French Communists Condemn Monument to the Victims of Their Own Ideology
21st August 2025
In Saint-Raphaël, on the French Riviera, the mayor has taken an unusual step: he plans to inaugurate a monument in his town in tribute to the victims of communism. The initiative has sparked outrage from the French Communist Party (PCF), which believes that the time for repentance has not yet come.
The mayor, Frédéric Masquelier, a member of the centre-right Les Républicains party, says he is very proud of his initiative, which is the first in France. With this gesture, he intends to “break a taboo of memory,” namely the responsibility of communist ideology for the deaths of 100 million victims throughout the last century. To date, monuments commemorating the victims of communism are all located in former communist countries.
The Communist Party has made its disapproval known, arguing that this monument has no place, since the only French “victims” of communism were “the Nazis and their collaborators.” The 10,000 French soldiers tortured in communist camps after the defeat at Dien Bien Phu in Indochina, to name but a few, will certainly appreciate being considered “Nazis and collaborators.”