The evening will not take place. Scheduled for Saturday evening, in a private estate located between the Loire and Rhône departments, the “anti-wokism rock” festival should have welcomed five neo-Nazi groups and between 100 and 200 people. But one survey by Mediapart and Rue89 Lyon had “the effect of a bomb”, says the organizer of the event Renaud Mannheim who had to cancel it.
He explained to the investigative media that the owner of the premises had “purely canceled [sa] reservation “. The room manager told Mediapart that he did not want to “taint [son] establishment”. “Four invited groups also withdrew,” added Renaud Mannheim, estimating his losses at “3,500 euros non-refundable”. The organizer of the event, also singer of the group Match Retour, assured that he had no alternative solution.
Pieces to the glory of Nazi cadres
The Rhône prefecture still issued an order to ban the concert “across the entire department” in order to “effectively and proportionately prevent disturbances to public order”. The ban “appears appropriate and necessary,” she concludes.
Indeed, in the decree, the state services noted, among other things, “that the headliner, Bunker 84, is known for his pieces to the glory of the Third Reich”. This group notably has songs entitled My Kampf, Night and Nebel Or Victims of democracies who praise the crimes of these Nazi cadres and advocate historical revisionism. Other groups, like the Nice-based Fraction, also have anti-Semitic, Islamophobic and supremacist songs in their repertoire.
The prefecture also considered that this festival, whose poster indicated “white lives matters” – wanting to replace the anti-racist slogan “Black Lives Matter”, was “likely to give rise to comments inciting racial hatred and violence against against certain groups of people. She recalled to this extent that the organization, Renaud Mannheim was “well known”, being “clearly affiliated with the Lyon ultra-right”. He is a former member of the “Third Way” section and frequent participant in the neo-Nazi music promotion network “Blood and Honor”, dissolved in July 2019 by ministerial decree.
As Mediapart reminds us, numerous clandestine neo-Nazi parties are organized throughout France. Several of them have been banned thanks to orders or journalistic investigations.