The photos of the mollusk which abound this Tuesday, January 7 on social networks have nothing to do with the physical state of the founder of the National Front at the end of his life, but are a reference to a sketch by Pierre Desproges.
«Ok, Jean-Marie Le Pen is deadbut… why are all these people posting photos of mussels or talk about this delicious food on my Bluesky or X feed?” Question that you may have asked yourself after the announcement of the death of the founder of the National Front this Tuesday, January 7, at the age of 96, seeing mountains of mollusks passing by.
The explanation can be found in a sketch that Pierre Desproges performed on stage in 1984. The comedian mentioned the death of Georges Brassens in these terms: “The day Brassens died, I cried like a child. Whereas, I don’t know why, but on the day Tino Rossi died, I took mussels twice. Mad !”
These photos of mussels have therefore become, for some, a subtly irreverent way of greeting the death of personalities arousing at best polite indifference, at worst frank hostility. And from there, we could weave a whole thread explaining that through this homage to Desproges, today precisely, there is something of the order of a revenge which is being played out between the comedian and the fascist.
It is in fact on the occasion of a Court of flagrant delusions on France Inter whose guest was Jean-Marie Le Pen, on September 29, 1982, which the prosecutor Pierre Desproges theorized publicly, in his indictment, his now famous – and sadly misused – “we can laugh at everything, but not with everyone”.
This was an opportunity for him to express his uneasiness about the presence on set, at a prime time dedicated to the joke, of“a far-right activist” of which no one yet really measured the power of nuisance. Unfortunately, events subsequently unfolded as if this warning had never been issued.
“More humanity in a dog’s eye”
A sign of this beginning of normalization, the founder of the FN would be invited two years later on the set of The moment of truththe most important political broadcast of the time. During the interview, Le Pen would stand out by launching into a minute of silence in tribute to the victims of communism.
Desproges having died in 1988, Le Pen will have survived thirty-six years to the one who observed that“there is more humanity in the eye of a dog when it wags its tail than in Le Pen’s tail when it wags its eye.” So, if this evening you have mussels twice for dinner, it will also be for Desproges, and perhaps a little for Charlie Hebdowhere he published a collection of texts ironically titled Foreigners suck whose title Le Pen would perhaps have approved, but certainly not the content.
