In Libé’s eye
published today at 3:22 p.m.
Demonstration against the presence of Jean-Marie Le Pen and the National Front in the second round of the presidential election, in Paris, April 27, 2002.
Elise Hardy/Gamma-Rapho
June 18, 1984. Until the beginning of the 1980s, the National Front was a second-tier party. This headline dated the day after the 1984 European elections, where it exceeded 10% for the first time, symbolizes the emergence of the far-right party, and its leader, among the major political forces.
September 5, 1988. A year after his comments on the gas chambers, a “point of detail” of the Second World War, Le Pen does it again with a pun on the name of Minister Michel Durafour. The beginning of a long companionship with anti-Semitism.
March 30, 1990. At the beginning of the 1990s, the FN dreamed big. In the 1988 presidential election, its leader obtained 14.4% of the votes and saw himself as a credible contender for power, even if his anti-Semitic or Holocaust denial statements isolated him politically.
September 21, 1998. At the end of the 1990s, despite good electoral results, revolt rumbled at the top of the FN. The ambitious number 2, Bruno Mégret, is exasperated with Le Pen now seen as a burden in the conquest of power. Imprudently, “Libération” then predicts the gradual erasure of the leader of the FN.
December 15, 1998. Bruno Mégret takes action and, unable to take over the FN, organizes its split. The Mégretist strategy will quickly decline, but the National Front apparatus will remain permanently weakened.
On April 21, 2002, astonishing the country, Jean-Marie Le Pen reached the second round of the presidential election. “Libération” devotes this emblematic and committed front page to him, often brandished in the demonstrations of the following days.
May 2, 2002. The period between the two rounds of the 2002 presidential election was marked by massive mobilizations against the far-right candidate, revealing the overwhelming majority rejection of him in society. Le Pen, for his part, misses his campaign during these two weeks.
May 6, 2002. On the evening of the second round, Jean-Marie Le Pen was defeated by a historic score by Jacques Chirac, thanks to a very broad Republican front. This presidential election will have been the swan song of the old far-right tribune, who is entering his political twilight.
February 19, 2007. Still alive? Certainly. But not in as good a shape as this headline fears: a few months later, in the 2007 presidential election, Le Pen will be eliminated in the first round, largely siphoned off by the “uninhibited right” of Nicolas Sarkozy. The president of the FN will remain in office for four more years, but the curtain falls on his national ambitions.
June 28, 2014. Although he has handed over to his daughter, Jean-Marie Le Pen cannot resolve to retire. Between criticisms of Marinism and republishing his polemical remarks, the old tribune plays a part which will lead to his exclusion from the party he helped to found.
