It was around 6 p.m. this Sunday, April 21, 2002, when I received a text from a friend working in a polling institute. “If you haven’t voted yet, please do so. We give JM Le Pen in the second round.”
I shrug and smile. Like many, I voted elsewhere that day. White in this case. Le Pen in the second round? It’s absolutely impossible.
Unlikely. Not serious. Seriously? Yes, when his face appears next to that of Jacques Chirac, there is disbelief, well before astonishment.
Disbelief: the FN in the second round
So here is the former Poujadist (he was, since the death in July 2024 of Roland Dumas, the last deputy to have served under the Fourth Republic), the paratrooper who tortured in Algeria, the one who sold records of songs from the Third Reich , the man who founded the National Front in the company of notorious collaborators, engaged in the SS Charlemagne division, and ultras from French Algeria, former members of the OAS – here is this man and with him this Pétainist right are invited to the second round of a presidential election, ahead of Lionel Jospin by some 200,000 votes.
An earthquake. The French press releases headlines, a crowd gathers the following Sunday to protest, the Republican front is active, which Jacques Chirac promises not to forget (ah ah ah) while enjoying a re-election in an armchair.
For history, on April 21, 2002, Jean-Marie Le Pen became the man who opened the doors of power to bring in the extreme right. It’s over with the little yellow pin against racism, “don’t touch my friend”, or “Mitterrand Generation”.
With seven candidates, some of whom had very honorable scores (Noël Mamère, Olivier Besancenot, Christiane Taubira), the “plural left” scattered its votes; she only has herself to blame. After five years of exercising power under cohabitation,…
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