French and American conservatives have made Sunday’s daylight Louvre heist the site of a battle in the culture wars upon learning the museum’s security head is a woman.
After thieves executed a surprisingly simple heist to rob the museum of jewels that belonged to Napoleon’s family, France’s far right began blaming “le wokisme,” believing Dominique Buffin, the first woman hired as security chief at the Louvre, was chosen for her gender and not her merits.
Speaking on French radio station Europe 1, Erik Tegnér, founder of far-right French news outlet Frontiéres, said, “The Louvre’s security director would have been chosen not based on her abilities, but because she is a woman. It is this destruction by wokeism that we find notably in the United States.”
On X, EU parliament member Marion Maréchal, niece of far-right French leader Marine Le Pen, said Buffin’s hire was “part of a feminization policy” in France and demanded her resignation.
The basis for these claims appears to stem from a 2024 article in Le Monde, which said “feminization of recruitment” is important to Laurence Des Cars, the museum’s first female director. Conservatives have jumped on this sentence to suggest Buffin is unqualified for the job and only got it because she is female.
Buffin, 46, began her career as a police officer in 2001. In 2013, she joined the Ministry of Culture, where she worked as an adviser on the security of French museums. In 2017, she was promoted to senior defense deputy and security official at the Ministry of Culture, and in 2024 was named the Louvre’s security director.
America’s right-wing media ecosystem picked up on the French right’s talking points, with influential podcasters Benny Johnson and Katie Miller saying the robbery was caused by “DEI.”
“DEI AT THE CENTER OF LOUVRE HEIST,” tweeted Johnson between two siren emoji.
“In 2024, almost a year prior to the date of the break-in, Laurence des Cars tapped ANOTHER WOMAN, Dominique Buffin, as the museum’s HEAD OF SECURITY,” he posted with liberal use of scare caps.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the Louvre, which does not have a formal Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policy, for comment.
The thieves in Sunday’s heist were able to break into the second floor of the Louvre using a mounted lift. They smashed the building’s windows, sawed through the case containing the jewels, snatched them, and left in the span of seven minutes. Culture Minister Rachida Dati said the theft appeared to be an “organized and professional” job.
The Louvre suffered several high-profile robberies in the century prior to hiring its first female security chief. This includes the infamous 1911 heist of the Mona Lisa, a 1990 robbery of a Renoir painting, twelve priceless jewels, and a few other paintings, and the 1998 heist of Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot’s Le Chemin de Sèvres.
