On Tuesday, 4 November, French identitarian activist Jean-Eudes Gannat posted a video on TikTok showing him in front of a supermarket in a small provincial town, commenting on the inappropriate presence of Afghan migrants gathered nearby. This video has now led to him being charged with incitement to racial hatred.
It only took a 24-second clip to spark the fury of the authorities. In the incriminating video, which is short and uncut, Gannat films himself in front of a Leclerc supermarket in the western town of Segré, where he comments on the presence of a group of migrants gathered at the store’s entrance. Gannat accuses this group of refugees of squatting and begging daily in a quiet little town of ten thousand inhabitants in the depths of the Anjou countryside.
It was not so much the video itself that led Jean-Eudes Gannat to have to explain himself to the police as the caption accompanying it, visible on the banner scrolling with the video: “Fed up with living with the cousins of the Taliban in the depths of our countryside.”
The activist was arrested and taken into custody. He has a previous conviction from 2023 for defamation of a local elected official and denounces the “relentless” pursuit of him by the justice system. After more than 24 hours of questioning, he was referred for trial and charged with ‘incitement to racial hatred’ with a view to his immediate appearance in court. The hearing, initially scheduled for Friday afternoon, has been postponed until 2026, May 6th. Until then, he remains under judicial supervision.
In another post, Gannat denounced the ban on “describing reality.” “A new milestone has been reached in censorship,” said his lawyer, Matthieu Sassi. The court had requested that he be subject to a total ban on using social media, under penalty of pre-trial detention. This ban was ultimately limited to X and TikTok for a period of one month.
On the Right, voices were raised in his defence, from, for example, Stanislas Rigault, a colleague of Éric Zemmour, who denounced the disproportionate response of the authorities: “This is complete madness. Repeat offenders are walking around freely in France, our borders are like sieves … On the other hand, for a descriptive video: immediate judgement,” he exclaimed on X.
Journalists also lent their support to the young man: “Showing the reality of France’s ethnocultural change is not a crime,” argued commentator Nicolas Faure, who denounced it as “pure madness.” Influencer Damien Rieu, for his part, is concerned about an English-style drift taking hold in France, where any “non-enthusiastic” comment on immigration could lead to legal trouble.
The case has taken on an international dimension, with several foreign right-wing influencers and personalities such as Tommy Robinson and Eva Vlaardingerbroek coming to his defence on X. Gannat asked for his video to be widely shared in order to gain support. The gamble paid off: at the time of writing, his post has been viewed more than a million times.
An online fundraiser has been launched to help Gannat, a father of three. It has already raised more than €10,000.
