Macron party candidate says she was tricked into ‘neo-Nazi’ group photo
Valerie Hayer, vying for European Parliament role, says she didn’t notice racist slogans on clothing of men she took a photo with
The lead candidate for French President Emmanuel Macron’s party in upcoming European elections said she was tricked into taking a photo with members of a “neo-Nazi group.”
“On Sunday, I was approached by men asking me for a photo. On principle, I don’t usually refuse, and I accepted as I do every time,” Valerie Hayer, heading the Renaissance party list, wrote on X.
Prominently visible alongside a smiling Hayer in the photo is one of the men’s T-shirts, whose logo aping the North Face outdoor brand reads “The White Race,” and in smaller text “Save European Identity.”
“This was a trap set up for me by activists from a neo-Nazi group,” Hayer said.
She added that the men — whose faces were blurred out in the photo circulated on messaging service Telegram — had used “shameful methods of the far right, which I fight against with all my might.”
Hayer said she had “not had time to notice the racist slogans on their clothing.”
????ALERTE INFO
Valerie Hayer vient de couler définitivement la campagne de son parti pic.twitter.com/ggAg0bflcl
— Jon De Lorraine (@jon_delorraine) May 12, 2024
The encounter took place a day after a far-right gathering in Paris where participants commemorated the 1994 death of Sébastien Deyzieu, a committed member of the avowedly antisemitic Œuvre française movement, which was forcibly dissolved by the French government in 2013.
Hayer came under attack from the fiercely anti-Macron hard-left party France Unbowed (LFI), whose leader Jean-Luc Melenchon said that “no sane person would present themselves alongside such perpetrators of ethnic violence.”
The Macron list is languishing a distant second to the far-right National Rally (RN) in polling, less than a month ahead of European Parliament elections.
The incident is the latest blow for Hayer, 38, after she was widely seen by analysts as coming out second best in a televised debate against the head of RN’s list Jordan Bardella, earlier this month.
Some polls have also indicated that the ruling party faces a tight race even for second place against the Socialist alliance led by former commentator Raphael Glucksmann, who is credited with running a dynamic campaign.
The European elections, in which European Union citizens will elect representatives to the union’s legislative body, are slated to take place June 6-9.
