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Jean-Marie Le Pen

 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia:

Jean-Marie Le Pen

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Jean-Marie Le Pen
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(born June 20, 1928, La Trinit, France) French nationalist politician. He was elected in 1956 to the National Assembly as its youngest member. Le Pen helped to found the National Front in 1972, becoming the party's leader later that year. The party emphasized the threat to France posed by immigration, particularly of Arabs from France's former North African colonies. The party also opposed European integration, favoured the reintroduction of capital punishment, and sought prohibitions on the building of additional mosques in France. Le Pen ran several times for the presidency; though he captured less than 1 of the vote in 1974, in 1988 and 1995 he won some 15. In the presidential election of 2002 Le Pen finished second in the first round of voting, winning 18, though he was easily defeated in the second round by Jacques Chirac. In the 2007 election he failed to reach the second round. Le Pen was widely regarded as the leader of French neofascism, and his National Front party constituted the main right-wing opposition to the country's mainstream conservative parties from the 1970s through the early 21st century.

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Oxford Dictionary of Political Biography:

Jean-Marie Le Pen

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(b. 20 June 1928) French; Presidential candidate 1974, 1988, 1995, and 2002 Born in the western department of Morbihan, the son of a fisherman killed at sea in 1942, Le Pen was educated locally. He got involved in extreme right politics while a law student in Paris and then joined a paratroop regiment, arriving in Haiphong just before Mendès France signed the Geneva accords which saw the end of French Indochina. On his return to France, he joined the anti-system movement led by Poujade and in January 1956 was elected Poujadist deputy for Paris. He soon broke with Poujade and took leave from the National Assembly to rejoin the paratroopers fighting in Algeria. A fervent defender of the cause for empire, and always mistrustful of de Gaulle, Le Pen was re-elected to the National Assembly in 1958. He became a vehement critic of the policy of withdrawal from Algeria, was briefly placed under arrest, and in 1962 lost his parliamentary seat. Algerian independence, economic growth, and the consolidation of electoral Gaullism combined to push Le Pen to the margins of French politics for the next eighteen years. He participated in the twilight world of the far right and in 1972 managed to unite a number of its warring factions in the Front National, of which he became president. But in 1974, when he stood for the presidency, he won under 1 per cent of the votes cast and seven years later was unable to obtain the 500 sponsors needed for him to stand.

His political prospects changed markedly in the early 1980s (his personal fortunes had already improved thanks to an inheritance from a rich supporter). As the euphoria produced by Mitterrand's 1981 victory evaporated, Le Pen was able to capitalize on the resentment felt by many at the government's austerity measures and on the failure of the parties of the system right to provide a convincing alternative. A good performance in the 1983 municipal elections was followed next year by a 10 per cent vote for Le Pen's list in the European elections, and in 1986 by the election of thirty-five Front National deputies. Suddenly Le Pen found himself a media star. To the inhabitants of run-down suburbs, his blunt message — 2 million immigrants too many — had considerable appeal. His warnings of an impending Islamic invasion of France and his denunciations of the political Establishment struck a chord with right-wing conservatives and with the former Algerian settlers concentrated in the south-east. The hard core of Le Pen's supporters shared his anti-Semitic, pro-Pétain views. But it was his populist ability to identify scapegoats — Arabs, bureaucrats, Aids victims — which helped him to win 14 per cent of the vote in the 1988 presidential election and 15 per cent in 1995.

If Le Pen's success demonstrates the persistence in France of a radical right discourse which many thought had disappeared in the Fifth Republic, it also shows the difficulties the mainstream conservative parties have had in maintaining the electoral hegemony they established in the 1960s and 1970s.

Gale Encyclopedia of Biography:

Jean Marie Le Pen

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Jean Marie Le Pen (born 1928) was a French political activist who led the radical right to its most important, although limited, electoral successes since World War II.

Born in the Breton fishing port of La Trinité-sur-Mer in 1928, Jean Marie Le Pen became a "national orphan" when his fisherman father was lost at sea in 1942. After a Jesuit education, he studied law in Paris, where he became president of the law students' "corporation" and began his career of radical rightist, anti-communist activity. Le Pen left his studies to enroll in the elite 1st Foreign Paratroop Battalion and served in the final months of the 1954 Indochina campaign.

Elected Deputy

Back in Paris, he came to the notice of the shopkeeper turned radical-right politician Pierre Poujade, on whose list he was elected deputy for the Seine in 1956. Le Pen soon broke with Poujade, joining the Centre National des indépendants et paysans, under whose auspices he was reelected in 1958. As a deputy, Le Pen returned to his unit in 1957, serving in the infamous Battle of Algiers during which French troops smashed an urban terror campaign through the systematic though unavowed use of torture. Several specific charges of torture have been levied against Le Pen. He has denied them, but his defamation suits against papers repeating them, such as the Canard Enchainée, have been unsuccessful. From Algiers, the deputy-soldier also participated in the 1956 Suez expedition.

Le Pen worked for "French Algeria" as orator on the summer 1957 caravan which visited the vacation beaches. During both the May 1958 revolt and the 1960 insurrection, the rightist deputy was briefly interned by the authorities, but he took no part in the later abortive generals' putsch. In 1965 he served as secretary-general of the ill-fated presidential election campaign of Tixier-Vignancour.

To support himself during the dry years, Le Pen founded a company to sell historical recordings. An historical appreciation stressing the popular and legal character of the Nazi rise to power that he wrote for a set of documentary recordings led to his conviction for "apology for war crimes" in 1968. In 1976 he received a substantial inheritance from an industrial heir with radical-right sympathies.

Elected President of the National Front

Meanwhile, in 1972 Le Pen founded and had become president of the Front National, an organization designed to reunite the French radical right that included many former members of the violent neo-fascist organizations Occident and Ordre Nouveau. In maneuvers with more "revolutionary" components of his party, Le Pen gained increasing control and steered the Front National to electoralism and legalism while drawing on the clientele of more intransigent groups. Unlike its rival, the Parti des Forces Nouvelles, however, the Front National eschewed alliances with parties of the respectable right. Despite this, neither the Front nor Le Pen achieved more than derisory electoral results. In 1981 he could not even get on the presidential ballot.

The advent of a Socialist president and a government with Communist participation, along with the continuing recession, gave the Front National its chance. Le Pen responded by concentrating on, and linking, the issues of immigrant workers (actually the North African minority) and "insecurity" (law and order). In first-round municipal elections in 1983 Le Pen received 11 percent of the vote in Paris and the Front National 17 percent in the left municipality of Dreux, forcing its way onto the unified right list for the second round (later over a third of the local electorate voted Front National).

The Penetration of the Front

The 1984 European Parliament elections, using proportional representation, gave the Front 11 percent, ten deputies (including Le Pen), and major media coverage. Further elections confirmed the Front's penetration, with results depending on the use of proportional representation (e.g., 1986 legislative elections, which gave the Front 35 deputies) or majoritarian two-round consultations (1988 presidential and legislative elections). The Front National's greatest strengths were east of a line from Le Havre to Perpignan, in the Midi, with its strong Pied Noir vote, the Paris area, and urbanized districts with or near large immigrant groups. Its voters came from across the spectrum, from such right parties as the Rally for the Republic (RPR - the old Guallist party) through the Socialists, though more rarely the Communists, despite that party's concomitant decline. While the left vigorously opposed Le Penism (though its policy of proportional representation favored it), the right parties were divided between principled condemnation and the need for local electoral alliances.

Le Pen denied being fascist or racist and sued, usually successfully, anyone who publicly called him such. His ideology drew most from the reactionary tradition of the French right, from Charles Maurras and Auguste Barrès (between whom it effected an uneasy synthesis) through Henri Pètain, updated to be Republican and legalist, and with a Reaganite neo-liberalism replacing the more traditional corporatism. The support of Romain Marie's integrist Catholic groups did not translate into votes in traditionalist Catholic areas. Though his lieutenants included many with neo-fascist or anti-Semitic backgrounds, his periodic lapses into language that approached anti-Semitism, or a less than systematic hostility to Nazism, can be understood as the real man showing through or as calculated scraps thrown to the more extremist among his followers.

Support for Baghdad

Alone among major French politicians, Le Pen criticized allied policy in the Persian Gulf in 1990 and 1991, adopting an anti-Atlantist position that may represent the adjustment of this professional anti-communist to the end of the Cold War.

In 1996, Le Pen called for U.N. sanctions against Iraq to be lifted during a visit to Baghdad. "This visit comes within the framework of political moves to remove sanctions on the Iraqi people, silence on which has become a moral scandal due to the tragic situation emanating from their continuation," Le Pen said. Le Pen met President Saddam Hussein and Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz during his visit and blamed the U.S. for the suffering of the Iraqi people. Le Pen met with Saddam on a trip to Baghdad in November 1990, during the Gulf War. Le Pen backed Saddam in the conflict and has since lobbied for the United Nations to lift its embargo on Iraq. Also on this excursion, Le Pen's wife Jany presented Iraq's health authorities with medical supplies and two ambulances.

Back in France, amidst a growing economic crisises, Le Pen surprised everyone when he received strong support in the first round of France's presidential elections in 1996 by collecting 15 percent of the vote, his best showing in three tries for the presidency, on a campaign to expel France's 3 million immigrants, which would mean expelling 1,000 people a day for seven years. The election placed The National Front as the third most popular party in France. Despite the strong showing, he had not exactly become mainstream. Opinion polls indicate 71 percent of the French consider his party "a threat to democracy," and analysts place him on the right-wing fringe of the political spectrum. Despite his strong showing in 1996, he opted out of the presidential race in 1997.

Le Pen's Beliefs

Although Le Pen continues to insist that he is neither racist nor anti-Semitic, his party shares the rhetoric of European neo-Nazi groups and he is the target of France's main Jewish organization, the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions (CRIF) and France's Movement against Racism MRAP. CRIF denounced Le Pen for continuously spreading anti-Semitist propaganda due to comments he made in the French press. He was convicted in 1987 in a French court for anti-semitism and made to pay a hefty fine. And MRAP said Monday vowed to sue Le Pen for saying gas chambers had nothing to do with anti-Semitism and repeating they were a mere detail of World War II. Also, card-carrying members of his party have been implicated in several highly publicized deaths of Arabs in France. He once suggested that people with AIDS - "a deadly disease, contracted mainly from sodomy," he says - be confined to specialized homes, which he dubbed "Aidatoriums."

French state television in February 1997 ran a documentary highly critical of far-rightist politician Le Pen after a court rejected his bid to have excerpts of his speeches deleted from the program. The program, "Le Pen in Quotes," used testimonies from historians and disgruntled former allies of Le Pen to draw parallels between his statements on immigrants and racial inequality with the ideology of the Nazis and of the French wartime collaborationist Vichy regime. The one-hour program on France-2 television also cited inconsistencies in Le Pen's statements on his personal history and wealth, producing testimonies purported to show that he had built up a large fortune from personal legacies of National Front sympathizers.

Further Reading

Since Le Pen was for most of his life the representative of a marginal political current in France, the radical right, and only rose to national prominence in the late 1980s, most works about him are available only in French. In English, one can get a good background on the political currents which gave him birth in René Rémond, The Right Wing in France, From 1815 to De Gaulle (1969). On Le Pen's electorally important activities since 1983, one can look at James G. Shields, Campaigning from the Fringe: Jean-Marie Le Pen in John Gaffney, editor, The French Presidential Elections 1988 (1989) and Julius W. Friend, Seven Years in France, François Mitterrand and the Unintended Revolution 1981-1988 (1989).

Wikipedia on Answers.com:

Jean-Marie Le Pen

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Jean-Marie Le Pen MEP
Président of the National Front
In office
5 October 1972 – 15 January 2011
Succeeded by Marine Le Pen
Member of the European Parliament
Incumbent
Assumed office
10 June 2004
Constituency South-East France
In office
24 June 1984 – 10 April 2003
Constituency France
Member of the
French National Assembly
In office
2 April 1986 – 14 March 1988
Constituency Paris
In office
19 January 1956 – 9 October 1962
Constituency 3rd district of the Seine
Regional councillor
Incumbent
Assumed office
21 March 2010
Constituency Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur
In office
22 march 1992 – 24 February 2000
Constituency Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur
In office
16 March 1986 – 22 March 1992
Constituency Île-de-France
Municipal Councillor
In office
13 March 1983 – 19 March 1989
Constituency 20th arrondissement of Paris
Personal details
Born (1928-06-20) 20 June 1928 (age 83)
La Trinité-sur-Mer, Brittany, France
Nationality France
Political party National Front
Spouse(s) 1) Pierrette Lalanne (1960-1987)
2) Jeanne-Marie Paschos
(1991-present)
Children Three daughters, including Marine Le Pen
Religion Roman Catholic[citation needed]

Jean-Marie Le Pen (French pronunciation: [ʒɑ̃ maʁi ləpɛn]; born 20 June 1928) is a French far right-wing and nationalist politician who is founder and former president of the Front National (National Front) party. Le Pen has run for the French presidency five times, most notably in 2002, when in a surprise upset he came second, polling more votes in the first round than the main left candidate, Lionel Jospin. Le Pen lost in the second round to Jacques Chirac. Le Pen again ran in the 2007 French presidential election and finished fourth. His 2007 campaign, at the age of 78 years and 9 months, makes him the oldest candidate for presidential office in French history.

Le Pen focuses on immigration to France, the European Union, traditional culture, law and order and France's high rate of unemployment. He advocates immigration restrictions, the death penalty, raising incentives for homemakers,[1] and euroscepticism. He strongly opposes same-sex marriage, euthanasia, and abortion.

Contents

Personal life and early career

Jean-Marie Le Pen, September 2005

Le Pen was born in La Trinité-sur-Mer, a small seaside village in Brittany, the son of a fisherman but then orphaned as an adolescent (pupille de la nation, brought up by the state), when his father's boat was blown up by a mine in 1942. He was raised as a Roman Catholic and studied at the Jesuit high school François Xavier in Vannes, then at the lycée of Lorient.

Aged 16, he was turned down (because of his age) by Colonel Henri de La Vaissière (then representative of the Communist Youth) when he attempted, in November 1944, to join the French Forces of the Interior (FFI).[2] He then entered the faculty of law in Paris, and started to sell the monarchist Action française's newspaper, "Aspects de la France", in the street.[3] He was repeatedly convicted of assault (coups et blessures).[4] He became president of the Association corporative des étudiants en droit, an association of law students whose main occupation was to engage in street brawls against the "Cocos" (communists). He was excluded from this organisation in 1951[why?].

After receiving his law diploma, he enlisted in the army in the Foreign Legion. He arrived in Indochina after the 1954 battle of Dien Bien Phu,[4] which had been lost by France and which prompted prime minister Pierre Mendès France to put an end to the war at the Geneva Conference. Le Pen was then sent to Suez in 1956, but arrived only after the cease-fire.[4]

Elected deputy of the French Parliament under the Poujadist banner, Le Pen voluntarily reengaged himself for two to three months in the French Foreign Legion.[5] He was then sent to Algeria (1957) as an intelligence officer. He has been accused of having engaged in torture, but he denied it, although he admitted knowing of its use.[4] After his time in the military, he studied political science and law at Paris II. His graduate thesis, submitted in 1971 by him and Jean-Loup Vincent, was titled Le courant anarchiste en France depuis 1945 or "The anarchist movement in France since 1945".

Le Pen with his wife at a political rally in 2007

His marriage (29 June 1960 - 18 March 1987) to Pierrette Lalanne resulted in three daughters; these daughters have given him nine granddaughters. The break-up of the marriage was somewhat dramatic, with his ex-wife posing nude in the French edition of Playboy to ridicule him.[4] Marie-Caroline, another of his daughters, would also break with Le Pen, following her husband to join Bruno Mégret, who split from the FN to found MNR, the rival Mouvement National Républicain (National Republican Movement).[4] The youngest of Le Pen's daughters, Marine Le Pen, is leader of the Front National.

In 1977, Le Pen inherited a fortune from Hubert Lambert, son of the cement industrialist of the same name. Hubert Lambert was a political supporter of Le Pen, as well as being a monarchist.[4] Lambert's will provided 30 million francs (approximatively 5 million euros) to Le Pen, as well as his castle in Montretout, Saint-Cloud (the same castle had been owned by Madame de Pompadour until 1748).[4]

In the early 1980s, Le Pen's personal security was assured by KO International Company, a subsidiary of VHP Security, a private security firm, and an alleged front organisation for SAC, the Service d'Action Civique (Civic Action Service), a Gaullist organisation. SAC allegedly employed figures with organized crime backgrounds and from the far-right movement.[6][7]

On 31 May 1991, Jean-Marie Le Pen married Jeanne-Marie Paschos ("Jany"), of Greek descent. Born in 1933, Paschos was previously married to Belgian businessman Jean Garnier.

Le Pen is (supposedly, even though no actual proof nor confirmation exist) the godfather of the third daughter of Dieudonné M'bala M'bala, a comedian, political activist, and anti-zionist of French-African descent who moved from fighting against the Front National to being very close to most of its senior members and defending their freedom of speech in French media. Jean-Marie Le Pen is also godfather of Alexandre Barbera-Ivanoff, who painted his portrait in 2006.

Le Pen wears an ocular prosthetic.[citation needed][dubious – discuss]

Political career

National advertisement in Marseille, predicting the now unrealised possibility of Jean-Marie Le Pen becoming President in 2007

Le Pen started his political career as the head of the student union in Toulouse. In 1953, a year before the beginning of the Algerian War, he contacted President Vincent Auriol, who approved Le Pen's proposed volunteer disaster relief project after a flood in the Netherlands. Within two days, there were 40 volunteers from his university, a group that would later help victims of an earthquake in Italy. In Paris in 1956, he was elected to the National Assembly as a member of Pierre Poujade's UDCA populist party. Le Pen, 28 years old, was the youngest member of the Assembly.

In 1957, he became the General Secretary of the National Front of Combatants, a veterans' organization, as well as the first French politician to nominate a Muslim candidate, Ahmed Djebbour, an Algerian, elected in 1957 as deputy of Paris. The next year, following his break with Poujade, Le Pen was reelected to the National Assembly as a member of the Centre National des Indépendants et Paysans (CNIP) party, led by Antoine Pinay. Le Pen claimed that he had lost his left eye when he was savagely beaten during the 1958 election campaign. Testimonies suggest however that he was only wounded in the right eye and did not lose it. He lost the sight in his left eye years later, due to an illness. (Popular belief that he wears a glass eye[citation needed] is untrue.) During the 1950s, Le Pen took a close interest in the Algerian war (1954–62) and the French defense budget.

Le Pen directed the 1965 presidential campaign of far-right candidate Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour, who obtained 5.19% of the votes. He insisted on the rehabilitation of the Collaborationists, declaring that:

"Was General de Gaulle more brave than the Marshall Pétain in the occupied zone? This isn't sure. It was much easier to resist in London than to resist in France."[4]

In 1962, Le Pen lost his seat at the Assembly. He created the Serp (Société d’études et de relations publiques) firm, a company involved in the music industry, which produced both chorals of the CGT trade-union and songs of the Popular Front and Nazi marches. The firm was condemned in 1968 for "praise of war crime and complicity" after the diffusion of songs from the Third Reich.[4]

1972-present

Jean-Marie Le Pen speaking at the Front National's annual tribute to Joan of Arc in Paris (1 May 2007)

In 1972, Le Pen founded the Front National (FN) party, along with former OAS member Jacques Bompard, former Collaborationist Roland Gaucher and others nostalgics of Vichy France, neo-Nazi pagans, Traditionalist Catholics, and others.[4] Le Pen presented himself for the first time in the 1974 presidential election, obtaining 0.74% of the vote.[4] In 1976, his Parisian flat was dynamited (he lived at that time in his castle of Montretout in Saint-Cloud). The crime was never solved.[4] Le Pen then failed to obtain the 500 signatures from "grand electors" (grands électeurs, mayors, etc.) necessary to present himself in the 1981 presidential election, won by the candidate of the Socialist Party (PS), François Mitterrand.

Criticizing immigration and taking advantage of the economic crisis striking France and the world since the 1973 oil crisis, Le Pen's party managed to increase its support in the 1980s, starting in the municipal elections of 1983. His popularity has been greatest in the south of France. The FN obtained 10% in the 1984 European elections. A total of 34 FN deputies entered the Assembly after the 1986 elections (the only legislative elections held under proportional representation), which were won by the right wing, bringing Jacques Chirac to Matignon in the first cohabitation government (that is, the combination of a right-wing Prime minister, Chirac, with a socialist President, Mitterrand).

In 1984, Le Pen won a seat in the European Parliament and has been constantly reelected since then. In 1988 he lost his reelection bid for the French National Assembly in the Bouches-du-Rhône's 8th constituency. He was defeated in the second round by Socialist Marius Masse.[8] In 1991 Le Pen's invite to London by Conservative MP's was militantly protested by large numbers coordinated by the Campaign Against Fascism in Europe, CAFE, which led to a surge of anti-fascist groups and activity across Europe. In 1992 and 1998 he was elected to the regional council of Provence-Alpes-Côte-d'Azur.

Le Pen ran in the French presidential elections in 1974, 1988, 1995, 2002, and 2007. As noted above, he was not able to run for office in 1981, having failed to gather the necessary 500 signatures of elected officials. In the presidential elections of 2002, Le Pen obtained 16.86% of the votes in the first round of voting. This was enough to qualify him for the second round, as a result of the poor showing by the PS candidate and incumbent prime minister Lionel Jospin and the scattering of votes among 15 other candidates. This was a major political event, both nationally and internationally, as it was the first time someone with such far right views had qualified for the second round of the French presidential elections. There was a widespread stirring of national public opinion as virtually the entire French political spectrum from centre-right to centre-left united in fierce opposition to Le Pen's ideas. More than one million people in France took part in street rallies; slogans such as "vote for the crook, not the fascist" were heard in opposition to Le Pen. Le Pen was then defeated by a large margin in the second round, when incumbent president Jacques Chirac obtained 82% of the votes, thus securing the biggest majority in the history of the Fifth Republic.

In the 2004 regional elections, Le Pen intended to run for office in the Provence-Alpes-Côte-d'Azur region but was prevented from doing so because he did not meet the conditions for being a voter in that region: he neither lived there nor was registered as a taxpayer there. However, he will be the FN's top candidate in the region for the 2010 regional elections.[9]

Political career

Electoral mandates

European Parliament

  • Member of European Parliament: 1984-2003 (Sentenced by the courts in 2003) / Since 2004. Elected in 1984, reelected in 1989, 1994, 1999, 2004, 2009.

National Assembly of France

Regional Council

Municipal Council

Political functions

Issues

See also National Front for a summary of Le Pen's manifesto.

Le Pen remains a polarizing figure in France, and opinions regarding him tend to be quite strong. A 2002 IPSOS poll showed that while 22% of the electorate have a good or very good opinion of Le Pen, and 13% an unfavorable opinion, 61% have a very unfavorable opinion.[10]

Le Pen and the National Front are described by much of the media and nearly all commentators as far right. Le Pen himself and the rest of his party disagree with this label; earlier in his political career, Le Pen described his position as "neither left nor right, but French" (ni droite, ni gauche, français). He later described his position as right-wing and opposed to the "socialo-communists" and other right-wing parties, which he deems are not real right-wing parties. At other times, for example during the 2002 election campaign, he declared himself "socially left-wing, economically right-wing, nationally French" (socialement à gauche, économiquement à droite, nationalement français). He further contends that most of the French political and media class are corrupt and out of touch with the real needs of the common people, and conspire to exclude Le Pen and his party from mainstream politics. Le Pen criticizes the other political parties as the "establishment" and lumped all major parties (Communist, Socialist, Union for French Democracy (UDF) and Rally for the Republic (RPR)) into the "Gang of Four" (la bande des quatre – an allusion to the Gang of Four during China's Cultural Revolution).

The international media often cites Le Pen as a symbol of French xenophobia. He is also occasionally criticized in French and foreign pop songs.

Controversial statements

Le Pen has been accused and convicted several times[11] at home and abroad of xenophobia and anti-Semitism. A Paris court found in February 2005 that his verbal criticisms, such as remarks disparaging Muslims in a 2003 Le Monde interview, were "inciting racial hatred",[11] and he was fined 10,000 euros and ordered to pay an additional 5,000 euros in damages to the Ligue des droits de l'homme (League for Human Rights). The conviction and fines were upheld by the Court of Cassation in 2006.[12]

  • In May 1987, he advocated the forced isolation from society of all people infected with HIV, by placing them in a special "sidatorium". "Sidaïque"[13] is Le Pen's pejorative solecism for "person infected with AIDS" (the more usual French term is "séropositif" (seropositive))[14]
  • On 21 June 1995, he attacked singer Patrick Bruel on his policy of no longer singing in the city of Toulon because the city had just elected a mayor from the National Front. Le Pen said, "the city of Toulon will then have to get along without the vocalisations of singer Benguigui". Benguigui, an Algerian name, is Bruel's birth name.
  • In February 1997, Le Pen accused Chirac of being "on the payroll of Jewish organizations, and particularly of the B'nai B'rith"[15][16]
  • Le Pen once made the infamous pun "Durafour-crématoire" ("four crématoire" meaning "crematory oven") about then-minister Michel Durafour, who had said in public a few days before, "One must exterminate the National Front".[17] This was made in reference to the crematories in which both living and dead victims of the Nazi holocaust were placed[18]
  • In June 1996, he claimed that the French World Cup squad contained too many non-white players, and was not an accurate reflection of French society. He went on to scold players for not singing La Marseillaise, saying they were not "French".[19][20]
  • In the 2007 election campaign, he referred to fellow-candidate Nicolas Sarkozy as "foreign" or "the foreigner." [21]

Arguing that his party includes people of various ethnic or religious origins like Jean-Pierre Cohen, Farid Smahi or Huguette Fatna, he has attributed some anti-Semitism in France to the effects of Muslim immigration to Europe and suggested that some part of the Jewish community in France might eventually come to appreciate National Front ideology.[citation needed]

Prosecution concerning historical revisionism

Le Pen has made several provocative statements concerning the Holocaust which amount to historical revisionism and has been convicted of racism or inciting racial hatred at least six times.[11] Thus, on 13 September 1987 he said, "I ask myself several questions. I'm not saying the gas chambers didn't exist. I haven't seen them myself. I haven't particularly studied the question. But I believe it's just a detail in the history of World War II." He was condemned under the Gayssot Act to pay 1.2 million francs (183,200 euros).[22] In 1997, the European Parliament, of which Le Pen was then a member, removed his parliamentary immunity so that Le Pen could be tried by a German court for comments he made at a December 1996 press conference before the German Republikaner party. Echoing his 1987 remarks in France, Le Pen stated: "If you take a 1,000-page book on World War II, the concentration camps take up only two pages and the gas chambers 10 to 15 lines. This is what one calls a detail." In June 1999, a Munich court found this statement to be "minimizing the Holocaust, which caused the deaths of six million Jews," and convicted and fined Le Pen for his remarks.[23]

Prosecution, allegations of torture and association with militarists

In April 2000, Le Pen was suspended from the European Parliament following prosecution for the physical assault of Socialist candidate Annette Peulvast-Bergeal during the 1997 general election. This ultimately led to him losing his seat in the European parliament in 2003. The Versailles appeals court banned him from seeking office for one year.[24]

In 2005 and 2008, Le Pen was fined, in both case 10,000 euros for “incitement to discrimination, hatred and violence towards a group of people”, on account of statements made about Muslims in France. In 2010. the European Court of Human Rights declared Le Pen's application inadmissible.[25]

Le Pen allegedly practiced torture during the Algerian War (1954–1962), when he was a lieutenant in the French Army. Although he denied it, he lost a trial when he attacked Le Monde newspaper on charges of defamation, following accusations by the newspaper that he had used torture. Le Monde has produced in May 2003 the dagger he allegedly used to commit war crimes as court evidence.[26]

Although war crimes committed during the Algerian War are amnestied in France, this was publicised by the newspapers Le Canard Enchaîné, Libération, and Le Monde, and by Michel Rocard (ex-Prime Minister) on TV (TF1 1993). Le Pen sued the papers and Michel Rocard. This affair ended in 2000 when the Cour de cassation (French supreme jurisdiction) concluded that it was legitimate to publish these assertions. However, because of the amnesty and the statute of limitations, there can be no criminal proceedings against Le Pen for the crimes he is alleged to have committed in Algeria. In 1995, Le Pen unsuccessfully sued Jean Dufour, regional counselor of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur (French Communist Party) for the same reason.[27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34]

Le Pen has also been criticized for ties to "suspect" individuals, such as:

Comments on the Right

Some of Le Pen's statements led other right-wing groups, such as the Austrian Freedom Party,[36] and some National Front supporters to distance themselves from him. Controversial Dutch anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders, who has often been accused of being far-right, has also criticized Le Pen.[37] Bruno Mégret left the National Front to found his own party (the National Republican Movement, MNR), claiming that Le Pen kept the Front away from the possibility of gaining power. Mégret wanted to emulate Gianfranco Fini's success in Italy by making it possible for right-wing parties to ally themselves with the Front, but claimed that Le Pen's attitude and outrageous speech prevented this. Le Pen's daughter Marine leads an internal movement of the Front that wants to "normalize" the National Front, "de-enclave" it, have a "culture of government" etc.; however, relations with Le Pen and other supporters of the hard line are complex.[38] Over the years, Le Pen gained widespread popularity among neo-Nazis and white nationalists throughout Europe, North America and South America.

As Le Pen, like many other European nationalists in recent years, has made statements highly critical of American foreign policy and culture[citation needed] for which he has received notice from American conservatives. Right-wing commentator and author Ann Coulter called him an anti-American adulterer but said his anti-immigration, anti-Muslim message "finally hit a nerve with voters" after years of irrelevance.[39] Paleoconservative commentator Pat Buchanan contends that even though Le Pen "made radical and foolish statements," the EU violated his right to freedom of speech.[40] Buchanan wrote:

As it is often the criminal himself who is first to cry, "Thief!" so it is usually those who scream, "Fascist!" loudest who are the quickest to resort to anti-democratic tactics. Today, the greatest threat to the freedom and independence of the nations of Europe comes not from Le Pen and that 17% of French men and women who voted for him. It comes from an intolerant European Establishment that will accept no rollback of its powers or privileges, nor any reversal of policies it deems "progressive".[40]

European Reform Treaty

Le Pen has been a vocal critic of the European Reform Treaty (formally known as the Treaty of Lisbon) which was signed by EU member states on 13 December 2007, and entered into force on 1 December 2009. In October 2007, Le Pen suggested that he would personally visit the Republic of Ireland to assist the "No" campaign but finally changed his mind, fearing that his presence would be used against the supporters of the NO vote. Ireland finally refused to ratify the treaty. Ireland is the only EU country which had a citizen referendum. All other EU states, including France, ratified the treaty by parliamentary vote, despite a previous citizen referendum where over 55% of French voters rejected the European Reform Treaty (although that vote was on a different draft of the Treaty in the form of the Constitutional Treaty).

After the Irish "No" vote, Le Pen addressed the French President Nicolas Sarkozy, accusing him of furthering the agenda of a "cabal of international finance and free market fanatics." Ireland has since accepted the treaty in a second Lisbon referendum.[41]

See also

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References

  1. ^ Murphy, Clare (2002-05-28). "Le Pen and his feminine side". London: BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/2011370.stm. Retrieved 2007-02-07. 
  2. ^ Quand Le Pen voulait rejoindre les FFI, L'Express, 28 March 2007 (French)
  3. ^ "Assemblée nationale - Les députés de la IVe République : Jean-Marie LE PEN". Assemblee-nationale.fr. http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/histoire/biographies/IVRepublique/le-pen-jean-marie-20061928.asp. Retrieved 2010-06-13. 
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Le Pen, son univers impitoyable, Radio France Internationale, 2006-09-01 (French)
  5. ^ CatusJack. "Jean-Marie Le Pen et La Torture [1/3] Excellent ! - une vidéo". Dailymotion. http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/search/Jean-Marie+Le+Pen+et+La+Torture/video/x446or_jeanmarie-le-pen-et-la-torture-13-e_politics. Retrieved 2010-06-13. 
  6. ^ Le général croate Gotovina arrêté en Espagne, RFI, 8 December 2005 (French)
  7. ^ Le chauffeur de l’homme de la Question, L'Humanité, 10 December 2005 (French)
  8. ^ Marius Masse biography
  9. ^ "FN list of candidates". Frontnational.com. 2008-08-25. http://www.frontnational.com/?p=1274. Retrieved 2010-06-13. 
  10. ^ Ipsos.fr - Political Action Barometer (French)
  11. ^ a b c "Le Pen convicted of inciting racial hatred for anti-Muslim remarks", Associated Press, 2 April 2004. Retrieved 18 October 2008.
  12. ^ "France's far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen convicted of inciting racial hatred", Associated Press, 11 May 2006. Retrieved 18 October 2008.
  13. ^ "SIDA" = Syndrome d'Immuno-Déficience Acquise, the French name for AIDS
  14. ^ "Le Pen et le sida: les modes de contagion et l'exclusion", L'Heure de vérité, Antenne 2, 6 May 1987 (QuickTime video, French). Retrieved 19 October 2008.
  15. ^ Nicolas Domenach and Maurice Szafran, Le Roman d'un President, Pion: 1997, ISBN 2-259-18188-0
  16. ^ Douglas Johnson, "Ancient and Modern", The Spectator, 15 March 1997. Retrieved 19 October 2008.
  17. ^ L'Humanité - Libres Échanges retrieved 30 May 2008[dead link]
  18. ^ Primor, Adar (25 April 2002). "'The veil? It protects us from ugly women'". London: The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,11882,690114,00.html. Retrieved 7 February 2007. 
  19. ^ Fifield, Dominic (30 June 2006). "We are, Frenchmen says Thuram, as Le Pen bemoans number of black players". London: The Guardian. http://football.guardian.co.uk/worldcup2006/story/0,,1809453,00.html. Retrieved 7 February 2007. 
  20. ^ Far-Right Le Pen's Slurs Fail to Upset France's Quest For Glory Deutsche Welle, 29 June 2006
  21. ^ "Le Pen rides to Sarkozy's rescue? | Certain ideas of Europe". Economist.com. 2007-04-12. http://www.economist.com/blogs/certainideasofeurope/2007/04/le_pen_rides_to_sarkozys_rescu.cfm. Retrieved 2010-06-13. 
  22. ^ "Jean-Marie Le Pen renvoyé devant la justice pour ses propos sur l'Occupation". Le Monde. 2006-07-13. http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3224,36-794895@51-776560,0.html/. 
  23. ^ "Le Pen Convicted for Racial Hatred", Associated Press, 1999-06-02. Retrieved 2008-10-18.
  24. ^ Julian Nundy, "One-year election ban for Le Pen", The Scotsman, 18 November 1998. Retrieved 18 October 2008.
  25. ^ ECtHR Admissibility decision in case No. 18788/09(French)
  26. ^ L'affaire du poignard du lieutenant Le Pen en Algérie, Le Monde, 17 March 2003 (French)
  27. ^ Le Pen et la torture, l'enquete du "Monde" validée par le tribunal, Le Monde, 28 June 2003
  28. ^ "J'ai croisé Le Pen à la villa Sésini" (I crossed Le Pen in the Sesini Villa), interview with Paul Aussaresses (who had argued in favor of the use of torture in Algeria), Le Monde, 4 June 2002
  29. ^ "Un lourd silence", Le Monde, 5 May 2002
  30. ^ "Quand Le Pen travaillait 20 heures par jour" in L'Humanité (freely accessible), 2 May 2002
  31. ^ "New Revelations on Le Pen, tortionary" in L'Humanité, 4 June 2002
  32. ^ "Le Pen attaque un élu du PCF en justice", in L'Humanité, 4 April 1995
  33. ^ Jean Dufour: "Le Pen vient d'être débouté", in L'Humanité, 26 June 1995
  34. ^ "Torture: Le Pen perd son procès en diffamation contre Le Monde", in L'Humanité, 27 June 2003
  35. ^ René Monzat, Enquêtes sur la droite extrême, 1992 [1].
  36. ^ Bruce Crumley in Time International magazine, (2002-06-05) writes: "Denunciations of Jean-Marie Le Pen and his xenophobic National Front (FN) as racist, anti-Semitic and hostile to minorities and foreigners aren't exactly new. More novel, however, are such condemnations coming from far-right movements like the Austrian Freedom Party (FPO), which itself won international opprobrium in 1999 after entering government on a populist platform similar to Le Pen's."
  37. ^ "In quotes: Geert Wilders". BBC News. 4 October 2010. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11469579. 
  38. ^ Le Canard Enchaîné, 2005-03-09
  39. ^ Coulter, Ann (2002-05-02). "French voters tentatively reject dynamiting Notre Dame". Jewish World Review. http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/coulter050202.asp. Retrieved 2007-02-07. 
  40. ^ a b Buchanan, Pat (2002-04-30). "True Fascists of the New Europe". The American Cause. http://www.theamericancause.org/pattruefascists.htm. Retrieved 2007-02-07. 
  41. ^ "Ireland backs EU's Lisbon Treaty". London: The BBC. 3 October 2009. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8288181.stm. Retrieved October 21, 2009. 

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