Four municipal police officers in Carcassonne, a town in southern France governed by the National Rally since March 2026, were suspended on Wednesday, September 9, after a video surfaced showing them making racist, sexist and conspiracist remarks.
One of the four was a member of the National Rally's own security service, the unit that manages security at the far-right party's events, deepening the embarrassment for the party as the case revives long-standing accusations that it attracts more racist recruits than its rivals.
The party's national leadership said it condemned the remarks with the greatest firmness, describing them as criminally reprehensible, and said it had immediately removed the officer from the security service staff and expelled him from the party altogether.
Party leaders deny a wider problem
Speaking on TF1 on Thursday morning, National Rally member of the European Parliament Matthieu Valet said such profiles could be found but were not the majority, calling them isolated cases that occur in administrations of all kinds. He said Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella had excluded them immediately, adding that the party's hand does not tremble, unlike other parties, when such facts are reported to it. Valet said the conduct must be condemned without fail, and that fighting all forms of extremism, racism and antisemitism would be a priority if Le Pen were elected president.
Jordan Bardella is the National Rally's party president, while Marine Le Pen is standing as the party's candidate in the presidential election.
Louis Aliot, the mayor of Perpignan and a close ally of Le Pen, made a similar argument, saying racists exist everywhere and in every party, and that while they do not speak out every day, there are surely many of them. Speaking to franceinfo, he said this kind of episode involving police was not new and had happened under municipalities of every political stripe across France. He criticised journalists for focusing on a National Rally-run town hall that had only been in place for five months, saying he would have preferred to see the former mayor or former officials questioned about how they managed the municipal police force.
Blame directed at the previous mayor
A second line of defence from the National Rally has been to place responsibility on the town's previous, centrist municipal administration. National Rally lawmaker Jean-Philippe Tanguy said it was the centrist mayor who had brought the officer back to work in full knowledge of the racist video.
The Carcassonne prosecutor's office opened an investigation after the police patrol chief filed a complaint on December 31, 2025, before Christophe Barthès was elected mayor. The officer went on sick leave after the video began circulating internally within the police force in early 2026, and returned to duty on March 16, the day after the first round of the municipal elections.
During the period he was absent, the officer had provided security for Bardella, who travelled to Carcassonne to support Barthès, who went on to win the mayoralty on March 22.
Investigation still unresolved
An administrative investigation opened by the previous town hall delivered its conclusions on May 19, but the new municipal team says those conclusions did not allow the identity of the authors of each remark recorded in the video to be established with certainty. The prosecutor's office has said it has not yet received the findings of that investigation.
Political fallout
The National Rally has repeatedly faced criticism, including during past legislative and municipal election campaigns, for having activists or candidates within its ranks who have made racist remarks, and the party's opponents were quick to seize on the Carcassonne case.
Former prime minister Bernard Cazeneuve, speaking later on franceinfo, said that all the efforts made to polish the facade of what he called a racist, xenophobic and far-right organisation were not enough to change its true nature. He noted that the officer at the centre of the case had been trained in crowd control within the National Rally's own security service.
Gabriel Attal, the Renaissance party's presidential candidate, had already criticised the party the day before on X, writing that this was what a France led by the National Rally would look like, with hatred disinhibited and encouraged.
