The place couldn’t be more neutral. At 8 rue des Arts, in Lille, 200 meters from the Grand-Place, on the ground floor of a pretty Flemish-style facade, a black grille is framed by two windows obscured by opaque curtains. Never the slightest sign pointed out what was hidden behind it: the La Citadelle bar, opened in September 2016 by the association of the same name. A private club which housed the headquarters of Génération identitaire Flandres-Artois-Hainaut, as it was called at the time.
On its social networks, La Citadelle now appears as “the house of identity and rooted and patriotic community”. Because on February 7, the ultra-right association, declared in the Northern prefecture on October 7, 2013, was dissolved by the council of ministers on the grounds that it incited “xenophobia, discrimination, hatred and violence”. Leading to the closure of the bar. On April 2, the Council of State rejected the request for suspension of the dissolution filed in summary proceedings by La Citadelle. No surprise for its president, Aurélien Verhassel who, contacted by telephone, reacts : “They want to silence us. It’s the return of the crime of opinion. »
A charismatic figure in the movement, this former communication and political science student, aged 39, was not unknown in the Lille landscape when he opened his private club. In 2014, he was one of those who set up a “anti-scum militia” to patrol the metro. In August 2015, we found the Lille identity group on the roof of Arras station to demand “the expulsion of Islamists”.
Statue of Joan of Arc and “There’s a good Banania” box
In March 2016, they deployed in front of the entrances to what was then the “jungle” of Calais. So many carefully publicized operations. During the presentation of the bar to the press in 2016, a few days before its inauguration, the staging was careful: statue of Joan of Arc, bouquets of hops hanging from the ceiling, “Y’a bon Banania” box and large pig-shaped piggy bank on the counter. Aurélien Verhassel assumes: the club is “reserved only for sincere patriots, Helleno-Christians and native Europeans”, and if he chose the name “La Citadelle” in the city where Vauban built one of the most beautiful, it is because“a citadel, we take refuge there when we are besieged but we can also launch the reconquest there”.
Faced with the opening of the bar in the center of Lille, the authorities remained powerless. The violent rejection of immigration is not legally enough to have it banned straight away. Martine Aubry, the mayor (PS) of Lille, could only note her lack of legal levers in the face of “a private club managed by an authorized association”. She then promises that she will not allow any disturbance, any provocation, or any violation of the law. A petition against the bar gathered seventy thousand signatures but nothing happened.
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