Version imprimableHe’s perhaps the only person we won’t say has "switched his weapon to the left" when he is dead. [1] That would be offensive to us. Even in death, Jean-Marie Le Pen cannot embody anything other than racism, colonialism, anti-Semitism, homophobia and misogyny.
He embodied the French far right for decades: from those nostalgic for the OAS and French Algeria to Nazi and antisemitic ideologues, racism and the most ordinary - and horrifying - machismo.
Our first thoughts are with the direct victims, the Algerians killed and tortured during the war of independence. And the indirect victims, to all those who have had to endure racism, discrimination, injustice and even insults and blows. And there are many of them, his victims, so many that he has helped to banalize racism, putting it back at the heart of the political debate time and time again... right up to his runner-up spot in the 2002 presidential election.
Jean-Marie Le Pen’s death was bound to happen one day. But his ideas are still very much alive. You only have to read Éric Ciotti’s tribute to be convinced of his poisoned legacy: “he was a pioneering whistleblower on mass immigration and its ravages”. Confirmed by Éric Zemmour.
Today, his daughter, almost 15 years after taking over the reins of the party that Le Pen père founded, is on the doorstep of power. The RN had 89 MPs in the National Assembly by 2022, and 130 by 2024. And they make good and bad weather for the governments that yesterday were chased FN and RN votes, from Balladur to Sarkozy, and today vote for laws with them, from Borne to Barnier. And, who knows, Bayrou tomorrow...
The new Prime Minister sees Le Pen as “a figure in French political life”, before adding : “We knew what a fighter he was when we fought him”, while the Élysée hides behind a press release, appealing to the judgment of history.
Our judgement is made. Marine Le Pen has pretended to put aside the antisemitism of her father, who in 1987, in a nod to his Nazi denialist comrades, presented the gas chambers as “a detail in the hisory of the Second World War”, and replaced it with a new Islamophobia, thereby making racism more fashionable. She has made racism acceptable to the bourgeoisie and its political personnel.
Jean-Marie Le Pen is dead, but the foul beast is very much alive. We fought the father and his friends for decades, and we will continue to fight his heirs.
Montreuil, 7 January 2025
Translated by International Viewpoint from l’Anticapitaliste.
