“This dirty racist is dead,” said a sign brandished in the crowd of a few hundred people gathered at Place de la République in Paris.
AFP
The historic figure of the French far right, Jean-Marie Le Pen, continues to divide the country after his death, which provoked celebrations in several cities in France, condemned by his party and the government.
The co-founder of the National Front (FN) party died Tuesday at the age of 96 in the Paris region, in an establishment where he had been admitted several weeks ago.
A provocative and sulphurous tribune obsessed with immigration and Jews, Mr. Le Pen, who liked to be nicknamed “the Menhir”, brought the French extreme right out of its marginality.
Hundreds of opponents gathered Tuesday evening in several cities in France to celebrate his death, with songs, smoke bombs and fireworks.
“This dirty racist is dead,” said a sign brandished in the crowd of a few hundred people gathered at Place de la République in Paris, where a few flags of the New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA) flew.
“Youth piss off the National Front,” participants chanted. This slogan, born in the 1980s, was widely adopted in the spring of 2002 when huge demonstrations took place in France after Jean-Marie Le Pen qualified for the second round of the presidential election, at age 73 and for his fourth candidacy. Thanks to a “republican front”, right-wing President Jacques Chirac was re-elected with 82.21% of the vote.
In Lyon, in the center-east of the country, 650 people gathered Tuesday evening, according to the prefecture. Several offensive tags were left on the walls, including “Death to the idiot” and “Le Pen, you have to burn to get into the ballot box”.
Seven people were arrested in Lyon and three in Paris on the sidelines of gatherings, we learned from the authorities.
“Misogynist, racist, Holocaust denier, anti-Semitic”
In Marseille (south-east), where between 200 and 300 people gathered in the Old Port according to AFP journalists, the atmosphere was festive, between bottles of champagne, small party hats and this sign: “Finally “.
“It’s the death of a character we hate, because he was misogynist, racist, Holocaust denier, anti-Semitic. We must celebrate when such hateful characters die,” Louise Delporte, a 20-year-old political science student, told AFP.
These demonstrations were strongly condemned by the National Rally (RN) party, heir to the FN. Its vice-president, Louis Aliot, vilified “the bitch, always the same, in the street, the leftist scum”.
“Nothing, absolutely nothing justifies dancing on a corpse (…) These scenes of jubilation are simply shameful,” also denounced the very conservative Minister of the Interior Bruno Retailleau on the social network X.
“Dead, even the enemy has the right to respect,” said government spokesperson Sophie Primas on Wednesday.
But the boss of the deputies of the radical left Mathilde Panot defended for her part “the Charlie spirit” (Hebdo), a reference to the famous satirical newspaper which was commemorated on Tuesday the tenth anniversary of the attack targeting it, by emphasizing that Mr. Le Pen was an “enemy of the Republic”.
The French presidency judged on Tuesday that Mr. Le Pen was a “historic figure of the extreme right” whose “role in the public life of our country for nearly seventy years” was “now subject to the judgment of History “.
“The State will ensure that they are kept away”
Mr. Le Pen’s funeral will take place on Saturday “in family privacy” in his hometown of La Trinité-sur-Mer, in the west of France, Louis Aliot, former companion of Marine Le Pen, announced on Wednesday. one of Jean-Marie’s daughters.
A setting which should remain conducive to contemplation, said Mr. Aliot, despite the demonstrations on Tuesday evening: “They are not going to come and demonstrate at a funeral. And if they do, I suppose the state will make sure to keep them away.”
Mr. Aliot confirmed that Marine Le Pen had learned of the death of her father through the press, during a stopover in Nairobi, returning from a trip to the French archipelago of Mayotte, in the Indian Ocean, devastated on December 14 by Cyclone Chido.
She paid tribute to her father on Wednesday on X. “A venerable age had taken the warrior but had given us back our father,” she stressed. “A lot of people he loves are waiting for him up there. Many people who love him are mourning him down here. Good winds, good seas, Dad!”
Relations between Jean-Marie and Marine Le Pen had deteriorated significantly over the years after the accession in 2011 of his daughter to the head of the FN. However, ties were renewed in June 2018 on the occasion of the patriarch’s 90th birthday.
(afp)
