Wealthy Cohen Family Attempts to Create Multicultural ‘Noah’s Ark’ by Settling 70 Refugee Families in Small French Town

A wealthy family is attempting to implement a utopian experiment with the goal of settling 70 refugee families in the quaint French town of Callac, and while no member of the family actually lives in the town, they are willing to invest millions of euros from their fortune to make their vision a reality.

Known as the Horizon Project, the scheme would be funded with money from the private Merci fund, which was created by Marie-France Cohen and is managed by her three sons. While the Cohen’s fund is reportedly spearheading the project, other financing would come from federal taxpayer subsidies and the local municipality.

The Cohens have identified 75 vacant jobs in health, trade, and agriculture in the town of approximately 2,000, which they plan to fill with refugees. Their endowment fund is designed to cover the cost of relocating the refugee families to the town and providing them with jobs, but only for 10 years. After that, the town is mostly on its own, unless authorities can secure more taxpayer money for the project.

Despite the wealthy family’s desire to create what they describe as a multicultural “Noah’s Ark of modern times” that can be replicated in other towns, residents of Callas are resisting the project, pointing out that no one in the family will have to actually deal with the consequences of their experimental “Noah’s Ark” and the long-term consequences for their small town. That is why residents of the Brittany town of Callac have launched a citizens’ group opposed to the scheme, calling “for defending the identity of Callac,” with the group made up of Danielle Le Men, Michel Riou, and Moulay Drissi.

The individuals have sent an open letter to the mayor of Callac outlining the reasons behind their opposition.

“The objective would be to repopulate a small ‘aging’ town with migrants, to revitalize the town center and to develop economic activities. Migrants would therefore be supervised, housed, and trained, and 70 jobs would be found for them.

The arrival of 70 non-European families would totally upset the life of the municipality and the canton. Thirty-eight non-French-speaking children would be educated at the Callac school and divided into classes. This would further complicate the task of teachers.

How can you impose on the people of Callac such a project that calls into question the identity of our population and before the real cost of the project is determined?”

Given the unemployment struggles people from Callac have faced, the citizens’ group is asking why the Cohen family is not interested in helping employ the people in the town who already live there. In a petition, they write, “We believe that the millions of euros that this project would cost should be invested as a priority for the local population, via the renovation of housing, via energy aid, via the development of the town of Callac and the surrounding municipalities, to allow locals to flourish there and those who want to come and settle there without monetary assistance to do so later.”

In the group’s letter to the mayor, they also point to the French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) to validate their concerns, which states the unemployment rate in Callac was 17.6 percent for those aged 15 to 64 as of 2018. That means nearly one out of five working-age people has no job in the town, yet dozens of refugee families are being brought in and allegedly being set up with new jobs.

The citizens are now calling for a referendum on the whole scheme, saying that citizens living in the town should be able to decide about their own future.

“An urgent consultation of the population of the municipality by referendum is essential with precise figures on this Horizon project,” reads their open letter. Such a letter could very well halt such a project, as polling from Ifop has shown that 70 percent of French citizens in general want a halt to all immigration to the country, with the same poll also showing that they believe migrants make France less safe nd 64 percent saying that immigration has a negative impact on the country. In rural areas like Callac, conservative positions on immigration are even more prevalent.

They also point to the massive societal ills associated with areas of France that already feature large migrant populations.

“You are going to create in the middle of Brittany, in Argoat, a foreign community with all the issues related to these groups. You are going to move the problems of the big cities to the Breton countryside,” the citizens of Callac warn.

The problems of the “big cities” referred to in the letter are the levels of crime and cultural tensions reaching the point that Pierre Brochand, who served as the head of France’s top intelligence agency from 2002 to 2008, warning of civil war if France does not halt mass immigration. He pointed to attacks on police officers, murders, growing social tension, divisions over schooling, and cases of “urban guerilla warfare” in migrant neighborhoods as all signs that multiculturalism in France has failed.

“All ‘multicultural’ societies are doomed to more or less deep rifts,” explains Brochand, who was one of the longest-serving directors of the DGSE, an agency he headed for six years and which is the French equivalent of the American CIA and the British MI6. “In such a situation, it happens that minorities are violent winners, and majorities placid losers.”

While all multicultural societies may be “doomed” to deep rifts, the same is not necessarily true for the wealthiest in society. In Paris, where the Cohen matriarch lives, wealthy parents are racing in to private schools at a record rate to escape diversity, leaving the poorest French to deal with the problems associated with multiculturalism. Another former French intelligence chief estimates that there are 1,513 “lawless neighborhoods” in France.

“These districts are established on the territory of 859 municipalities and bring together approximately 4 million inhabitants. It is therefore almost 6 percent of the French population who live outside the law and outside the cultural and political practices of the national community,” said Alain Chouet.

The fact that over 250 French people have lost their lives due to Islamic terrorist attacks since 2015 also contrasts sharply with other countries like Hungary, which has rejected mass immigration, a move security analysts have credited with making terrorist attacks in Hungary non-existent.

The citizens’ group is also asking for more information about the project. They write that given the unemployment problems facing people in the area, they want evidence that the jobs promised to the migrants even exist.

“Indeed, where are the 70 jobs you foresee for these migrants?” they ask.

A grandiose social engineering project

What would the actual plan look like? The municipality plans to acquire the premises of the former Saint-Laurent school in order to settle the first refugees there. A few would also be placed in various locations in the town, allegedly to promote diversity. During a public meeting on April 14, 2022, the Cohen brothers and the director of the funds presented architectural models for what they claim is the “revitalization” of the town, which were produced by students from the National School of Architecture in Rennes.

Back then, Horizon Project was describing itself as “a multicultural village populated by refugee and non-refugee inhabitants who will settle there permanently. We are not talking here about charity, but about building a common future with men and women who, each with their uniqueness, will bring to this territory: proximity, mobility, employment, diversity, education, health, culture.”

Ouest-France also reported that the day after the public meeting, when the agreement between the Cohen family and the Callac town hall was signed, the deputy for the neighboring town of Guingamp, Yannick Kerlogot, said he was “extremely confident in the future.” Kerlogot belongs to Emmanuel Macron’s left-wing La République En Marche! (LREM). In February of this year, Macron said that mass immigration from Africa and the Middle East can “make France greater.”

The regional councilor, Arnaud Toudic, affirmed that “the region will support this project” and proclaimed, “You are creating a new world.”

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