Carrefour stops selling the far-right newspaper ‘Rivarol’

LOIC VENANCE / AFP

A Carrefour store, in Saint-Herblain in Loire-Atlantique, on January 13, 2021.

CARREFOUR – The distributor Carrefour announced on Friday, August 19, that it had decided to withdraw the far-right weekly from sale Rivarolwhich was deprived of its approval by the Mixed Commission of Publications and Press Agencies (CPPAP).

“Following the decision of the Ministry of Culture’s Mixed Commission of Publications and Press Agencies not to renew the registration certificate issued to the Rivarol publication for the benefit of the press aid scheme, Carrefour has decided not to sell this weekly”the group told AFP.

Founded in 1951, Rivarol (named after counterrevolutionary Antoine de Rivarol) is a flagship publication of the French far right. The paper had its approval withdrawn in May by CPPAP, a measure that removes the tax breaks and reduced postage rates enjoyed by dailies.

Its publication director, Jérôme Bourbon (Fabrice of his real name), has been sentenced fifteen times, in particular, for incitement to hatred, contesting crimes against humanity and racist insults.

Last December he was sentenced for contesting a crime against humanity and inciting hatred against Jews because of a video in which he spoke of the Vel d’Hiv raid.

“Racist, anti-Semitic, xenophobic and Holocaust denier rags should no longer have the right to citizenship”

He stated in particular that Marshal Pétain had “always opposed to the slightest persecution or attack on French Jews”.

In March, around thirty historians and personalities, including Beate and Serge Klarsfeld, defenders of the memory of those deported from France, had protested against the “indirect public aid” from which he benefited Rivarol.

The representative council of Jewish institutions in France (Crif) welcomed Carrefour’s decision. “Racist, anti-Semitic, xenophobic and Holocaust denier rags should no longer have citizenship rights, in distribution as well as on social media”the institution said on Twitter.

The CPPAP is an organization composed of equal parts by representatives of the State and professionals of the press. It is up to him to decide if the publications can benefit from the economic regime of the press, according to a series of criteria.

Its regulation specifies that “Denialist publications that incite racial hatred, xenophobia and those that violate the dignity of the human person” You cannot benefit from this scheme.

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