Jean-Marie Le Pen, a precursor of the radical right

Faced with the constellation and multiple forms of the nationalist and radical right in Europe, we sometimes hesitate, with good reason, about the use of the expression “extreme right”.

But in his case, it was pretty clear. Jean-Marie Le Pen, whose death was announced by those close to him on the morning of January 7, has recovered a French extremist tradition – anti-Semitic, racist, authoritarian, collaborationist during the Nazi occupation – which dates back to the darkest hours of history European.

That’s where this character came from. He fully assumed it and, for him, the term applies perfectly.

In the early 1970s, he founded his party, the National Front, alongside neo-Nazis like Pierre Bousquet, a former French member of the SS, and also former terrorists from the Organization of the Secret Army (OAS), opposed to the departure of the French from Algeria and who had attempted to assassinate President Charles de Gaulle.

Five times candidate

He ran five times in the French presidential elections, first obtaining 0.7% of the votes in 1974, then skipping the 1981 election. In 1988, he won 14%, then 15% in 1995, and 17% of the votes. votes in 2002. That spring, to everyone’s amazement, he went to the second round of the election.

In the first round, he beat the socialist Lionel Jospin by a whisker for second place, then losing by a score of 18% to 82% against Jacques Chirac, then re-elected for five years.

Five years later, on the decline, competed by the discourse safe hard of Nicolas Sarkozy, Le Pen fell back to 10.4% of the vote.

Spirit of provocation and outrageous remarks

Jean-Marie Le Pen was marked by his experience in Algeria, where he fought the movement for that country’s independence.

The character’s brawling, provocative, extreme side, his verbal and sometimes even physical violence, were undoubtedly influenced by the horrors of this war in the 1950s. There are strong presumptions that he then participated in torture sessions – even if he denied it.

He is a man who combined the spirit of provocation with radical and outrageous remarks: on homosexuals, Arabs, Muslims, immigration in general, but also on Jews. All carried by remarkable elocution.

What we called his skidsbut which in fact were perfectly controlled coming from him, brought him to court several times.

The gas chambers, point of detail

In 1987, Le Pen declared on television that the gas chambers used by the Nazis were a detailed point of the history of the Second World War. Scandalous comments for which he was convicted by the courts: one of the many sentences for his controversial statements throughout his career.

In 2014, he was fined 5,000 euros for having said in 2012 that the Roma (Gypsies), like birds, fly naturally.

He was also indicted in 2019, this time with several leaders and officials of the movement, in a case of embezzlement of public funds from the European Parliament (where he was a member) by the National Front which used the money for other purposes than parliamentary work in Brussels. Among other things, his driver was paid from these funds.

The daughter replaces the father

His youngest daughter, Marine Le Pen, took control of the National Front in 2011. She tried to distance herself from her father to broaden support for the formation – even if she declares today assume absolutely the entire history of the party.

In fact, it has largely succeeded in erasing part of the past which linked the training to collaborationists, neo-Nazis and those nostalgic for French Algeria.

While remaining an anti-immigration party, with xenophobic overtones in particular in relation to North African populations, it has made, among other things, a very marked philo-Semitic turn – in contradiction with the father, who multiplied the anti-Semitic barbs.

In the history of this family, Homeric quarrels have created splits. Marine Le Pen, after taking over the presidency of the National Front in 2011, completely expelled her father in 2015, mainly for his anti-Jewish and anti-homosexual statements.

In 2018, she changed the name of the formation, from “National Front” to “National Rally”. The party is taking off electorally, breaking the 20% wall and soon that of 30%, whether in the legislative or European elections. In the 2022 presidential election, in the second round against Emmanuel Macron, she obtained 41.5% of the votes cast: we are far from the father’s 0.7% in 1974!

An influence beyond France

Jean-Marie Le Pen, with his political training and his career, has had an influence that goes beyond France. It preceded the authoritarian, populist and anti-immigration movements that are part of the political landscape in Europe today. Tendencies which – with significant variations depending on the country – are in power, generally in coalition, or even in a position of main opposition.

Jean-Marie Le Pen’s ideas on immigration and insecurity appear today in party programs which bring together millions of votes. They have influenced the vision of many Europeans on these themes. He put subjects that had long remained in the shadows on the agenda. He brought the radical right out of the margins.

A new right (the term comes from the commentator John Lloyd, in the Financial Times of January 6, to encompass all these trends) which, depending on the country and ideologies, varies enormously, despite constant radicalism.

This right is more or less opposed to the European Union. It takes the side of Ukraine or, on the contrary, of Russia (Moscow supports several of these movements, which do it well). She is anti-Semitic or no longer is. She respects parliamentary democracy or hates it, hides real authoritarian tendencies or not, is conservative or not on morals and religion, etc. The German AfD party is home to real neo-Nazis, but the same cannot be said of all these groups.

All these movements agree, however, to oppose immigration, which they want to abolish or significantly reduce. This was one of the founding themes of Jean-Marie Le Pen, a theme which has continued to progress over the decades.

Good questions, bad answers

Depending on your point of view, Le Pen added fuel to the fire by stirring up hatreds that previously remained buried and marginal, or on the contrary he dared to break down taboos and pose the real questions. Questions which were undoubtedly less significant, less objectively present, in 1974 than they have become in the 21st century.

Open in full screen mode

Already, Laurent Fabius, French socialist prime minister in 1984, had declared: The National Front asks the right questions, but gives them the wrong answers.

There is also the tone that has become a school: the crudeness of the language, as well as the political target of his diatribes. Aggression in political discourse, anti-elite outbursts. The hatred of elites was a recurring theme in his mouth. He spoke with contempt of the establishment (a word which he also turned in the French way by saying the establishment), in a communication that is both violent and agile.

Even with polished French, far removed from the incomplete sentences and incoherent snippets of Donald Trump, Jean-Marie Le Pen was also a precursor stylistic of political communication.

This tone as well as its direct attacks against its adversaries or enemies, against specific ethnic groups, against journalists, were also harbingers, several decades before the Internet, of the flood of insults and threats online which will become the norm in 2025 .

Controversy unto death

President Emmanuel Macron said, a few hours after the announcement of his death: He is a historic figure of the far right and played a role in the public life of our country for almost 70 years, which history will now have to judge.

Open in full screen mode

The Prime Minister, François Bayrou, described Jean-Marie Le Pen as a figure of political lifebeyond controversies which were his favorite weapon and necessary confrontations on the merits. […] We knew, by fighting him, what a fighter he was.

But several leaders on the left have denounced this type of reaction, which is too laudatory in their eyes.

According to Manon Aubry, leader of MEPs from La France insoumise, a radical left party, Jean-Marie Le Pen is dead. He was not just a “figure of French political life”, as François Bayrou says. 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, torturer in Algeria.

Even in death, he continues to sow controversy…