France’s Interior Minister requested the dissolution of Civitas due to antisemitic remarks made during the group’s summer seminar last month.
French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin tweeted that he had asked the ministry „to proceed to the dissolution” of Civitas, an association generally considered to be Traditionalist Catholic, integrist, nationalist, and of the extreme right, reports the RFI.
The initiation comes after antisemitic remarks made by the association members during their summer seminar, which received strong condemnation from Darmanin. „There is no room for antisemitism in our country,” Darmanin said in his post, adding that he is taking the matter to the national prosecutor.
At that summer seminar, polemicist Pierre Hillard told his audience that before the French Revolution of 1789, Jews and other religious minorities could not become French citizens because they were „heretics.” Hillard said, „Maybe we should go back to how things were before 1789.”
The association defines itself as a „Traditionalist Catholic lobby group „. It claims to have 165,000 members and was recognised as a political party in 2016.
Photo credit: AFP – FRANCOIS GUILLOT