French Far-Right Leader Cancels US Speech After Bannon's Controversial Gesture
French far-right leader Jordan Bardella decided to cancel his scheduled talk at the US Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland, on Friday morning. This decision came after a controversial salute by Donald Trump’s former aide, Steve Bannon, reminiscent of a fascist gesture, which he displayed mere hours before. Bannon, known for his role in Trump’s 2016 president election victory and current status as a right-wing podcast host, concluded his CPAC speech on Thursday with an outstretched arm, fingers pointed, palm down – a gesture evocative of the Nazi salute. This act also recalled a similar gesture made by tech giant Elon Musk at the US president’s second inauguration in January.
Citing Bannon’s gesture as an allusion to “Nazi ideology,” Bardella, a member of France’s hard-right National Rally party, chose to withdraw from CPAC. The salute from Bannon during his speech was met with cheers from the audience at the event. Bardella, who was already in Washington and planned to address US-French relations, released a statement which read: “Yesterday, while I was not present in the room, one of the speakers provocatively made a gesture alluding to Nazi ideology. I, therefore, made the swift decision to cancel my afternoon speech.”
The National Rally party was outperformed during France’s snap election last summer by a left-leaning coalition. On Thursday evening, Bannon amped up the CPAC attendees with his talk, following Elon Musk, someone who has eclipsed him in Trump’s inner circle, and with whom Bannon shares a contentious relationship. “The only way they win is if we retreat; but we won’t retreat, surrender, or quit. We will fight, fight, fight,” he passionately declared, mirroring Trump’s motivational chants to his supporters post an assassination attempt.
Subsequently, Bannon extended his right arm at an angle with the palm facing down. While the more renowned Nazi salute, associated with Adolf Hitler, typically involves the arm pointing directly forward, Bannon and Musk’s gestures carried clear fascist undertones.
The Anti-Defamation League, which works against antisemitism, describes the Nazi salute as “raising an outstretched right arm with the palm down.” Some observers identified Bannon’s gesture, similar to Musk’s, as a “Roman salute,” though historians often argue this is simply a misleading distinction. Among some right-wing supporters, there’s a baseless claim that the Roman salute hails from ancient Roman times. However, historians have established that it was actually adopted in the 1920s by Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini and later by Hitler’s Nazi party in Germany.