persevere in the organization. From the union’s point of view, La Cocarde is keen to avoid becoming a victim group known for sending its students “into the fray.”
When asked about his greatest achievement, Bina believes it lies first and foremost in the organization of the ten-year celebration, bringing together enthusiastic profiles from all over the Right, who don’t see the university as “lost territory” to be left… to the Left. The construction of a European network is also an achievement of which he is proud. At the anniversary event, several representatives of European partner organizations were present, bringing their own specific national flavour. These included the K.V.H.V, or union of Flemish Catholic students, more of a “fraternity” than a trade union, close to the Belgian Prime Minister; the Alternativa Estudiantil, close to VOX; the RFS, the FPÖ’s trade union; and Turin’s FUAN, close to Fratelli d’Italia, which has now been in existence for over seventy years. The way these groups operate may vary from one country to another, but the observation and motivation are the same: the realm of intellectual training and academia has been left to the Left and constitutes a privileged field of engagement for young people who do not wish to keep their ideas under wraps.
There’s still a long way to go. La Cocarde faces a number of obstacles, notably the impunity enjoyed by the extreme Left. The university administration, obsessed with the risk of unrest, does little to help, preferring to accommodate the hegemony of the far-left unions to avoid any form of protest. The presence of La Cocarde in a faculty is seen by them as a challenge to ‘peace,’ which is just another name for a left-wing dictatorship that silences all forms of opposition.
Bina concluded, a little bitterly: “In fact, quite often, the hierarchy is waiting for us to disappear.” But he and his members have no intention of doing so. “We’re back for another ten years,” he declared with pride.
