A French “anti-hate” website claiming to catalogue far-right symbols has listed several mainstream Roman Catholic symbols, including crosses and the Sacred Heart of Jesus, alongside well-known Nazi devices.
The French “anti-hate” website Indextreme claims that it is looking to “observe, catalogue and publicize the graphic symbols used by the far right in France,” and places various mainstream Roman Catholic symbols alongside those of Nazism and other far-right ideologies.
The project, which was created by graphic designer Geoffrey Dorne and photojournalist Ricardo Parreira and has been promoted by the leftist French website StreetPress, lists many symbols broken up into various categories from phrases to animals, flags, gestures, numbers, and crosses.
In the section on crosses, the Nazi Swastika is highlighted alongside several mainstream Roman Catholic symbols, including the Jerusalem Cross (the Christian symbol for the city of Jerusalem), the Cross of Burgundy, the Cross Pattée and the Cross of Lorraine, which is seen on the flags on Hungary and Slovakia.
The Cross of Lorraine was also used by the anti-Nazi Free France led by General Charles De Gaulle during the Second World War who fought the Nazi regime along with the Allies.
The inclusion of the Cross of Lorraine echoes another “anti-hate” school booklet released last year in Canada by the Canadian government-funded far-left Canadian Anti-Hate Network (CAHN), which claimed the World War Two-era Red Ensign flag was a symbol of hatred.
CAHN has also been alleged to have ties to the violent far-left group Antifa and last year a Canadian judge stated “CAHN did in fact assist Antifa and that the movement has been violent,” when proceeding to throw out a defamation suit lodged by a senior member of the far-left group against Canadian journalist Jonathan Kay.
Along with declaring various Catholic crosses as hate symbols, Indextreme declares that the Sacred Heart of Jesus, a major symbol of the Catholic church that represents the love of God for mankind, is also linked to the far-right.
“Today, the Sacred Heart is well-known thanks to the far-right political party Civitas, an offshoot of the Civitas Institute founded in 1999. Civitas is a nationalist, fundamentalist and Petainist movement. It is known for its anti-abortion, homophobic and transphobic positions,” the website states.
Even the early Christian Chi Rho symbol, which is credited as being used by Constantine the Great and became a Roman Imperial Insignia, is listed as being used as a far-right symbol by the two authors of the website.
The inclusion of mainstream Catholic symbols on a so-called “anti-hate” website comes as France has seen repeated and constant attacks on Catholic churches and cemeteries, members of the Catholic clergy and parishioners, including murders, such as the killing of Father Jacques Hamel in 2016.
In 2021 alone, more than 800 anti-Christian incidents were reported in France, including one incident that saw far-left Antifa extremists viciously attack a Roman Catholic procession in Paris that commemorated martyrs killed during the 1871 Paris commune.
Monsignor Denis Jachiet, Auxiliary Bishop of Paris commented on the violence saying, “We would have thought we were back 150 years ago. It’s surreal.”
“They clearly wanted to fight it out. They were Antifa,” he said and added, “They snatched the banners from our hands, knocked down the French remembrance flag, which they trampled on, punched the parishioners. They threw garbage cans, bottles, even wire fences at us.”