The organisation of Women’s Day in Paris on Sunday, March 8th, gave rise to an intense political battle between the various movements responsible for championing women’s causes. On the Left, there has long been a refusal to name the real enemies of women; on the Right, attacks are multiplying against those who try to embody another struggle and face hostility from the authorities and violence in the streets.
A parade of various feminist groups is traditionally organised in the streets of Paris on Women’s Day. This year, the right-wing feminist group Collectif Némésis was not given permission to march with the main procession but had to arrange for its own parallel procession after pressure from other organisations.
This is a direct consequence of the assassination of nationalist activist Quentin Deranque in Lyon on February 12th. ‘Anti-fascists’ beat the young man to death while he was protecting members of the Némésis group during a protest against a pro-Palestinian MEP’s visit to a conference at the city’s Institute of Political Science. Since Quentin’s murder, the media and political Left have been pouring all their energy into placing the entire blame for the young man’s death on the shoulders of Collectif Némésis, accused of instigating the rise in street violence, while the small group La Jeune Garde, to which all the suspects involved in Quentin’s death belong, is at the same time benefiting from the authorities’ culpable complacency: a clear process of reversal of guilt.
Ahead of the day of the demonstration, the magazine Valeurs Actuelles obtained a document signed by the minister of the interior, Laurent Nuñez, explicitly expressing his support for left-wing feminist organisations, such as the CGT union and Planned Parenthood, in order to grant their request to ban the right-wing group from the Paris demonstration. In this letter, the minister also seems to raise the possibility of dissolving Collectif Némésis, as requested by the Left a few days earlier in a session of the National Assembly.
The minister explicitly requested that, in the event that a gathering organised by Némésis did take place, it be geographically separated from the main procession, effectively segregating them.
Valeurs Actuelles also obtained another document, this time addressed to prefects—local representatives of the state—asking them to check whether activists from Némésis planned to take part in Women’s Day marches and, if necessary, to ban them: “You will take all necessary measures, including, if necessary, a ban, to prevent this participation,” reads the ‘operational message’ from the ministry.
Collectif Némésis denounces the irresponsibility of the authorities in the face of the constant threats to which its members are subjected. The group’s founder Alice Cordier was threatened with a bullet to the head by Raphaël Arnault, founder of La Jeune Garde. The movement’s spokeswoman, Yona Faedda, had her address and those of her family members posted online but was denied police protection. “This decision gives the impression that it is the victims who are being punished, as is sometimes the case in harassment cases, where the preference is to remove the victims rather than address the underlying problem,” warns Amaury Bucco, a specialist in justice and police issues for Valeurs Actuelles.
Despite this pressure from high places, the Némésis group was able to organise its own demonstration, with an autonomous procession under police protection. Their supporters were there to honour the memory of the many female victims who have made headlines in recent years, having been killed by illegal immigrant attackers, such as 12-year-old Lola or 19-year-old Catholic student Philippine. “Our actions consist of displaying banners, as left-wing associations do,” Alice Cordier reminded the press. “They want to dissolve an association of victims, which denounces violence against women, which represents raped women?” she said indignantly. Cordier explained that she is fighting to ensure that French girls do not suffer the same fate as British girls who were subjected to grooming gangs across the Channel.
European MP Marion Maréchal, president of the Identité-Libertés movement, came to show her support for the Némésis movement, as did Rassemblement National (RN) MP Anne Sicard. “You are courageous; you are fighting for all women who have no voice, for all the forgotten victims, all those whose attackers are silenced so as not to contradict the supposed ‘living together,’” Maréchal said. Thierry Mariani, the RN candidate for mayor of Paris, was also present.
« Merci @CordierAlice2, merci au @Coll_Nemesis.
— Marion Maréchal (@MarionMarechal) March 8, 2026
Vous êtes courageuses, vous vous battez pour toutes les femmes qui n’ont pas de voix, pour toutes les victimes oubliées, toutes celles dont on veut taire l’agresseur pour ne pas contredire le prétendu "vivre-ensemble". »#8mars pic.twitter.com/Gzpv4lcz2r
While the women of Némésis saw their right to protest challenged, left-wing feminists marched, carefully selecting their battles. Ahead of Women’s Day, a demonstration in Nancy saw pro-Palestinian ‘feminist’ activists clash with Iranian demonstrators celebrating the Israeli-American offensive against the mullahs’ regime, requiring police intervention.
In the name of a convergence of struggles driven by antisemitism, hatred of the West, and subservience to Islam, calls from “feminists” supporting the Iranian regime could be read on X: “As feminists, we demand the defeat of Israel and the United States, and the withdrawal of imperialist troops from the Middle East!” posted Louise, an activist with Du Pain et des Roses (Bread and Roses), “a collective that fights for the emancipation of all from an anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, and revolutionary perspective,” on Sunday, March 8th. The slogan “Jews, rapists, murderers” was heard in the official march in Paris on the same day. Several Iranian women’s associations were also troubled by the silence of official feminists regarding the persecution of women by the Khamenei regime.
The essayist Naima M’Faddel, a Franco-Moroccan essayist who is active in the right-wing Les Républicains party and defends a conservative stance on immigration, had these bitter words to say about this lamentable drift:
There is complete disdain for those who do not fit the category of the “good victim,” the one who would reinforce the overarching narrative of systemic Western patriarchy. …This is how a cause that should unite all women, without hierarchy or ideological sorting, withers away. A cause that does not discriminate among its victims.