Swipe to the far-right? Dating app for patriots launches in France

A new dating app for single French ‘patriots’ has launched, seeking to help those on the right of the political spectrum find love and someone to raise a family with.

Droite au coeur – a play on words that can be translated as both ‘straight to the heart’ or ‘to the right of the heart’ – has been available since early June as a website but launched its mobile app last week.

On its homepage, Droite au Coeur says it is “a meeting site for single patriots” who are “defenders and guardians of our rich civilisation”.

The platform says its goal is to “connect women and men proud of our country, sharing the same values.”

The app was launched by Stéphanie and Yohan Pawer, the latter of whom is a far-right influencer with more than 30,000 followers on the social media platform Instagram. The site has been endorsed by a number of right-wing figures in France.

Placing the spotlight on the far-right

While the app officially claims to have “no political position,” when a user signs up they are required to declare their political interests.

These range from the right-wing Les Républicains party, all the way to Éric Zemmour’s extremist Reconquête, as well as the far-right Rassemblement National.

On top of this, the “values” that users share are “education, culture or religion, our roots are unfailing beacons that guide us on the path of life in a deconstructed and unhealthy society that no longer resembles us”, says the site on its homepage.

Read also: Far-right French MPs declare war on ‘the poison of wokeism’

Family focus

Although the site claims you can use the app to find either a lifetime partner or just a short-term fling, the app is geared towards the former.

The app – and its users – are keen on promoting the idea of starting a family with like-minded individuals, which many see as a thinly veiled reference to a falling birth rate amongst white families in France.

“We hope that thanks to us, thanks to you, families can be born, and single parents can finally find a partner who will help them rebuild a solid, loving and generous family,” says the app.

“There’s the idea, implicitly, that people will meet and have white children [using the app],” Céline Simmons, a researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue think-tank that focuses on far-right extremism, told Euronews.

“It’s motivated by anxieties about racial replacement -- it doesn’t mention things like the ‘Great Replacement’... but is completely steeped in that kind of fatalist anxiety,” she added.

The Great Replacement is a conspiracy theory, which believes that white Europeans are being replaced by migrants, usually who follow Islamic beliefs.

The dating website did not respond to The Connexion’s request to comment on this article.

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