This is a challenge to the authorities. A neo-Nazi black metal festival banned in five departments of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region was organized in a village in Isère, the department prefecture announced on Saturday.
The gendarmerie was deployed to carry out systematic checks around the village, the organizer of the “Call of terror” festival refusing despite injunctions to cancel the event organized on February 24, the anniversary of the creation of the national socialist party. ‘Adolf Hitler, according to the same source.
A fine of a few hundred euros for participants
The organizers risk up to six months’ imprisonment and a fine of 7,500 euros and the participants a fourth-class fine, punishable by a few hundred euros at most.
The authorities learned “towards the end of the afternoon” that the banned concert was being held in Vezeronce Curtin “in a community hall which had been rented to an individual without the municipality knowing the reason or nature of this gathering” , indicated the prefecture.
An abject headliner
Five checkpoints were set up by the gendarmerie on the main access roads to this town of 2,000 inhabitants, less than an hour’s drive from Lyon, one of the strongholds of the ultra-right. These “systematic controls” are carried out with a view to “prosecutions which may be brought against the organizers or participants”, according to the prefecture.
The festival headlined the Polish group Graveland, known “for its songs in praise of the Third Reich” and others in reference to the SS division responsible for Adolf Hitler’s close protection. Announced on social networks without any other indication of location than “Rhône Alpes Region”, the event had been banned in five departments, including Isère, because it was “close to neo-Nazi ideology” and in order to “prevent any attack on the “public order”, recalled the prefecture.