Controversies and commemorations:
the extreme right and the 2016 commemoration of the battle of Verdun
Time and Emotion: Extreme Right Visions of the Past

Frédéric Clavert / C2DH, University of Luxembourg

8 Decembre 2022

The Centenary

  • exceptional series of commemorations,
  • social media
    • intertwined layers of time
    • high frequency circulation of information
    • vibrations (Dominique Boullier)
  • mechanisms that favors the expression of emotion
    • retweet, like, etc

#ww1: echoes of the Centenary of the Great War on Twitter

Commemorating Verdun

Two main commemorations:

  • February 2016: “Saint Cyr” commemoration, ministry of Defence
  • 29 May 2016 (Ossuaire de Douaumont)
    • French-German
    • two controversies

A cold memory?

Two different controversies

(in terms of circulation of information)

The BlackM controversy


  • Web
    (far right website “François de souche” / fdesouche.com)
  • social media (Twitter)
  • newspapers / TV / Radio
    (off and online) (weekend)
  • social media (Monday)

The staging controversy


  • Double screen effect
  • Twitter / TV interaction

Emotion?

  • Dramatisation (fdesouche.com)
  • Twitter: high frequency circulation of information
  • double screen effect

→ emotion as a mode of connection to the past

→ emotion as a way to go out of one specific political milieu