In L’Express of February 10, 1984, by Alain Duhamel
Jean-Marie Le Pen, the untimely tribune
This is the man who caused the scandal: Jean-Marie Le Pen is disturbing. Everyone. Because, on February 13, he will be the guest of The moment of truthon Antenne 2 – its first major broadcast on television – the political class is moved. The Communist Party is offended, storms, threatens to go to war against this “indecent invitation”. The left proclaims itself shocked by the “trivialization” of an individual deemed dangerous. But, in opposition, many leaders grimace and twist their noses, preoccupied with the image of a too summary right that this agitated and cunning tribune risks giving.
What if he disrupted the game by causing a boomerang effect favorable to the government? In the past, the Giscardians welcomed each appearance of Georges Marchais on the small screen: don’t their socialist successors hope to discredit the liberal camp thanks to the unnuanced verb of Jean-Marie Le Pen? Some even suspect a maneuver. Clearly, the president of the National Front will always be seen as an untimely adventurer…
It is true that, since the fall of 1983, it has only been about him: 17% of the votes for the National Front in Dreux, in the municipal elections, obtained by going all out with security ideology and denunciation. immigrants; almost 10% in Aulnay-sous-Bois; 12%, above all, for Jean-Marie Le Pen himself, in the Morbihan legislative by-election, with 51% of the votes in his native commune of La Trinité-sur-Mer, and more than a quarter of the votes in Carnac, the city of the very moderate senator Christian Bonnet.
“Populist, fighter, extremist, chauvinist, he was born and will die the same”
Until then, Jean-Jean, as he is called in Brittany, was basically the mouse that roared, the eternal fighter of the extreme right, with his 1.84 meters, his massive silhouette, his brick complexion , his blue eye, his pale hair, his eventful past, his strong tongue… And his symbolic scores. A political outsider: 0.75% of the votes in the 1974 presidential election, a pittance; and less than 4%, in Paris, in the 1981 legislative elections.
And then, divine surprise, in the municipal elections of 1983: he himself obtained, in March, a sign of the new climate, 11% in the first round, in Paris, in the 20th arrondissement, and a small mandate as district councilor, after a violent campaign against delinquency and unemployment, linked, of course, to “moral laxity” and immigration. After twenty years of crossing the desert, Jean-Marie Le Pen resurfaces, and everyone immediately cries out: this man is dangerous. For politicians, he is at least an old acquaintance. The president of the National Front has always had a certain idea of commitment. It can be summarized as follows: full starboard. Almost 56 years old, this son of a fisherman who died at sea, an orphan, therefore, from the age of 14, can at least invoke the merit of constancy.
Portrait of Jean-Marie Le Pen in L’Express of February 10, 1984.
© / THE EXPRESS
His entire biography bears witness to this: populist, combative, extremist, chauvinist, he was born and will die the same. A poor childhood, a religious college, then the Lorient high school, good law studies in Paris: he was already considered an activist, but never a fool. He has the easy punch, the guts of an orator, the ascendancy over others. He is bon vivant, sanguine, nationalist to the point of xenophobia, instinctively reactionary. He became president of the Corporation of Law Students. And then, as he is penniless and does not tolerate the empire being “sold off”, this ward of the Nation, exempt from military service, joins the paratroopers, becoming a second lieutenant in Indochina. He will return to Paris, at the height of the Poujadist wave. The papermaker from Saint-Céré then looked for a smooth-talking intellectual. At the age of 28, Jean-Marie Le Pen became deputy for the Seine. At the Bourbon Palace, his brutal verve immediately made him stand out. However, he abandoned the hemicycle to “return” to the paratroopers, in order to defend, this time, Algeria. The man has courage.
Becoming the “Bavarian Bull”
He also has methods of reiteration: he “interrogates” the prisoners himself. Supporter of a strong regime and the all-out fight against the fellaghas, he voted for General de Gaulle’s Constitution and was re-elected deputy for the Latin Quarter. His sympathies are with Oas End of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s first political career, beginning of purgatory.
To make a living, the swordsman becomes a publisher: he prints quality historical records, but very oriented, with a presentation that is sometimes more than imprudent; thus he is condemned for a cover of Hitler’s speeches. In his far-right opposition to the Fifth Republic, he runs physical risks. He had already lost an eye in an electoral fight, hence, for years, his famous black headband which made him look like a pirate; In 1976, the building in which he lived was blown up and it was a miracle that no one was killed. His commitment, however, earned him, at least once, pleasant profits: a fanciful billionaire, Hubert Lambert, one of his most ardent supporters, bequeathed his fortune to him. Here he is, after some Moliéresque legal adventures, sheltered from want, in an enviable villa, on the heights of Saint-Cloud, from where, with his marine glasses, he contemplates Paris at his ease.
He can guess there the National Front, small group for ten years, which today troubles the political establishment. The first barometer Figaro Magazine-Sofres for having integrated this data awards it the lowest sympathy rate; Jean-Marie Le Pen himself achieved the worst score, with 12% wanting him to play an important role in the future. The first surveys on the European elections limit its influence to less than 5%.
The far right still smells of sulfur. However, it has found, with Jean-Marie Le Pen, its first real leader in a long time. The president of the National Front has just demonstrated, on the radio, that he is not only a Falstaff of the political scene, but also a skilled jouster. Don’t take it apart who wants. He is now trying to temper his image. He proclaims himself a legalist and a good republican, and happily has himself photographed in the company of his wife and three daughters, or in Breton sailor’s outfit. He enchants certain popular audiences with his eloquence and his resolutely neopujadist themes: crusade against the “fiscal inquisition”, holy war against the “Bolsheviks”, “priority to the French”, battle against socialism, against Jacques Chirac, “this rather radical left”, or Giscard, whom he considers to be a relative of the PS. At each of his meetings, the name of Simone Veil is whistled a lot, the ex-president is jeered, the mayor of Paris is scratched.
Le Pen himself is to the right of the right, but formally rejects any attribution of neo-fascism. He dreams of becoming the hexagonal Strauss. Before claiming to equal the “Bavarian bull”, this Armorican bull calf, however, has a long way to go. It is already worrying, but exists above all at the expense of the opposition. His lieutenants, less circumspect than him, sometimes, as in Lyon recently, make insane and even nauseating speeches. Le Pen assures: “I do not feel at all in a position of inferiority from the point of view of the power of ideas or the talent of expression”. For expression, no doubt; for ideas, even.