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[20XX] Puy du Fou UK

I see there are proportionally quite a few more indoor shows than the other parks - it’s good to see they’re catering for the poorer weather. There also looks to be two walkthroughs, along with the distinctive outline of both the chariot show in the colisseum and the bird show. Whilst I’m sure we’ll see some similar format shows to the other parks, but with different overlays, I’m also hoping for some innovation in at least some of the presentations to provide something truly unique for this park. It looks to be more ambitious than the park in Spain at the moment.

Whilst I’m sure we’ll have to sit through the continued, tedious mentions of fascism, I think this is a positive development for the UK industry.
 
The Guardian has obtained correspondence between the UK Government and Puy Du Fou, via an FoI submission, chronicling how the former Conservative business and trade minister promised to “assist” Puy du Fou in finding a UK site, despite well known documented links to the far right and past praise for Putin.

De Villiers senior attended the funeral of far-right National Rally founder Jean-Marie Le Pen earlier this year. He hosts a weekly political television show in France on which he regularly rails against immigration and Islam.

Son, Nicolas de Villiers, and current head of the business, described Vladimir Putin as having "sweet eyes and sweet words", and claimed that the Russian president was misunderstood by the international community.

This is also the family who wanted to build a theme park in the then recently invaded and annexed Crimea, promoting the virtues of Russian superiority, despite international sanctions at the time.
www.theguardian.com

French theme park firm won UK government support despite far-right ties

Tory trade minister promised to ‘assist’ plans to open £600m Puy du Fou site in Oxfordshire, emails shows
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com

I do appreciate the need for foreign investment, but I believe we have to ask if all money is good money. Are we really so desperate for investment that we'll actively assist a company whose leadership has praised Putin, tried to build a park in illegally annexed Crimea with a sanctioned oligarch, and associates with convicted hatemongers? Surely there are other investors who can bring jobs to Oxfordshire without this kind of toxic ideological baggage.

The company has tried to distance itself by saying the founder, Philippe de Villiers, is "no longer involved in management". This is a smokescreen. Philippe's extremist views are hardly historical; he's still on TV railing against immigrants and publicly stated of a convicted hatemonger, "What he defends is what I live for." This is a family business, and that family's ideology is current and clear.

I don't believe that the typical "it's just a theme park" will fly for me either. I find this the most naive defence. Puy Du Fou's entire brand is built on presenting a specific, highly politicised, nationalist, and traditionalist version of history. Their planned park in Crimea was explicitly to promote "Russian superiority". It is fanciful to believe a UK park, run by this family, would be a neutral historical attraction. It's a platform for their worldview, disguised as a day out.

This has nothing to do with cancelling someone for having a different opinion. This is about the UK government actively using public resources to "assist" and support a massive project. It is a legitimate and serious question of due diligence and national values. The same British values which are mandatory throughout UK education, as a tool in the PREVENT programme, to challenge extremist views. I would rather that the UK government didn't roll out the red carpet for a business whose leadership has supported hostile states and aligned itself with the extremist far-right.
 
Thank you for sharing that article.

GooseOnTheLoose said:
The company has tried to distance itself by saying the founder, Philippe de Villiers, is "no longer involved in management". This is a smokescreen. Philippe's extremist views are hardly historical; he's still on TV railing against immigrants and publicly stated of a convicted hatemonger, "What he defends is what I live for." This is a family business, and that family's ideology is current and clear.
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It is also worth noting that the convicted hatemonger you reference (Eric Zemmour) who is long time friend of De Villiers - in fact he funded Zemmour’s 2022 French presidential campaign - was a speaker at the recent Tommy Robinson far right march in London.

The links between Puy du Fou and the far right are many and varied, they are both historical and current, it is impossible to separate the business and the views of their owners.

Many things are more important than theme parks and the harm to society and citizens from the far right is one of them as far as I am concerned.

I certainly don’t want my money going to fund views such as:
De Villiers, a well-known rightwing politician, founded a party whose manifesto included a ban on the construction of new mosques and a prohibition on gay marriage and same-sex adoption.
Click to expand...
 
It's the question of how much is someone willing to ignore in order to have some leisure.

Much like the quandary facing those wishing to ride Falcon's Flight.

I also doubt that any historical attraction would actually dare to include all the truth. Given the current response to anyone daring to say that England kinda did some bad stuff (underselling it I know) historically.
 
As someone who's never been, one thing I dont think I've seen much comment in is to what extent do the owners beliefs leach out into the entertainment they provide?

It's one thing for a horrible business owner to be making money by providing entertainment for the sake of business, it's another if they are using that business to impart those beliefs on visitors within the entertainment they provide. If the entertainment is based on culture and history, are they being disturbingly selective in their source material or skewed in their narrative?
 
Islander said:
There'll be a number of people on this forum (myself included) that can say they went to PDF in France and had a fantastic day. Does this make us bad people?
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No, of course it doesn't make you bad people, and I am sorry if my post has caused some to question that. I would like to think that I not seen as that reductive or dismissive.

I do not think that buying a Sodastream makes you complicit in genocide. I do not think that driving a Subaru Impreza, and getting 18 miles to the gallon, makes you complicit in the destruction of the environment. I do not think that listening to the music of Michael Jackson makes you a paedophile sympathiser. None of these things make you a bad person.

That being said, it is important to be informed of these connections so that you can make an informed choice. I am not privileged enough to not feel the impact of some of De Villiers proposed measures and rhetoric. I am not privileged enough to be able to visit Saudi Arabia without fear of my own safety, or the safety of those who live there full time and are part of the same community as me.

There is nuance to everything, but if the government is going to harp on about British Values, they probably oughtn't be backing a project by a family whose extremist views are opposed to those.
 
I’m not sure I can buy into this type of piety. It seems to be a tedious contemporary human instinct to focus only on pearl-clutching about some very specific issues, whilst ignoring others.

Whilst we’re worrying about Puy du Fou imparting far right beliefs into its visitors, most of those same people haven’t even visited the two existing parks. We’re probably wearing clothes and using electronics that are made using exploitative labour practices, whilst being extraordinarily concerned by a planning application for a visitor attraction.

I’ve been to both Puy du Fou parks. They’re great. I’ll admit some of the nuances of all those alleged Nazi undertones might have passed me by due to not being a native French or Spanish speaker, but I didn’t notice any of this supposedly pervasive far right ideology.

Maybe I’m just naive though, and visit theme parks to be entertained, rather than using it form my political beliefs.
 
venny said:
I’m not sure I can buy into this type of piety. It seems to be a tedious contemporary human instinct to focus only on pearl-clutching about some very specific issues, whilst ignoring others.

Whilst we’re worrying about Puy du Fou imparting far right beliefs into its visitors, most of those same people haven’t even visited the two existing parks. We’re probably wearing clothes and using electronics that are made using exploitative labour practices, whilst being extraordinarily concerned by a planning application for a visitor attraction.
Click to expand...

I don’t really have the time or capacity to delve into or deconstruct the accusation that it's "pearl clutching" to be concerned about one issue, while not making room for the literally countless others that impact us in modern consumer society. But I will note that it tends to screech all discussion to a halt. And besides, as @GooseOnTheLoose and a few others have highlighted concisely here, there is a more specific issue at play, which is the current Labor government's intersection with an organization whose leadership has explicit links to the far right. Given the current climate, I find this troubling, regardless of the context being a new theme park or any other form of industry.
 
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