Jean-Marie Le Pen divides the French even after his death

The historic figure of the French far right, Jean-Marie Le Pen, continues to divide the country after his death, which provoked celebrations in several cities in France, condemned by his party and the government. The co-founder of the National Front (FN) party died Tuesday at the age of 96 in the Paris region, in an establishment where he had been admitted several weeks ago.

Hundreds of opponents gathered Tuesday evening in several cities in France to celebrate his death, with songs, smoke bombs and fireworks. “This dirty racist is dead,” said a sign brandished in the crowd of a few hundred people gathered at Place de la République in Paris, where a few flags of the New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA) flew.

“Youth piss off the National Front,” participants chanted. This slogan, born in the 1980s, was widely adopted in the spring of 2002 when huge demonstrations took place in France after Jean-Marie Le Pen qualified for the second round of the presidential election, at age 73 and for his fourth candidacy. Thanks to a “republican front”, right-wing President Jacques Chirac was re-elected with 82.21% of the vote.

In Lyon, in the center-east of the country, 650 people gathered Tuesday evening, according to the prefecture. Several offensive tags were left on the walls, including “Death to the idiot” and “Le Pen, you have to burn to get into the ballot box”. Seven people were arrested in Lyon and three in Paris on the sidelines of gatherings, we learned from the authorities.

In Marseille (south-east), where between 200 and 300 people gathered in the Old Port, according to AFP journalists, the atmosphere was festive, between bottles of champagne, small party hats and this sign: “Finally”. “It’s the death of a character we hate, because he was misogynist, racist, Holocaust denier, anti-Semitic. We must celebrate when such hateful characters die,” Louise Delporte, a 20-year-old political science student, told AFP.

These demonstrations were strongly condemned by the National Rally (RN) party, heir to the FN. Its vice-president, Louis Aliot, vilified “the bitch, always the same, in the street, the leftist scum”.

“Nothing, absolutely nothing justifies dancing on a corpse (…) These scenes of jubilation are simply shameful,” also denounced the very conservative Minister of the Interior Bruno Retailleau on the social network X.

“Dead, even the enemy has the right to respect,” said government spokesperson Sophie Primas on Wednesday.

But the boss of the deputies of the radical left Mathilde Panot defended for her part “the Charlie spirit” (Hebdo), a reference to the famous satirical newspaper which was commemorated on Tuesday the tenth anniversary of the attack targeting it, by emphasizing that Jean-Marie Le Pen was an “enemy of the Republic”.

The French presidency ruled on Tuesday that Jean-Marie Le Pen was a “historic figure of the extreme right” whose “role in the public life of our country for nearly seventy years” was “now subject to the judgment of the History”.

The funeral of Jean-Marie Le Pen will take place on Saturday “in family privacy” in his hometown of La Trinité-sur-Mer, in western France, Louis Aliot, former companion of Marine Le Pen, announced on Wednesday. . A setting which should remain conducive to contemplation, said Louis Aliot, despite the demonstrations on Tuesday evening: “They are not going to come and demonstrate at a funeral. And if they do, I suppose the state will make sure to keep them away.”