It had marked him. But had this outraged or flattered him? At the funeral of director Claude Autant-Lara at the Montmartre cemetery in Paris in 2000, Jean-Marie Le Pen noted that there was “not a single artist present”. Being a friend of the demon is expensive, until the end. The cultural community had never forgiven the filmmaker, a former fellow traveler of the Communist Party, for having become a European deputy for the National Front and then for having made openly anti-Semitic remarks, notably about Simone Veil.
Jean-Marie Le Pen has, throughout his life, wanted to take care of his brand: being the monster of the Republic. What accounts for such a trajectory? After his defeat in the legislative elections of 1962, the outgoing MP saw a very serious offer coming: to become deputy to the head of litigation, with the promise of becoming head of litigation a little later. “I would have had a bourgeois career,” he said. In his mouth, a swear word. The general was a colossus, a monster could not be a Gaullist. “Everyone is except me. I never have been, I’m not and it’s unlikely that I will be,” he confided.
A monster does not wield power. Jean-Marie Le Pen saw all the presidents of the Fifth Republic parade. Chirac was the one he hated the most, Mitterrand the one who charmed him the most. In January 1995, the socialist met the far-right leader in the halls of the Strasbourg prefecture, just after his famous speech to the European Parliament. The scene is described by one of the witnesses, Yvan Blot, former FN European deputy. “Hello, Mr. Le Pen, I got you just now! – I don’t understand, Mr. President. How did you get me? – Come on, Mr. Le Pen! You didn’t hear my speech in the hemicycle of the European Parliament? I said: ‘Nationalism is war!’ Didn’t you feel targeted? […] – No, Mr. President! You know very well that many wars have nothing to do with nationalism; there are wars of religion, wars for oil! – Ah, the cause of wars is a big subject; we don’t have time to talk about it now in this living room; […] I regret it anyway; but will we see each other again soon? I hope so. – It’s up to you to decide.” Far from view, a form of generational complicity – twelve years separated them.
“If it’s a wave, it could be a breaker”
He had established his hierarchy of presidents. “Apart from de Gaulle, I don’t see one with an exceptional dimension. Valéry Giscard d’Estaing is a bourgeois who wants to be enlightened, 19th century style, with a certain allure all the same. Mitterrand, in a Florentine style, has a dimension which is not small. Jacques Chirac seems to have come down from the ENA on the march. But these are pre-war figures. How comfortable it is to talk about heads of state, provided you are not one. And he never came close to becoming one, despite his five presidential candidacies. A near-record, only Arlette Laguiller has done more with six participations, but not better, since she belongs to the restricted circle of finalists.
On April 21, 2002, he created an earthquake by reaching the second round of the presidential election. “If it’s a wave, it could be a breaker”: he will say it afterwards, but on the Sunday evening of the first round, and in the week that follows, he does not hope for victory, rather fears it. He consoled himself by seeing, on May 1, 2002, nearly a million and a half people take to the streets to boo his name at the instigation of the left: he provokes, the devil dresses in Pravda.
In his eyes, that year would never constitute the peak of his public life. Its best memory dates back to 1984. In the European elections, the National Front achieved its first national breakthrough by obtaining ten elected officials. The filthy beast shows its muscles, what jubilation! She arouses widespread opprobrium but without ever having to exercise any responsibility – a chemically pure victory for her, in a way. Likewise, it was the end of the 1950s, when he was a deputy for the first time, about which he spoke most readily, with many details, many memories. Politics as a balance of power, not as an exercise of the State.
“Death is like burning down a library”
A monster is not a shooting star, it settles in time – its political journey lasted some sixty-five years. He plays with words, until the legal sanction. He used it, he abused it, he who was convicted more than 25 times for glorifying war crimes, inciting hatred and discrimination, anti-Semitism or even for public insults. This Monday in March 2018, at the Père Claude restaurant which saw many political leaders parade and which was one of Jacques Chirac’s favorite tables, he blurted out: “Me, a fascist? I wasn’t socialist enough for that. “
Does a monster leave a mark in history? Does he even want it? Jean-Marie Le Pen had an image in mind: “Death is like burning down a library. Everything you have learned disappears.” Above all, no excuses, they are the ones who would be monstrous. “I am a man without regrets”: There will be no remorse, even in the face of death. It’s not a question of ruining everything, of calming the waves, when we have had “a life as an icebreaker who has never sailed in open water”.
Live like a monster, leave like a dinosaur? “When I’m dead, I’ll be a great guy,” he said that day. “We like the dead in France.” The desire or the obligation, when the fight is over, to surrender. The impossible redemption as a possible ending.