Paris Olympic Games: An Opening Ceremony of Blood and Tears

On the night of Saturday, July 27th, a total power cut plunged part of Paris into complete darkness. Only the Sacré-Coeur, dominating the hill of Montmartre, remained lit up. Wasn’t this church erected as reparation for the crimes of revolutionary France? What a symbol—just a few hours after the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, a spectacle that will long be remembered as a moment of abomination.

For many months, Parisians have seen their city transformed in the run-up to an opening ceremony that they were promised would be unprecedented, exceptional, and grandiose. The other side of the coin was a capital disfigured by fences, security perimeters and ruined vistas to make way for the installations. But they were warned to be patient and self-sacrificing, because the result was supposed to surpass anything that had been done elsewhere in the past. Despite these flamboyant promises, scepticism reigned supreme. And with good reason: what could we expect from political and cultural leaders driven not by a concern for beauty and celebration, but by unhealthy ideological obsessions?

Even before the show, Patrick Boucheron, the historian in charge of the Olympic parade’s script, had already announced its intended direction. Known for his detestation of the Puy du Fou, the historic theme park founded by Philippe de Villiers, Boucheron considered the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Games to be an absolute repudiation, offering the world “a history lesson, an ode to grandeur”—in his view, the height of horror. His stated aim for 2024 was to “advocate global cultural mash-up.” In 2017, in his Histoire mondiale de la France, he clearly explained that he had a “political” ambition. Left-wing thinkers are unique in that they can take up their “political” struggle with impunity. 

And so it came as no surprise that the opening ceremony of the Games turned out to be exactly what its designers had originally intended: a militant ideological and political project, not a festive spectacle in the service of sport and the host country, France.

The show lasted a little over four hours, with plenty of technical resources, as is the rule for this type of event. Much could be said about the acts that followed one another on the banks of the Seine. Organised in a series of tableaux of more than dubious taste, the ceremony offered spectators a fairly complete catalogue of all the sick obsessions of decadent progressivism. “Global cultural mash-up” was the order of the day, as was the celebration of LGBT love, hatred of France’s glorious past, and of course—an indispensable component of any progressive staging—the violent anti-Christianism that is the hallmark of any so-called ‘free’ cultural performance.

In fact, it was all terribly conformist, even if the designers of the ceremony tried to convince themselves that they had ‘broken the codes’ and demonstrated creative freedom. What could be more clichéd than to see a black woman, Aya Nakamura, shimmying ‘without taboos’ in front of the uniforms of the Republican Guard, to play up the contrast between formalism and coolness, as in the tableau using the Académie Française and the Louvre as a backdrop?

But no matter how much the average viewer is fed politically correct messages from morning till night, there comes a point when the threshold of saturation is reached, even for him. The scandal finally erupted at a part of the ceremony featuring a parody of the Last Supper, performed by drag queens in the poses of Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece. People all over the world gasped—not at the aesthetic audacity, but at the vulgarity of the scene, and its outrageously and deliberately offensive nature. Voices of protest began to rise, until they became a torrent of indignation—in France and abroad.

The Conférence des évêques de France (French Bishops’ Conference), though not inclined to blow against the wind and generally stuck into praising consensus, issued a statement deploring the staging, rightly understood as an unhealthy outlet for a few pseudo-artists-creators:

This ceremony unfortunately included scenes of derision and mockery of Christianity, which we deeply deplore.

We thank the members of other religious denominations who expressed their solidarity with us. Our thoughts this morning are with all the Christians on every continent who have been hurt by the outrageousness and provocation of certain scenes. We want them to understand that the Olympic celebration goes far beyond the ideological biases of a few artists.

On the French side, the CEF’s press release acted as an eye-opener. In the press, immediate reviews of the ceremony—on the evening of 26th and the morning of 27th—were almost unanimously positive. Then the chorus of criticism intensified, and the articles condemning the ceremony began to multiply. In the end, the truth came out: the king is naked, and this show, designed to be inclusive, is nothing more than a hate-filled offensive against those who think ‘wrong.’

In the official media and on social networks, a few left-wing do-gooders tried to rescue the opening ceremony, looking for a range of cultural and artistic references hidden in the show from the eyes of the uninitiated. The nasty, obtuse spectators from the conservative Right didn’t actually understand anything: it wasn’t a representation of the Last Supper, but a reworking of an obscure painting depicting a Dionysian scene, housed in a small museum in Dijon. As they are uneducated—given that the Left has a monopoly on culture—they didn’t understand.

This attempt at a counter-fire did not have the desired effect, such was its ‘bad faith’. Thomas Jolly, the director, also attempted a balancing act to explain that his intentions had been misinterpreted.

But the canvas has left traces that are difficult to erase, and that prove the conscious intent of the people who created this blasphemous painting, in which obese drag queens mimic Christ and his apostles. As Amaury Brelet of Valeurs Actuelles points out on X:

In a since-deleted tweet, the official broadcaster, France Télévisions, celebrated ‘a legendary Last Supper.’

Drag queen Piche, who was present on the bridge that evening, acknowledged that it was the Last Supper and referred to a ‘biblical representation’ (BFMTV).

DJ and LGBT activist Barbara Butch, who was also present, praised a ‘gay New Testament’ on Instagram, with a comparative photo to back it up.

Outrage took off across the world, among ordinary citizens and leaders alike. The government of Costa Rica expressed alarm at the offence taken against millions of Christians around the world. In the United States, advertising companies announced that they are withdrawing their advertisements as a sign of disapproval of games that show contempt for Christians. In the end, the organisers had to apologise. Anne Descamps, communications director for Paris 2024, publicly apologised: “Clearly, our intention was not to show disrespect to any religious group whatsoever. On the contrary, our intention was to show tolerance and communion. If people were offended, we apologise.” The International Olympic Committee later published a text to congratulate this statement: “The IOC has taken note of and welcomes the clarification provided by the Paris 2024 Organising Committee regarding the opening ceremony.”

Nice result.

Ultimately, the issue is not even a religious one. Some have pointed to the existence of a famous ‘right to blasphemy’ that has supposedly been defended by the French constitution since the Revolution. But the problem is not limited to religion and it is not a ‘simple’ question of blasphemy. Clearly, no one would have dared to propose a representation of Mohammed’s paradise surrounded by his virgins, all performed by drag-queens, to celebrate the opening of the Olympic Games. The offensive is political, and the entire ceremony was conceived as a political project. In an interview with Le Monde the day after the second round of the legislative elections, Thomas Jolly said that, in the event of a Rassemblement National victory, the Olympic Games ceremony he was finalising would become “a sort of resistance ceremony.” One can not be more explicit.

Some commentators on the ceremony from the Left congratulated themselves on having “put the reactionaries to shame,” or on having “brought tears to the eyes of the far right.” That was the essence of their project: not to celebrate France and sport, but to settle scores with a mouthful of hate and bile. According to them, the success of the ceremony would be measured by its ability to trigger heartburn in conservatives. How else to justify the choice of this parody of the Last Supper? How else can we understand the unhealthy, bloody indulgence in revolutionary madness shown during the part of the ceremony where we see a silhouette of Queen Marie-Antoinette decapitated, shrouded in blood red, against a backdrop of death metal?

But the paradox is that these mediocre characters are nothing without the culture, history, genius and soul of this eternal France that they abhor and vomit. Their technical prowess, made up of spotlights and lasers, only makes sense because a few centuries ago, their illustrious predecessors, enamoured of beauty, eternity, and grandeur, built the Conciergerie, the Louvre and the Académie to adorn the banks of the Seine and serve today as a showcase for their pitiful fantasies. It’s no coincidence that Anne Hidalgo was dreaming up this opening ceremony on the Seine, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. No one would have been interested if it had taken place on the concrete slab of Argenteuil. Yet it deserved little more.

Let us rejoice. In a few days’ time, the all-consuming leprosy of the Olympic festivities celebrating compulsory progressivism will have receded. The Seine will remain, lined with its wonders of blonde stone, and on the hill of Montmartre, the Sacré-Coeur will continue to watch over France.