The opposition against Jean-Marie Le Pen, who died this Tuesday at the age of 96, was also carried out in music. In 1985, a year after the National Front’s breakthrough in the European elections, the Bérurier Noir, a French punk rock group, signed Rubbish. “The world is a real pigsty/Men behave like pigs,” chants frontman François Guillemot in this anti-capitalist and anti-oppression song.
Its slogan, “youth piss off the National Front”, only appears later, over the course of the concerts. “We went on tour and quickly realized that young people reacted enormously to this specific song. Especially when we say “Le Pen? Porcherie!”, we felt a sudden enormous vibration coming from the audience […] The truth is that we said to ourselves, wow, are the youth pissing off the National Front or what? », explained the guitarist in 2017 to the magazine Greenroom.
Having since become the anthem of youth against the far right – as evidenced by the demonstrations before the legislative elections last summer -, Rubbish inspired other artists, like Diam’s, in 2004, with the title Marine. “Your name is Le Pen/Never forget that you are the problem/Of a bleeding youth,” the artist rapped in particular.
“International is the affront”
In the world of rap, many artists very early on raised their voices against the rise of the National Front. Impossible not to mention NTM and titles like White and black in 1991 or never againin 1995, which directly targets the party leader: “National is this front, international is the affront. That’s why I stand, frowning. When the senile one-eyed man has fun scoring 25% in my town. No, never again, let’s stop all this.” A few weeks later, Jean-Marie Le Pen won 15% of the votes in the presidential election, rising to 4th place in the first round.
In 2002, his accession to the second round against Jacques Chirac provoked a slew of reactions. River songs and collectives appear to denounce the rise of the far right, as France Inter pointed out twenty years later: The fight is on with Sniper, Arsenik, Abd Al Malik… Hip-Hop Citizen initiated by Princess Aniès or even We should with the reformation of the AMER Ministry.
On the French variety and pop side, a handful of artists have declared, in their own way, their opposition to Jean-Marie Le Pen. In 1988, in Disgusting songthe singer Renaud describes a man “Like a guy who has eaten vulture, rolled galoshes at a herd of hyenas [et qui] pushed back from the bottleneck as if he had always embraced the ideas of Le Pen.
“A hydra with beguiling speeches”
Mylène Farmer who, during her career has been careful not to take any explicit position, nevertheless reacted when, in 1995, the National Front presidential candidate called on one of her lookalikes during a meeting . “I am scandalized to learn that Mr. Le Pen was able to use my image and deceive people in this way. I find this process revolting. It’s scandalous and above all I am sad, deeply unhappy, that people who like me could have thought for a moment that I could support such a policy,” she declared to France 2.
In 1998, Zazie listed first names from all walks of life in his song Everyone where she said she was “from the same country as Sigmund, as Sally, as Alex and Ali”. A sort of unifying anthem in the chorus of which she proclaimed “Everyone is beautiful”, and that “even if it means hurting Jean-Marie”, an obvious allusion, pun included on the pain, to the leader of ‘then of the French extreme right.
The same year, marked by regional elections, Pierre Perret, worried about the rise of the National Front, sang The beast has returned. The text does not directly mention Jean-Marie Le Pen, but the lyrics, evoking a “hydra with beguiling speeches which forges a new breed of oppressors” leave no doubt about the message that the singer wishes to convey.
“Shame on our country, here comes the enemy again”
When, in 2002, the leader of the National Front reached the second round of the presidential election, Damien Saez expressed his dismay. “I saw the news this morning with tears in my eyes. 20% for horror, 20% for fear,” he begins in Son of France. At the end of the piece, he calls for “resistance”: “Shame on our country, here comes the enemy again. Come, let us walk together, children of the homeland.” At the time, the qualification of the far right for the second round was a shock for a large number of French people, some of whom spontaneously took to the streets to call for a barrier to the FN.
Our file Jean-Marie Le Pen
In the following years, Jean-Marie Le Pen gradually withdrew from the French political landscape, passing the baton to his daughter Marine. This is directly cited in 20.04.2005 where Philippe Katerine tries to escape from him while she follows him in the street. In 2014, Benjamin Biolay deplored the breakthrough of the FN in the European elections in The black flight – a reference to Song of the Partisans. “To you, dear departed, oh this evening, if you had seen this old country of Enlightenment fall and fall on its ass,” he sings in what remains to this day one of the last mainstream songs denouncing the far-right party.
