Is the break between Jean-Marie and Marine Le Pen definitively over? At 87 years old, the honorary president of the FN was banned on Thursday August 20, 2015 from the party he co-founded in 1972. The highest authority of the National Front, meeting in disciplinary formation at the party headquarters, held against Jean- Marie Le Pen fifteen grievances, in particular her repeated comments on the Nazi gas chambers.
If Mr. Le Pen immediately made it known that he would file an appeal against his exclusion “before the competent judicial authorities”this procedure marks the culmination of a long history of family and political tensions between father and daughter.
July 2015: triple legal victory and removal
On three occasions, the very litigious Jean-Marie Le Pen went to court to obtain the suspension of the extraordinary general assembly of the FN, desired by Marine Le Pen to reform the statutes and, incidentally, eliminate the position of honorary president held by his father.
On three occasions, he won his case:
- On July 2, the courts first canceled the congress because the party had not specified its duration.
- On July 8, the TGI also suspended the event.
- On July 28, the Versailles Court of Appeal confirmed this decision.
To regain control politically, Marine Le Pen then counted the 28,664 votes of members already received by mail. According to the party, which published the results on July 29, 94.08% of voters voted for the end of Mr. Le Pen’s role as honorary president.
In the process, a decision was taken to organize a disciplinary council against Jean-Marie Le Pen in front of the executive office. The latter led to his exclusion. On the other hand, he assures that he is always honorary president, because “I was elected by a congress, not by a small group of five people.”
April 2, 2015: the return of the gas chambers
Twenty-eight years after causing a scandal on RTL, Jean-Marie Le Pen reiterated his comments on the gas chambers on Thursday April 2 on BFM-TV. According to him, their use by the Nazis during the Second World War to exterminate Jews, political opponents, gypsies and homosexuals was only a ” detail “ of history.
“What I said corresponded to my thinking, that the gas chambers were a detail of the war, unless we admit that it was the war which was a detail of the gas chambers (…) I maintain , because I believe it’s the truth and it shouldn’t shock anyone. »
The next day, faithful to her strategy of demonization, Marine Le Pen disavows her father and says “in deep disagreement on form and substance” with him.
The World
Support an editorial staff of 550 journalists
Unlimited access to all our content from €7.99/month for 1 year.
Subscribe
The honorary president of the FN replied four days later in the far-right newspaper Rivarol by launching that“we are never betrayed except by our own”. Before bidding: “I never considered Marshal Pétain a traitor. They were very harsh with him at the Liberation. » Jean-Marie Le Pen also attacks the origins of Prime Minister Manuel Valls, naturalized French at the age of 20: “What is Valls’ real attachment to France? Has this immigrant changed at all? »
With this interview, Marine Le Pen evokes a crisis “unprecedented” and announces that she will oppose her father’s candidacy for the regional elections in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region. “Its aim is to harm”declares Mme Le Pen, who announced the upcoming holding of a meeting of the party’s executive office to “protect the interests of the movement”.
November 20, 2014: Jean-Marie Le Pen against a change in the name of the National Front
Jean-Marie Le Pen responds sharply to his daughter, who believes that the question of changing the name of the National Front “worth asking”. Warning against “betrayal of activists”he tackles them “people recently arrived at the National Front from other political parties” who do not have “feeling towards a flag which has flown for forty years and which has cost those who planted and defended it dearly”.
June 6, 2014: the “batch” and the open letter
In his video “log diary”, Jean-Marie Le Pen castigates the artists who took a position against his party during the European elections. Targeting in particular the singer Patrick Bruel, of Jewish faith, he promises to make “a batch next time”.
Two days later, his daughter condemned a “political fault”. “If this controversy can have a positive impact, she declares to Figaro.fr, it is to allow me to recall that the National Front condemns in the strongest possible terms any form of anti-Semitism, of whatever nature it may be.”
The following week, the honorary president of the FN responded in a cold open letter, in which he called on you “madam president”. He denounces the “unfair sanction” inflicted after his remarks – namely the deletion of his “log diary” from the National Front website. Before reminding his daughter: “Have you not been called into question by your declaration on the “occupation” of streets by Muslim faithful or by your presence in Vienna, at a ball deemed “Nazi” by our enemies? Do you therefore consider yourself justified in sanctioning the founder and honorary president of the National Front, who has also been a Member of the European Parliament for thirty years? »
Read also: Marine Le Pen on her father: the future of the FN, “it’s me and no longer him”
January 7, 2014: the “quenelle” timidly condemned
In October 2013, the honorary president of the FN carried out with Bruno Gollnisch a “quenelle”the provocative (and anti-Semitic leaning) gesture popularized by Dieudonné. A few months later, while the controversy over the comedian is gaining momentum, Jean-Marie Le Pen ensures “not to regret” his gesture. In the Sunday newspaperMarine Le Pen then timidly distances herself, believing that“we must avoid doing it”without mentioning his father’s name. “We have no reason to seek to hurt or harm peopleshe explains, while adding that “many people make this gesture without imagining for half a second that there is an anti-Semitic reference behind it. »
July 6, 2012: Jean-Marie Le Pen tackles his “petite bourgeois” daughter
A few weeks after the presidential election, Jean-Marie Le Pen opposed in an interview with Times his past“man of the people” to the “petty bourgeois[i]e » from which his daughter comes. The same day, he assured on his video blog that he had been the victim of a translation problem, explaining that he wanted to qualify Marine Le Pen as “little bourgeois girl”to evoke a “difference of origin and environment”.
January 31, 2012: disagreements over retirement conditions
In the middle of the presidential campaign, while Marine Le Pen promises to restore the right to full retirement at 60, Jean-Marie Le Pen declares himself in favor of raising the legal age to 65. He will return to this in his interview in Rivarol to be published on April 9: “I tried to explain to Marine Le Pen and her advisers that it was a mistake. It’s ridiculous to ask for retirement at 60 when I, at the head of the FN, for decades, asked for it at 65! I was early, although the Germans are now at 67! »
July 30, 2011: the Breivik “accident” and Norway’s “naivety”
At the time of the Oslo massacre, perpetrated by Anders Breivik, Marine Le Pen condemned “barbaric and cowardly acts”. The former strong man of the party, for his part, evokes the“accident of an individual who, under the influence of madness, even if temporary, begins to massacre his fellow citizens”. He blames Norway, a “friendly little country […] who has not taken into account the global danger represented by massive immigration, which is the main cause, it seems, in the mind of this murderous madman..
At the time, the president of the FN refused to condemn her father’s comments and was content, in a press release, to denounce a “politician recovery” from the left.
April 22, 2011: the Nazi salute affair
On March 25, 2011, the website of New Obs publishes the photo of a National Front candidate for the cantonal elections, Alexandre Gabriac, miming a Hitler salute in front of a Nazi flag. Summoned by the party’s conflicts commission, the 21-year-old young man received a simple reprimand. But Marine Le Pen, president of the party since January, decided to exclude him.
Following Bruno Gollnisch, Jean-Marie Le Pen contests his daughter’s choice on LCI: “I think it was a quick reaction and maybe she didn’t have all the information. […] In my opinion, there is no reason for exclusion. » A few days later, Marine Le Pen confirmed her decision. This is the first public disagreement between father and daughter since the latter became leader of the party.
2008-2009: Marine Le Pen dissociates herself from her father on the question of “detail”
In May 2008, then in March 2009, Jean-Marie Le Pen reiterated his 1987 comments on the gas chambers, which he considered to be “a detail of history”. Marine Le Pen, who was one of the party’s rising figures at the time, assured that she “does not share the same vision on these events” than his father. Then vice-president of the National Front, she claims not to “not think” that the gas chambers are “a detail of history”while defending his father from having “never denied any of the events of the Second World War”.
When Marine defends Jean-Marie
If Marine Le Pen has dissociated herself from her father on a certain number of subjects, it also frequently happens that she turns a blind eye to other statements by Jean-Marie Le Pen.
Thus, after the death of Nelson Mandela in 2013, the president of the FN welcomed a “figure of appeasement”whom Jean-Marie Le Pen had wished to meet in 2002. She forgot in passing that her father, in 1990, had called the South African president a “terrorist” and declared that his release had not “neither moved nor delighted”.
In May 2014, when Jean-Marie Le Pen claimed he could “to settle” the problem of “demographic explosion” thanks to « Mgr Ebola »referring to the infectious fever which has caused more than 10,000 deaths in Africa, Marine Le Pen affirms that her father’s comments were “distorted”.
