Various newspapers recall the career of Jean-Marie Le Pen, marked by multiple convictions, whether for provocation of hatred, trivialization of crimes against humanity or violence against a local elected official.
This Wednesday, January 8, the French press recalls the journey of Jean-Marie Le Pen without hiding his worst failings, but recognizing that the ideas of “Menhir”, who died Tuesday at the age of 96, have made their way into society.
“In such circumstances, the tradition is to forgive everything and to pay homage to the deceased by delving into his biography in search of a few moments of life more glorious than the others. Impossible today,” says Le Midi-Libre, which in a short editorial reflects the tone of a large part of his colleagues.
“Marshal, here he is”
“Denier of Nazi crimes”, author of “torture in Algeria”, “racist”, “anti-Semitic”, cultivating “anti-queer hatred”… the French daily newspapers do not fail to recall the dark past of Marine Le Pen and his “excesses”, as La Voix du Nord writes.
“Marshal, here he is”, headlines Libération in a front page accompanied by a photo of Jean-Marie Le Pen in majesty escorted by his two Dobermans, a black and white photo taken in 1997 by the photographer Helmut Newton.
“Hate was his job,” adds L’Humanité, whose black and white front page shows the “torturer’s dagger” of Jean-Marie Le Pen during the Algerian war. “He devoted his life to the rehabilitation of an extreme right disqualified by its collaborationist past. His pestilential ideas survive him.”
“Monument of political life”
More soberly, La Croix, under the title “Death of a far-right tribune”, underlines the disappearance of a “monument of French political life” which marked the political scene by the “violence of its ideas and his words.” “It was Le Pen…” wrote Le Parisien for its front page.
-“The Menhir and its shadow” headlines Le Figaro, which concedes to Jean-Marie Le Pen “the fatal attraction for the media cynicism which, with him, generated staggering audiences”, while rewarding him with an “intractable republican virtue “.
Jean-Marie le Pen “leaves a legacy as massive, controversial, as it is unique” at the end of a “journey, imposing, chivalrous, excessive, Orwellian, Balzacian” during which “he tirelessly worked to dynamite” the Fifth Republic, judges the far-right weekly Valeurs Actuelles, under the title “The Odyssey of a Menhir”.
The far right “more powerful than ever”
“Son of Boulangism, Poujadism and a long French history of nationalism, will Jean-Marie Le Pen be entitled to a noun in ‘ism’? In other words, apart from his xenophobic provocations, his long list of condemnations criminal laws and its variable geometry ideology, does it leave a political legacy?” asks the Republican Lorraine.
For several titles, the answer is hardly in doubt. According to Le Figaro, the former far-right leader had “an early intuition about immigration”. He was able to grasp “the growing existential concerns of French society on migration, demographic, security and identity issues”, believes Valeurs Actuelles.
Today, the extreme right is “more powerful than ever”, Libération is alarmed, with La Voix du Nord recalling that if Jean-Marie Le Pen “in 2002 gathered 5.5 million votes in the second round, twenty years later later, (his daughter Marine Le Pen) gathered more than 13”.
“Jean-Marie Le Pen is dead. He unfortunately leaves a legacy of a very much alive extreme right,” concludes Libération.
