“There is perhaps in this way of doing politics a memory of revenge at work,” explains historian Benjamin Stora

Following the death of Jean-Marie Le Pen, historian Benjamin Stora, author of “Algeria at War”, looks back on the relationship between the politician's career and the complex period of the Algerian War.

“All political memory [de Jean-Marie Le Pen] is that of nostalgia, of a great France of the empire, which according to him would have been betrayed and abandoned by the various French political leaders”explains Benjamin Stora, specialist in Algeria and the history of colonization, the day after the death of Jean-Marie Le Pen on Tuesday January 7.

The history of this period intersects with those of Jean-Marie Le Pen and the National Front, according to the specialist: “Jean-Marie Le Pen is fundamentally a man of the Fourth Republic, and this is the moment when the colonial empire is faltering.”describes the historian. “Arrived too late” for the Indochina War, “he intends to make up for it in Algeria”he says.

However, the Algerian War remains a notorious black spot in the history of France, because of the practice of torture and summary executions which were carried out there. If Jean-Marie Le Pen had admitted in 1962 to having practiced torture before retracting, “the evidence is that of testimonies collected by a journalist from Le Monde, Florence Beaugé,” who were judged “fairly irrefutable”indicates the historian.

These testimonies from Algerians also allowed the courts to decide, when Jean-Marie Le Pen filed a complaint against this investigation, which implicated him during the battle of Algiers in 1957. “But what I specified, and which was the subject of a discussion, however adds the historian, it is that Jean-Marie Le Pen was only a performer, he was not a decision maker. The decision-makers are those who were in power, that is to say Robert Lacoste [responsable de la SFIO] and François Mitterrand [alors ministre de la Justice] especially”he recalls, two figures of the socialist left, he specifies.

The success of Jean-Marie Le Pen was then revealed in the 1980s, and this can be explained by the expansion of Algerian immigration, “on which he focused”, describes Benjamin Stora. The co-founder of the National Front then focused most of his speeches against the Algerians, says the historian, with this question: “You wanted the independence of Algeria, so why this continuation of Algerian immigration to France?” followed “a whole series of speeches delivered in the 80s, 90s, 2000s, describes the specialist, on this Algerian invasion in France, which in fact appealed to the spring of the memory of lost French Algeria”, “a memory of revenge”.