A lengthy investigation of the French news website Mediapart revealed that there are about 50 "additional" elements of Nazi conviction in the ranks of the French army who do not hesitate to publicly display their extremist ideas, whether inside the barracks or during the military missions carried out by the army.

Last July, the site revealed how about 10 French soldiers on social media boasted of their belief in the ideology of the neo-Nazis and showed their nostalgia for the Third Reich (Nazi Germany), but the discovery of dozens of additional soldiers shows, according to the site, that the size of Nazi ideology in the ranks of the French armed forces is greater Than he imagined.

Commenting on the results of the new investigation conducted by 3 investigative journalists for Mediapart, the French Ministry of the Armies said that "the data raised by the investigation are very serious."

The investigation revealed that the discovered elements are distributed among several branches of the French army, especially the "Foreign Corps", the 3rd Marine Corps Regiment, the 35th Infantry Regiment, and others, and that most of those who were discovered were not isolated cases but rather were communicating with each other and appeared in group photos published on their accounts on the communication sites. .

The website stated that the identities of those who have been revealed so far - that is, about 60 people - raise the number of branches of the French army that include elements that show their loyalty and belief in Nazi ideology to 14.

He stressed that compared to the total number of French soldiers of approximately 210,000 soldiers, the 60 cases discovered within months by MediaPart remain of limited value and cannot accurately express the size of the phenomenon because it relied solely and mainly on open sources and on the capabilities of a news site and not a state. .

But what is certain - the site adds - is that the results of this partial investigation, which was limited only to the neo-Nazi category - without monitoring other types of other right-wing extremists - clearly contradict the figures presented by the authorities in this regard.

In June 2019, the report of the fact-finding mission on public services in the face of extremism - compiled by Parliamentarians Eric Dyar and Eric Bollat ​​based on statistics provided by the French Directorate of Intelligence and Defense Security - estimated that “the armed forces of our country (France) seem to be safe, Until this moment, from any noticeable extremism. "

According to the same directorate, the rate of suspicion of extremism was estimated at that time at 0.05% among the land forces and 0.03% in the navy, which means that there are roughly 57 extremists within the land armed forces "who are mainly Islamist extremists", and 11 extremist elements in the navy. .

The army responded

The website stated that the French Ministry of Armies tried very hard to minimize the findings of the investigation by issuing a statement claiming that it had "carefully analyzed" the data and details that it came up with.

The ministry said that there are elements among the 50 names that were provided that "no longer have any relationship with the army .. And about 20 of the aforementioned cases did not confirm our continuous investigations the information provided by the website regarding their association with the extreme right."

The ministry also confirmed that “about ten cases were actually discovered during their joining the army, but they were not involved in blood crimes, so they were recruited under the right to forget that is applied specifically in the case of those enrolled in the foreign legion’s units .. They were warned and did not publish, to our knowledge, that is. Content since their integration into the ranks of the army. "

She indicated that some of the soldiers whose names were mentioned had already been exposed and were punished for their actions. However, the latest MediaPart investigation "did not show in light of the outcome and the status of the investigation being carried out by the Ministry, only 6 or 7 cases were not noticed by the special monitoring and investigation agencies." In the ministry. "