High mass of the far right in tribute to Jean-Marie Le Pen

The entire far right gathered on Thursday for a final tribute to the founder of the National Front Jean-Marie Le Pen, in and outside the Notre-Dame du Val-de-Grâce church, in Paris.

Died on January 7 at the age of 96, the finalist in the 2002 presidential election was already buried on Saturday in the cemetery of his hometown of La Trinité-sur-Mer (Morbihan) after a mass celebrated in the strictest family intimacy.

His three daughters, Marie-Caroline, Yann and Marine Le Pen, however, wanted to organize another tribute, in Paris, this one open to the public.

But only the approximately 400 people invited could enter the church built by Anne of Austria to thank the birth of the future Louis the ceremony.

In addition to the members of the National Rally, led by its president Jordan Bardella, all the groups of the far right had made the trip, including Marine Le Pen’s opponent, Éric Zemmour, but also Bruno Mégret, former number two of the FN who broke with Jean-Marie Le Pen in 1998 or Carl Lang, also a dissident. Philippe de Villiers was also present.

The historian specializing in the far right Jean-Yves Camus was also in the church.

On the other hand, several undesirable ultra-right personalities have been relegated to the outside, such as the negationists Thomas Joly, president of the Pétainist Parti de la France, or Yvan Benedetti, its founder. “Repressed with the outcasts of the religious tribute to Jean-Marie Le Pen in Paris,” tweeted the first with a photo also showing Jérôme Bourbon, the boss of the far-right weekly Rivarol.

Remaining in the street near the church, the former comedian Dieudonné, convicted of anti-Semitism, estimated that Jean-Marie Le Pen “was a free man” in the middle of a “political landscape that was perhaps too narrow”.

“I will not dwell on the political commitments of Mr. Le Pen, which are not within my competence, except that they have always been motivated by the love of France,” for his part. assured Father Christophe Kowalczyk at the start of the service.

During this mass lasting more than an hour and a half, Bruno Gollnisch, Jean-Marie Le Pen’s old traveling companion, spoke, a tricolor flame pinned to the lapel of his jacket, as did Marie-Christine Arnautu, very close to the founder of the FN, and his daughter Marie-Caroline Le Pen, who celebrated an “indomitable patriot”.

More political, the speeches of Marion Maréchal – who had moved away from her aunt Marine Le Pen for a time to support Eric Zemmour, before getting closer to the RN again – and of Louis Aliot, former companion of Marine Le Pen, were applauded.

“We do not stop a people on the move, we do not stop a true idea, we do not stop a fair example,” thundered Marion Maréchal, when the mayor of Perpignan recalled that “April 21, 2002”, the date of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s qualification for the second round of the presidential election, “he shook the system, eliminating the left while remaining faithful to its history, its ideas, its values ​​and its friends.”

The former president of the National Youth Front then began a litany of his deceased political companions, from OAS activist Roger Holeign to Jean-Pierre Stirbois, the man of the party’s first electoral successes in the years 80.

Several grandchildren of Jean-Marie Le Pen had previously taken turns to read part of the homily, one of them calling to pray “for France”: “May the French know how to choose to govern them and wise and just men to guide them.”

Many prayers were read or sung, including the prayer of the paratroopers, the prayer to Joan of Arc and a prayer by the Catholic writer Charles Péguy, “The faith that I love best is God, ‘is hope’.

Around the church, before the start of the ceremony, we could hear Verdi’s “Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves” – in a German version -, which the Frontist leader already played in his meetings, and see a richly decorated cart. to the glory of the imperial guard.

Throughout the ceremony, flag bearers in different colored berets were placed on either side of the church.

Behind them, at the foot of a statue in front of the church, we could see “foot noir forever” stickers on a large stole in the colors of the RN. Next door, an activist frozen with cold plunged from time to time into reading his novel, “Ecritures corsaires”, by the Marxist writer Pier Paolo Pasolini.