On 16 May at the Unite The Kingdom march, a far-right group took to the stage and presented themselves in burqas. Encouraging the crowd to boo, they then took them off, and the crowd cheered. It was one more stunt demonstrating the very apparent rise in Islamophobia across Europe.

Let’s break down who these women are and why they were on stage in the first place.

Collectif Nèmèsis

Meet Collectif Nèmèsis, the ethnonationalist group that likes to hide behind feminist language and is now operating at the heart of the biggest far-right network in the world, which includes Tommy Robinson, Viktor Orbàn and MAGA.

If you haven’t heard of them, there’s probably a reason for that, as they operate mainly in France, where they have indeed spent the past 6 years building this extreme far- right movement, wrapped up in a feminist mask.

They purposefully go out of their way to crash feminist marches. They plan confrontations, and they’ve even helped to get an anti-fascist network banned. They also have a weekly prime-time television show.

This investigation into who they are and how they operate is to show they are more organised than just an appearance on a stage in London.

Organisation Profile

Collectif Nèmèsis are named after the Greek goddess of revenge. They were founded in October 2019 and now operate in France, Switzerland, and Belgium.

The main founder is Alice Cordier, born Alice Kerviel in 1997. She trained in a monarchist far-right movement called Action Française, who are believed to only have around 100 active members. Obviously, their online presence is way bigger.

They describe themselves as identitarian feminists, which is widely rejected as racist by almost every feminist organisation in France, but what they actually are is femonationalists.

What is femonationlism?

To understand the group, you need to understand their belief system.

Femonationalism is a term coined by Sara Farris. It describes the hijacking of feminist language for a racist agenda. This is how they believe it goes:

Immigrants, particularly Muslim men, are a unique danger to women, which means opposing immigration is a feminist act, which then means anti-immigration politics is pro-women… which we all know is a bag of lies. The dangers of this are that groups like Collectif Nèmèsis are finding it easier to draw more and more women into their movement by using these tactics.

People who have studied this group describe their strategy as a cynical attempt to redefine feminism. In their manifesto, the Collectif describe themselves as “the island where the castaways of feminism can take refuge,” trying to place mainstream feminism as the problem.

History of actions

In November 2019, they made their first appearance at the Nous Toutes women’s demonstration. They arrived with xenophobic placards, and they were immediately turned away, which they obviously claimed was censorship during their first PR appearances.

In 2021, members of the group posed in niqabs at the Eiffel Tower to promote “No Hijab Day” in opposition to World Hijab Day.

In January 2025, members stormed a New Year’s greetings ceremony held by the mayor of Besançon, presenting banners that said “foreign rapists welcome”. Then minister Bruno Retailleau (a French right-wing politician) publicly endorsed the group at a government conference.

But the worst was yet to come. In February 2026, Nèmèsis staged a protest targeting a lecture by LFI MEP Rima Hassan, a Palestinian-rench politician. Fighting broke out, and a 23- year-old man providing security for Nèmèsis was beaten and died two days later. The group tried to blame the man’s death on anti-fascist violence.

The death of Quentin Deranque at the incident in 2026 is one of the biggest political scandals that Nèmèsis has been involved in. The picture they painted was that of an innocent young man who was lynched by anti-fascist thugs. French ministers made official statements and a minute’s silence was held. The French government even banned an anti-fascist group called La Jeune Garde Antifasciste.

Journalists decided to investigate this and found that Nèmèsis had actually repeatedly coordinated with other far-right groups in Lyon to start confrontations with left-wing groups, and video evidence finally proved that.

Deranque wasn’t an innocent bystander; he was a member of a neo-fascist group called Allobrogues Bourgoin, a former Action Française member, and a participant in a 2025 neo-fascist rally organised by the 9 May Committee.

Who is Alice Cordier?

A closer look at the women behind it all helps clarify why the group operates as it does.

Her real name is Alice Kerviel, and she was born in Rennes in 1997 to a strict Catholic family. She studied and trained inside Action Française, the famous French monarchist far-right movement. People who have researched Collectif Nèmèsis say the group operates almost identically to Action Française.

Cordier also studied and passed the Institut de Formation Politique (IFP), which is, to put it simply, a training school that aims to dissolve the boundaries between the mainstream right and the far right.

This is her full-time paid job. Cordier also has 227k followers on Instagram and appears on TV news channel Cnews every week.

She was involved in another scandal in March 2026, when a photo from 2022 surfaced showing her making a SS hand sign, which was identified by multiple journalists. Of course, she tried to deny this. Cordier claimed she was a baby in the photo; investigators dated the photo to 2022, when she was 24 years old. She also claimed that the hand gesture was a “rap” sign; the rap group she tried to frame responded and said they have no connections to her and that she should find a better excuse.

Cordier also harassed a French journalist called Nassira El Moaddem, who received death threats from the French senator Thierry Meignen, following the publication of a book:

entitled “Main basse sur la ville. Enquête au Blanc-Mesnil” (Taking over the city. An investigation in Le Blanc-Mesnil), in which the journalist exposes alleged ties of the city administration with the far-right and alleged corruption, nepotism, and harassment within the administration under Senator Meignen’s associates.

For her part, Cordier set up a GoFundMe to pay for the journalist’s plane ticket to leave France.

The money

Their website collectif-nemesis.com isn’t owned by the group; it is owned by a separate registered company called Féminines & Féministes, which is based in Vitry-sur-Seine. This separation layer between a public-facing organisation and its legal business operations is a common practice in far-right groups.

They make money from streams, donations and merch. They even offer a 66% French income tax deduction on donation contributions, which gives French taxpayers tax relief for supporting this ethnonationalist group.

Conclusion

The group’s appearance on 16 May in London was not merely a prank. It was a serious statement of intent: Islamophobia performed as liberation in front of 60,000 people.

Their pattern of actions is consistent: crash spaces, claim censorship, generate media, play the victim and achieve political goals. It’s gross, and the UK government should feel ashamed to have allowed this group to attend, despite having already banned 11 other ‘far-right agitators’ from attending.

Featured image via La Croix

By Sip the System

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