Carpentras. May 10, 1990. 34 Jewish graves were discovered desecrated in the cemetery of the Var town. The Minister of the Interior at the time, Pierre Joxe, declared: “The ideas of the leader of the National Front, Jean-Marie Le Pen, can lead to violence beyond imagination.” Six years later, six young neo-Nazis confessed their responsibility. On May 14, a transpartisan demonstration against racism and anti-Semitism is organized. In the streets of Paris, between Bastille and République, the organizers count 200,000 participants. Jean-Marie Le Pen is absent. The latter preferred to stay away from the gathering, denouncing, at the time, a “set-up”, which would have served as a springboard for the political class to reach the National Front.
Thirty-three years later, things have changed. Tuesday, November 7, Marine Le Pen, candidate of the National Rally in the last presidential election, and Jordan Bardella, leader of the party, indicated that they would go to the big march against anti-Semitism organized this Sunday at the initiative of Yaël Braun-Pivet and Gérard Larcher, respective presidents of the National Assembly and the Senate. On November 5, at the microphone of BFMTV, the same Jordan Bardella declared: “I do not believe that Jean-Marie Le Pen was anti-Semitic.” Almost immediate reaction from the political class, which recalls that the historic leader of the far-right party has been convicted on multiple occasions, notably for contesting crimes against humanity. At the PS, we decided to respond to the call, specifying that the presence of RN elected officials is “illegitimate”. At La France insoumise, we refuse to march alongside the frontists. Yaël Braun-Pivet and Gérard Larcher assure that they will not walk alongside them. Hide this RN that cannot be seen.
The organizers of the march seem to have found the solution: a head of procession exclusively composed of former presidents and religious leaders. No RN manager, therefore. “The hypocrisy of the political class and the way they use moments that should be moments of national unity to push themselves, I don’t care,” Marine Le Pen responded on Thursday at RTL. If we are at the back of the procession, we don’t care at all. It is the French who will judge those who fall into this type of thinking.”
January 2015, Marine Le Pen is not invited
The tail of the procession can also be comfortable. Especially for the RN and Marine Le Pen, who have only had happy experiences in their previous and rare attempts to demonstrate. Since its creation fifty-one years ago, the far-right party has rarely adopted the tradition of pounding the pavement, which remained the prerogative of the left. At large gatherings, often instigated by the unions, Jean-Marie Le Pen and his comrades were not welcome, and moreover, most of the time, did not wish to be associated with them. Like this day in 1984, when, joining several right-wing figures, Jean-Marie Le Pen marched in the streets to protest against the Savary bill aimed at integrating French private schools into a “major public service”. He will have to be content, however, with a separate parade, far from Jacques Chirac and Simone Veil, who are reluctant to appear with “the devil”. Nearly forty years later, things have changed a little, but habits die hard.
Despite her vast de-demonization enterprise, Marine Le Pen is still not popular in the demonstrations. Of course, there was 2013 and the Manif pour tous, where right-wing and far-right elected officials crossed paths smoothly in the processions (Marine Le Pen was not there). But the street and its cobblestones remain a hostile place for the member of Parliament for Pas-de-Calais. In January 2015, the day after the attacks against the editorial staff of Charlie Hebdo and the Hyper Cacher de Vincennes, the frontist leader, like her comrades, had not been invited to the major republican demonstration organized in Paris. She found the solution by calling on her elected officials to go to demonstrations in the provinces. “We, elected representatives of the nation, will take part in parades where sectarianism is less violent. We will be with the French people, elsewhere than in the Parisian procession, taken over, alas!, by parties which represent what the French hate: partisanship, electoralism and indecent controversy,” she said at the time. Jean-Marie Le Pen, for his part, had pointed out a gathering “orchestrated by the media”, and which reminded him of the mobilizations during the Carpentras affair and during the between-two rounds of the presidential election of 2002.
March 2018, Marine Le Pen exfiltrated from the white march in tribute to Mireille Knoll
March 2018, new attempt. After the assassination of Mireille Knoll, a Jewish octogenarian, in Paris, a white march was organized in her memory on March 28. Crif warns: the presence of Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Marine Le Pen is not desired. The two leaders turn a deaf ear. Marine Le Pen will be exfiltrated by the organizers, and forced to join the tail of the procession on the sly. Since then, the elected official from Pas-de-Calais has remained reluctant to join these mobilizations. In 2019, during the episode of the yellow vests, she repeatedly affirmed her support for the demonstrators, but never risked putting her heel on a roundabout. Idem, last year, while the whole of France was mobilizing against Emmanuel Macron’s pension reform, Marine Le Pen, although self-proclaimed as the first opponent of the project, was careful not to hit the streets. The unions repeat it: the National Rally is not welcome.
The decision to go to the big march against anti-Semitism this Sunday therefore puts an end to the period of street boycott by Marine Le Pen. Courageous but not reckless, the president of the RN group in the Assembly nevertheless sent a few deputies as scouts, last October 9, to the Parisian rally in support of Israel after the terrorist attack perpetrated by Hamas on October 7. The vice-president of the Assembly, Sébastien Chenu, as well as the deputies Julien Odoul, Franck Allisio and Frédéric Falcon joined the procession, and received an enthusiastic welcome. Marine Le Pen did not make the trip, indicating that she did not wish to overshadow the demonstration with her presence, while Jordan Bardella was busy managing her affairs at the European Parliament. This time, the frontist duo will be present, despite warnings from Crif telling them that they are still not welcome. Jean-Luc Mélenchon will not be there.
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