National Rally Candidate Ousted Over Violent Anti-Muslim Tweets

Candidate Danielle Delavaud was dismissed on Tuesday, May 18 by the party, which had not been aware of these tweets inciting violence that were published since 2017, reports France Bleu Limousin. "I discovered them two days ago and I immediately informed the party," said Valéry Élophe, the departmental secretary of the party in Corrèze. "Stop building mosques, I’m okay with blowing them up. Flash ball... don’t hesitate, CRS, bomb them, you have the support of the French." These are the racist messages posted on Twitter by Danielle Delavaud.

No complaint has so far been filed against Danielle Delavaud, the media informs, recalling that incitement to hatred, violence or racial discrimination is a criminal offense punishable by one year’s imprisonment and a fine of 45,000 euros.

For the now former RN candidate, it is indeed "a shame" that the party’s sanction comes nearly four years later. "If they had seen it before, they would have warned me, I would have deleted it," she explains to France Bleu Limousin, adding that she "regrets" her dismissal from the party, which she considers a "punishment." "I’m very upset to have done that. I didn’t have the maturity I have today, since I’ve been active, now since 2017," she admits.

The RN is not the first case of sanctions for racist remarks. In 2020, Christophe Rippert, a former RN municipal councilor in the town of Le Pontet, who had commented on Facebook on a photo of Muslim prayer in the street, claiming that he would like to "crush all this shit," was convicted of incitement to racial hatred to six months suspended prison sentence. In 2017, at the time of the Front National, many party candidates had also published, liked or shared racist or homophobic content, according to the media Buzzfeed News.