{"id":659700,"date":"2025-12-28T12:20:16","date_gmt":"2025-12-28T12:20:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/659700\/"},"modified":"2025-12-28T12:20:16","modified_gmt":"2025-12-28T12:20:16","slug":"bardot-leaves-controversial-legacy-of-activism-for-frances-far-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/659700\/","title":{"rendered":"Bardot leaves controversial legacy of activism for France\u2019s far right"},"content":{"rendered":"

French cinema<\/a> legend Brigitte Bardot, whose death<\/a>\u00a0at the age of 91 was announced on Sunday. During her life, she was a 1960s sex symbol who later became a militant animal rights activist and outspoken supporter of France’s far right<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After her film career catapulted her to global stardom<\/a> and sex-symbol status, she suddenly retreated into a hermit-like existence in the French Riviera resort of Saint-Tropez at the age of just 39.<\/p>\n

In 1986 she set up the Brigitte Bardot Foundation dedicated to animal protection. She crusaded for baby seals and\u00a0elephants<\/a>, called for the abolition of ritual animal sacrifice and the closure of horse abattoirs.<\/p>\n

Convictions for inciting racial hatred<\/p>\n

As her advocacy intensified, so too did the backlash to her political statements. Bardot\u2019s public remarks on immigration<\/a>, Islam<\/a> and homosexuality led to a string of convictions for inciting racial hatred.<\/p>\n

Between 1997 and 2008, she was fined six times by French courts for her comments, particularly those targeting France\u2019s Muslim community.<\/p>\n

In one case, a Paris<\/a> court fined her \u20ac15,000 for describing Muslims<\/a> as “this population that is destroying us, destroying our country by imposing its acts”.<\/p>\n

In 1992, she married Bernard d\u2019Ormale, a former adviser to the far-right National Front<\/a>, and later publicly endorsed the party’s successive leaders, Jean-Marie Le Pen<\/a> \u200dand his daughter Marine Le Pen<\/a>. Bardot called the latter “the Joan of Arc of the 21st century”.<\/p>\n

Read moreBrigitte Bardot risks prison for hate speech<\/a><\/p>\n

Jordan Bardella<\/a>, the head of Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party, was among the first to pay hommage.<\/p>\n

“Today the French people have lost the Marianne they so loved, whose beauty astonished the world,” he wrote on X.<\/p>\n

In her final book, “Mon BBcedaire” (“My BB Alphabet”), published weeks before her death, she fired barbs at what she described as a “dull, sad, submissive” France and at her home town of Saint-Tropez, now packed with the wealthy tourists she helped attract. The book also contained derogatory remarks about gay and transgender people.<\/p>\n

(FRANCE 24 with AFP and Reuters)\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"French cinema legend Brigitte Bardot, whose death\u00a0at the age of 91 was announced on Sunday. During her life,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":659701,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5309],"tags":[201637,22647,2000,299,36,201638,201636,201634,29774,201635],"class_list":{"0":"post-659700","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-animal-rights-activist","9":"tag-brigitte-bardot","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-france","13":"tag-french-cinema","14":"tag-french-courts","15":"tag-inciting-racial-hatred","16":"tag-jean-marie-le-pen","17":"tag-outspoken-supporter"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=659700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659700\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/659701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=659700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=659700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=659700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}