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Robert Ménard (; born 6 July 1953) is a French politician and former journalist who has served as
Mayor In many countries, a mayor is the highest-ranking official in a Municipal corporation, municipal government such as that of a city or a town. Worldwide, there is a wide variance in local laws and customs regarding the powers and responsibilitie ...
of Béziers since
2014 The year 2014 was marked by the surge of the Western African Ebola epidemic, West African Ebola epidemic, which began in 2013, becoming the List of Ebola outbreaks, most widespread outbreak of the Ebola, Ebola virus in human history, resul ...
. He co-founded the Paris-based international NGO
Reporters Without Borders Reporters Without Borders (RWB; ; RSF) is an international non-profit and non-governmental organisation, non-governmental organization headquartered in Paris, which focuses on safeguarding the right to freedom of information. It describes its a ...
, which he led as its general-secretary from 1985 to 2008. He subsequently participated in the launch of the conservative information website ''Boulevard Voltaire'' in 2012. An
independent politician An independent politician or non-affiliated politician is a politician not affiliated with any political party or Bureaucracy, bureaucratic association. There are numerous reasons why someone may stand for office as an independent. Some politicia ...
since 1981, he was elected to the mayorship of Béziers in 2014. He joined the Les Amoureux de la France alliance in 2017.


Family and education

Ménard comes from a Catholic French '' Pied-Noir'' family which settled in Algeria in the 1850s. Around the time of the Independence of Algeria and when he was nine years old, the family moved to Brusque, Aveyron."Robert Ménard, porte-flambeau de la dédiabolisation du FN"
''Le Monde'', 21 June 2013
He studied religion, and planned on becoming a priest. Ménard's wife, Emmanuelle Ménard (née Duverger), was elected to the
National Assembly In politics, a national assembly is either a unicameral legislature, the lower house of a bicameral legislature, or both houses of a bicameral legislature together. In the English language it generally means "an assembly composed of the repr ...
in the 2017 legislative election as the member for Hérault's 6th constituency. He has one daughter with her and two children from previous relationships. In 2008, he created, with her, the publishing house Mordicus and released a book of interviews between Dieudonné M'bala M'bala and Bruno Gaccio under the title ''Can we say everything?'', echoing the book by Raoul Vaneigem, ''Nothing is sacred, everything can be said'', criticizing the Gayssot Law, defending the freedom of expression of Holocaust deniers, prefaced by Robert Ménard himself ; interviews of Alain Soral in the ''Medias'' magazine and of Dieudonné again on Sud Radio, in 2012.


Media career

In 1975, Ménard created the pirate radio station Radio Pomarède and became president of the ''Association pour la libération des ondes'' (Association for the liberation of the airwaves). He consequently became the target of many lawsuits, in one of which, François Mitterrand, later President of the French Republic gave a character reference. He later created the free magazine ''Le Petit biterrois'' but had to close it down due to a lack of advertisers. In 1985 he co-founded
Reporters Without Borders Reporters Without Borders (RWB; ; RSF) is an international non-profit and non-governmental organisation, non-governmental organization headquartered in Paris, which focuses on safeguarding the right to freedom of information. It describes its a ...
(''Reporters sans Frontières''). A Rue89 post claims Ménard became the focus of significant controversy after an interview with France Culture in which in response to a question about the case of the kidnapped journalist Daniel Pearl he made a statement which some have interpreted as saying that the use of
torture Torture is the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a person for reasons including corporal punishment, punishment, forced confession, extracting a confession, interrogational torture, interrogation for information, or intimid ...
could be justified in some circumstances. On 24 March 2008 Ménard and two other members of Reporters Without Borders were arrested for attempting to disrupt the lighting of the Olympic Flame prior to the 2008 Summer Olympic Games. The disruption was aimed at protesting the crackdown on
Tibet Tibet (; ''Böd''; ), or Greater Tibet, is a region in the western part of East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about . It is the homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are other ethnic groups s ...
an
civil rights Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' political freedom, freedom from infringement by governments, social organizations, and private individuals. They ensure one's entitlement to participate in the civil and ...
activities by the Government of the People's Republic of China. Ménard resigned from his role as secretary-general of RWB in September 2008 and became director-general of the Doha Center for Media Freedom in
Qatar Qatar, officially the State of Qatar, is a country in West Asia. It occupies the Geography of Qatar, Qatar Peninsula on the northeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula in the Middle East; it shares Qatar–Saudi Arabia border, its sole land b ...
which opened in October 2008. Ménard resigned as director-general in June 2009, complaining of obstruction by officials of the Government of Qatar of the Center's work (notably its criticism of Qatar's restrictive media policies, along with the Center's efforts to bring several persecuted journalists to Qatar for temporary refuge), despite earlier assurances that it would be allowed to operate freely. On 1 October 2012, he founded, along with Dominique Jamet, the conservative news website '' Boulevard Voltaire''.


Political career

While in college in the 1970s, he became aligned with
Trotskyist Trotskyism (, ) is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Russian revolutionary and intellectual Leon Trotsky along with some other members of the Left Opposition and the Fourth International. Trotsky described himself as an ...
elements and the Revolutionary Communist League; he later joined the Socialist Party for two years before leaving it in 1981. He would remain an independent thereafter, and would later shift to the political
right Rights are law, legal, social, or ethics, ethical principles of freedom or Entitlement (fair division), entitlement; that is, rights are the fundamental normative rules about what is allowed of people or owed to people according to some legal sy ...
and/or far-right. In 2013, he announced he would be a candidate for the position of Mayor of Béziers in the 2014 municipal elections. He launched his campaign with the support of the sovereigntist right-wing party Debout la République. Ménard subsequently welcomed the support of the National Front, which endorsed him as its candidate although he was not a member. His move to the far-right attracted media attention. He described himself publicly as a " reactionary", supporting the reintroduction of the death penalty and objecting to the legalisation of gay marriage in May 2013. He was elected Mayor of Béziers on 30 March in the second round with 47% of the vote. In April 2014, he imposed a curfew on unaccompanied minors under the age of 13 from 23h to 6h in several districts of the city. In May 2015, Ménard violated French law by attempting to record the religion of schoolchildren in his city, claiming that 64.9% were Muslim, based on their first names. In September, he visited a refugee complex to tell them that they were not welcome in France, and two months later he declared that no more kebab restaurants would open in Béziers. He promoted the concept of the " Great replacement" conspiracy theory, created by Renaud Camus and inspired by the ideology of Jean Raspail, which was also used during the 2017
Unite the Right rally The Unite the Right rally was a White supremacy#United States, white supremacist rally that took place in Charlottesville, Virginia, from August 11 to 12, 2017. Marchers included members of the alt-right, neo-Confederates, neo-fascists, whi ...
in Charlottesville, Virginia in the United States. In October 2016, he launched a poster campaign claiming that "The state is imposing them on us: That’s it, they are coming" in response to an announcement that the French government would be relocating 40 asylum seekers from Calais Jungle to Béziers. In March 2018, he announced he would seek a second term in the 2020 municipal elections, running once again as an Independent because of disagreements he has with certain policies promoted by the National Front. In May 2018, Ménard was physically attacked and pushed to the ground while visiting Saint-André-de-Cubzac, Gironde to attend a conference, by what he himself called "left-wing fascists". The attacker was later convicted to a suspended prison sentence of four months. He was reelected as Mayor of Béziers on 2020 with 65% of the vote.


Views

Ménard supported Marine Le Pen in the 2022 French presidential election. In a 2022 interview with Der Spiegel, he self-described as "an authoritarian mayor" and stated that Le Pen "says things that others don’t dare say because they have a bad conscience." In a 2020 interview with CNews, he stated that France needed "a more authoritarian government that knows how to put its foot down." In 2010, he publicly voiced support for the death penalty stating in an interview on France Inter that he supported capital punishments "in certain cases" and that "supporting the death penalty doesn't make you a monster."


Great Replacement

Ménard has supported the Great Replacement conspiracy theory. Speaking of the demographics of school children in France, '' La Croix'' covered his statement that in one classroom at a school near his home 91% of pupils were "Muslim children", claiming that "obviously it is a problem". Ménard declared that it was "proof of the Great Replacement in progress" in France. He was convicted of "incitement to hatred and discrimination" and ordered to pay €2,000.


Works

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References


External links

*. {{DEFAULTSORT:Menard, Robert 1953 births Living people People from Oran Pieds-noirs French journalists French activists French male non-fiction writers Mayors of places in Occitania (administrative region) Former Marxists French conspiracy theorists Freedom of the press Free speech activists