Climate skeptics lose one of their most illustrious representatives. The co-founder of the National Front Jean-Marie Le Pen, openly anti-ecology, died on January 7, in Garches (Hauts-de-Seine), at the age of 96.
First a deputy, the far-right politician was several times a candidate for the presidential election, going so far as to qualify for the second round against Jacques Chirac in 2002. He was finally excluded from the National Front by his daughter Marine in 2016, and left his mandate as an MEP in 2020.
Weakened by a heart attack in 2023, he has since become much more discreet. His life was marked by multiple controversies: accusations of torture during the Algerian War, the gas chambers of the Second World War which were only one « detail of the story »racism, homophobia. He has also increased the number of provocations and untruths regarding the environment.
The climate crisis: an invention of environmentalists
Jean-Marie Le Pen was thus an eternal climate skeptic, presenting climate change as an invention of environmentalists intended to impose their political program. Their « catastrophism »which would rely « on the questionable analysis of phenomena like the “greenhouse effect” »would serve them to « imposing globalist solutions, negation of our civilization and our identity »he assured in 2002.
In 2010, during a conference on the theme « Global warming, myth or reality ? » intended to denounce the « manipulation » of « alleged global warming »Jean-Marie Le Pen castigated « ecologism, the new religion of the bobos gogos ». A number of his climate skeptic statements were delivered on Twitter, his favorite social network: « Without global warming we would die of cold » (January 2018) ; « Brrr Brrr we’re having fun. Those who denounce global warming are desperate » (February 2018).
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Beyond climate skepticism, he has built a vision of ecology that is deeply nationalist and exclusionary, the premise of a form of localism exalting landscapes and traditional values that the far right continues to promote. In a 2007 speech, he said he wanted « safeguard the heritage of France which is embodied in a people and in a civilization, but also in a region, with its landscapes, its fauna and its flora » and promote « an authentic ecology, based on respect for the natural order, common sense and confidence in human genius ».
Hunter Defense
This, however, without turning our back on the dogma of growth: « It is not by slowing down the economic growth of our nations that we will protect our environment. It is technological progress that has made it possible to have cars today whose pollution is 20% lower. % to those of twenty years ago. »
This ecology has its actors, necessarily coming from rural areas and traditional practices. For example, hunters: « You do ecology and fieldwork on a daily basis. When professional ecologists are only interested in the exceptional, the bear in the Pyrenees, the wolf in the Mercantour, you manage nature in real life: the thrush, the woodpigeon, the duck, the partridge or the hare, and we attack you »he told them in 2007.
Or again, traditional farmers: without specifying what his vision of agriculture is, he attacked « agriculture dedicated to productivity »characterized by the use ofGMO and especially pesticides which « led, on the one hand, to the destruction of 60 % of the natural humus of our land […]on the other hand, to the pollution of groundwater ». As well as « the disappearance of two million peasants » and rural landscapes — notably the bocage — and the rise of industrial livestock farming « threatening our health and imposing unworthy operating conditions for animals ».
« Regular and massive instillation of non-European blood »
This localism is inseparable from its racism, since it is a question of not mixing people together: « We have persuaded Europeans that children are an unbearable burden, and that the Other, that is to say immigrant peoples, will provide us with the population we lack. […] Under the disguise of immediate material interest, lies the project to physically suppress peoples, through a regular and massive instillation of non-European blood. »he wrote in 1991.
Ecology, a pretext for venting racism
Ecology becomes one pretext among many others to express xenophobia, as in 2002 when the National Front was worried about « the killing, in illegal, barbaric conditions contrary to public hygiene, of thousands of sheep on the occasion of Muslim festivals ».
However, it remains difficult to find overall consistency in his statements on the environment, a subject which has never really interested him. Nuclear power was a striking example of its changes of footing. In 1996, Jean-Marie Le Pen sharply criticized Jacques Chirac’s decision to end nuclear testing, accusing him of « [renoncer] implicitly to defend our independence, and therefore our sovereignty ».
In his 2007 program, he also indicated that he wanted « continue the effort on nuclear power » by developing third and fourth generation reactor systems and relaunching the construction of a breeder reactor.
This did not prevent him, the same year, from denouncing the Czech Temelín nuclear power plant and the nuclear agreement concluded between France and the Czech Republic as dangerous. And, in 2016, to assure that his hypothyroidism had been caused by his irradiation during the passage of the Chernobyl cloud in France – he said he felt it passing the Sunday following the disaster while he was taking a bath sunshine in Cannes. « It is a catastrophe which must always make us think that nuclear power carries a very great risk. »judged the politician.
The Greens, supporters of total immigration »
Finally, he never tired of attacking political ecology. The Greens were in his eyes « the most extremist supporters of the most harmful solutions » et « the most fervent supporters of total immigration »he declared in 1992. The Greens and « their totalitarian spirit » were one of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s favorite targets. In 2007, he criticized their « autophobia which leads them to create monster traffic jams in Paris, which increase pollution ». According to him, by trying to limit car use in the capital, « their misguided ecology can lead to the establishment of a global totalitarian system, a Big Brother controlling our actions ».
Another example, the same year, where he considered that their desire to slow down economic growth was a « ideology, seemingly bucolic, which is in reality more criminal than those which bloodied the last century, since its implementation would involve the death of billions of men. As was the case in Cambodia where millions of men were killed by the communists to return to the pre-industrial era. ».
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