Antoine Martinez

Antoine Martinez (born January 17, 1948) is a French far-right activist and former general. He is president of the Volontaires pour la France (VPF) party since 2016.

A retired Air Force brigadier general since 2005, he entered politics in 2015. With politician Yvan Blot, he founded Volontaires pour la France, which brings together mainly former military and police officers and defends a radically anti-Islam, anti-immigration and nationalist line. It gained strength after the November 2015 Paris attacks. More radical militants split off in 2017 to form Action des Forces Opérationnelles.

Antoine Martinez gained media notoriety through his participation in “generals' tribunes”, signed alongside Christian Piquemal and Didier Tauzin, which criticized the management of immigration by François Hollande and then by Emmanuel Macron. Martinez is also a member of the National Council of European Resistance, founded by identitarian Renaud Camus and described as pro-Russian.

Military career Antoine François Martinez was born in 1948 and spent his childhood in Oran, French Algeria. he joined the Second Section (reservists who have left active service) in 2005. In 2018, he resided in Nice, Alpes-Maritimes.

He is an executive member of the Association des Officiers de Réserve (which is part of the Union Nationale des Officiers de Réserve), an association of retired officers in the Pyrénées-Orientales region, and was re-elected to its presidency in 2013.

Political activism

Volontaires pour la France Alongside Yvan Blot, co-founder of the Carrefour de l'Horloge and then National Front MEP in the 1990s, Antoine Martinez co-founded “Volontaires pour la France” in the summer of 2015. Essentially made up of former members of the army and police, political organization's aim is to “fight” the “Islamization” and “Africanization” of Europe to “defend French identity”, and to combat the so-called international lobbies that would have allegedly “captured” democratic power. the organization was incorporated as an association under the French law of 1901 in October 2016 in Ingré (Loiret), while Mediapart puts the figure at just 50. and cofounder of the National Council of European Resistance, who Antoine Martinez is a member of. Antoine Martinez (10th from right) at a meeting of the National Council of European Resistance in 2018, alongside Christian Piquemal, Christian Vanneste, Renaud Camus, Damien Rieu, Karim Ouchikh and Richard Roudier, among others.

The Volontaires pour la France cultivate a military idea and claim not to be a militia. On their website, they announce that “Volunteers can train, learn and practice thanks to training days, weekends and seminars organized by the organization's executives and led by specialists in all fields”. The group was dismantled and arrested in 2018, accused of planning an attack against Muslims.

Anti-immigration and anti-Islam media petitions Antoine Martinez came to prominence in 2016 when he signed an open letter to French President François Hollande criticizing the management of the migrant crisis in Calais, who are causing Calais residents to suffer “a disastrous existential situation” “in the terror of mafia gangs”, even though they should enjoy the protection of the President, “guarantor of the integrity of the territory”. They call for changes to the Le Touquet and Schengen border treaties. and chaired his support committee. he initiated an open letter to President Emmanuel Macron written by General Didier Tauzin.

In April 2021, Antoine Martinez signed an article with seventeen other retired generals published by the far-right magazine Valeurs actuelles (including Christian Piquemal and several signatories of his 2018 open letter, and a second VPF member, General Roland Dubois).

Political ideas Antoine Martinez rejects the “radical” or “ultra-right” labels in favor of “patriotic”

His ideas are hostile to immigration and Islam,

Notes and references