François Bayrou’s comment about Jean-Marie Le Pen – who died Tuesday at the age of 96 – turns into controversy. Several left-wing political leaders have thus denounced the reaction, too laudatory in their eyes, of the Prime Minister to the death of the founder of the National Front, described as a “figure of political life” and instigator of “controversies” by the Prime Minister.
“Jean-Marie Le Pen is dead. It was not just “a figure of French political life” as François Bayrou reacts. Respect for the deceased should not lead to blindness along the way. Jean-Marie Le Pen was a notorious racist and anti-Semite, worshiper of Pétain and a torturer in Algeria,” wrote the leader of La France insoumise MEPs, Manon Aubry, on social networks. “Racism, hatred of Muslims, anti-Semitism are not controversies. These are offenses punishable by law,” added LFI deputy Paul Vannier.
A message deemed “pathetic” to the PCF
“Beyond the controversies which were his favorite weapon and the necessary confrontations on the merits, JM Le Pen will have been a figure in French political life. We knew, by fighting him, what a fighter he was,” François Bayrou had written a little earlier on X.
“He was a racist. An anti-Semite. A colonialist. A nostalgic for the Vichy regime. An anti-feminist… A repeat offender who founded the FN with the SS. Not a figure in French political life,” said the secretary general of the Socialist Party, Pierre Jouvet.
Death of Jean-Marie Le Pen
“It is not a question of controversies, but of condemnations for racist, anti-Semitic and Holocaust denial remarks,” said the spokesperson for the French Communist Party Ian Brossat, describing the Prime Minister’s message as “pathetic”.
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