The Catholic movement Civitas, recently accused of promoting anti-Semitic comments at its summer university, had been in the sights of the authorities for several weeks. It has now officially been dissolved by the government.
The decision, taken by the Council of Ministers, was announced on Wednesday, October 4th by government spokesman Olivier Véran.
“Civitas considers human rights to be tools for destroying Christian civilisation. Civitas has organised rallies in tribute to personalities emblematic of collaboration. Civitas promotes a hierarchy between French citizens with clearly anti-Semitic and Islamophobic theses,” he said in the minutes of the Council of Ministers.
The charges against the movement, founded in 1999 to defend, according to its official website, “the national and Christian identity of France” and chaired by the Belgian Alain Escada, had been mounting recently.
During its summer university at the beginning of August, Civitas welcomed guest speaker Pierre Hillard, who made remarks deemed anti-Semitic, claiming that the naturalisation of the Jews in 1791 had opened the door to uncontrolled immigration, which is the bane of contemporary France. Alain Escada went further, calling for a return to the situation prior to 1789, when Jews could not obtain French nationality—a historical approximation, since the notion of ‘nationality’ did not exist under the Ancien Régime.
Pierre Hillard’s statement, deemed “ignominious” by the Ministry of the Interior, paved the way for the dissolution of the movement, which the government already considered to have a heavy record.
In April, Civitas was the target of a complaint from two LGBT rights groups over the cancellation of a concert by singer Bilal Hassani, which had been scheduled to take place in a former church and was finally cancelled under pressure.
In June, several of its members were suspected of involvement in the firebombing of the former mayor of Saint-Brévin-les-Pins, a commune targeted by the action of Civitas and also Reconquête for having tried to set up an asylum seekers’ reception centre on its territory.
Since 2016, the Civitas movement has been recognised as eligible for political party funding. Alain Escada had lent his support to Eric Zemmour as part of the 2022 presidential campaign.
