"Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth"
Franklin D. Roosevelt
The French extreme right leader revived Vichy-era antisemitism and normalized xenophobia
Jean-Marie Le Pen's lifelong obsession with Holocaust denial was strictly off the agenda at his carefully staged funeral and burial. A few days after the January 7, 2025 death of France's extreme right patriarch at the age of 96, Le Pen's clan assembled in La Trinité-sur-Mer. It was the village where the Front National founder had been born. In choreographed scenes worthy of The Godfather and Dynasty, the Le Pens marched all dressed in black, to the sound of Brittany bagpipes. There were tender tributes to 'Daddy' and images of his tearful scion and successor Marine Le Pen heading up the front of the requiem procession, followed by her sisters and other descendants. However, Le Pen's murky past of antisemitic and other hateful conspiracies was never far from people's lips. As reported by Libération, neo-Nazi skinhead sympathisers and anti-Arab admirers of Le Pen had gathered in the streets and bars of this tiny town to drink to the legacy of a man labeled "the devil of the Republic".
Rewind to March 1978, Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet Church, the parish favored by ultra-orthodox breakaway Catholics in Paris. Dressed in black, Jean-Marie Le Pen delivered a sulphurous eulogy to François Duprat. Just days earlier, Duprat, the man who brought Holocaust denial into the ideological core of the French far right, had been assassinated in a car bombing. "Those who die shortly after their thirties are not consolidators but founders," declared Le Pen. "These individuals disappear before others...before their own success. They were not sent to bring peace to the world but the sword." Forty years later, Le Pen was still visiting the grave of this "martyred brother," much to the cynical chagrin of his daughter Marine and her strategy of “de-demonizing” or "detoxifying" the image of the party she rebranded as the Rassemblement National (National Rally) in 2018.
Despite the whitewashing of his legacy at his funeral ceremony, Jean-Marie Le Pen never resiled from his over expressions of negationism, and might have appreciated being honored in a similar way to Duprat. For over half a century, the Front National leader proudly played a key role in reviving an antisemitic discourse that many had believed buried with the World War II Nazi collaborationist Vichy regime. He promoted the most pernicious denialist fantasies, normalizing racist, xenophobic, and reactionary ideologies.
In fact Le Pen spent his life embracing conspiracy theories.
In February 1958, not yet thirty years old, Jean-Marie Le Pen used his position as a Poujadist MP to launch a vicious attack against former Resistance fighter and Prime Minister Pierre Mendès France, who was Jewish, accusing him of "selling out" Indochina. Employing old antisemitic tropes, Le Pen stated from the National Assembly podium: "You know very well, Mr. Mendès France, the real extent of your influence over the country. You cannot ignore that you crystallize certain patriotic and almost physical repulsions." The tone was set; his career had begun.
Five years later, Le Pen co-founded the Société d'études et de relations publiques (SERP) with associates Pierre Durand and former Waffen-SS member Léon Gaultier. Their mission: to "publish and promote records relating to history and literature." But not just any history. SERP was condemned for "glorification of war crimes" after releasing a record titled The Third Reich: Voices and Songs of the German Revolution. Its back cover exalted the "collective passion" sparked by "the oratorical propaganda of Hitler’s leaders."
Le Pen's fascination with the vestiges of Vichy collaboration didn’t stop there. In 1965, during the presidential election, he supported Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour, a former Vichy official. In October 1972, he joined forces with the neo-fascist group Ordre Nouveau and ex-militiaman François Brigneau to establish a new political entity: the Front National.
In a notorious filmed incident in June 1979, Auschwitz survivor and long-serving health minister Simone Veil faced off with the far-right commandos of Le Pen, present in person, who came to violently sabotage her campaign meeting: "You don't scare me. Not scared at all! I've survived much worse than you! You're nothing but small-footed SS."
As Front National boss, Le Pen incorporated Holocaust denial into the party's political strategy. In the 1980s, the denialist theories of Henri Roques, who claimed gas chambers never existed, caused a scandal. Yet in National Hebdo, the FN’s unofficial newspaper, Le Pen argued that the Roques affair "falls under the domain of historical research, not administrative or judicial inquiry." He added: "Regarding the Jewish genocide, it’s not unreasonable that historians on both sides (sic), in good faith, need time to determine accurate figures."
On September 13, 1987, Le Pen’s career took a controversial turn on Grand Jury RTL-Le Monde. When asked about his denialist claims, he claimed ignorance of "revisionist theories" but went on to infamously declare: "I’m not saying gas chambers didn’t exist. I haven’t seen them myself. I haven’t studied the issue specifically. But I believe this is a mere detail in the history of World War II [...] Is this a revealed truth that everyone must believe? Is it a moral obligation? Historians debate such matters."
Three years later, after the desecration of Jewish graves in Carpentras, Le Pen accused everyone from the KGB to "Islamic subversive movements" and "socialist state authorities" of orchestrating the act to discredit his movement. Investigations revealed neo-Nazis were responsible, but Le Pen doubled down, framing it as a "manipulation" targeting the FN.
By the early 21st century, with the rise of the internet amplifying conspiracy theories, Le Pen adapted his rhetoric.
On several occasions, Jean-Marie Le Pen expressed his doubts about the September 11, 2001 attacks. Speaking to Guillaume Durand on Radio Classique in September 2009, he explained that he shared "the suspicion of millions of people regarding the official version." Echoing Thierry Meyssan's well-known theory, he claimed that "we are being mocked" regarding the commercial plane that allegedly struck the Pentagon. "I have the right to doubt this and other things," insisted Jean-Marie Le Pen. "I believe, as a free citizen, I have the right to doubt everything."
During his 2007 presidential campaign—his 2002 campaign having secured him a spot in the second round—Le Pen integrated the ex-communist turned conspiracist antisemite Alain Soral into his team and later into the party's leadership. Described as a "brilliant fellow," Soral became his "special advisor" and the author of several of his speeches. In September 2007, the FN president spoke at the first summer university of Égalité & Réconciliation, the association Soral had founded a few months earlier. In an interview given years later to L’Opinion, Le Pen once again voiced his support for Soral, expressing contempt for the Gayssot Law: "Mr. Soral was convicted of denialism, meaning for an opinion. (...) You are allowed not to believe in God, but not in the concentration camps or their significance. It’s a violation of free speech."
Le Pen, alongside FN identity Bruno Gollnisch, grew closer to Soral’s ideological circles. Le Pen enthusiastically attended the antisemitic comedian Dieudonné’s show at the Zénith in Paris in late December 2008, where the antisemitic comedian invited Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson onstage. The bond solidified; Le Pen subsequently attended the Bal des Quenelles, Dieudonné’s conspiracy-theory-laden gatherings, often accompanied by Gollnisch. At one such event, the former FN president pledged himself a "faithful supporter of Dieudonné," praising his "talent, courage, and tenacity," adding that he "shares the same virtues" as Dieudonné. The relationship grew so close that Dieudonné named Le Pen the godfather of one of his daughters.
In summer 2014, amid renewed conflict between Israel and Hamas, Le Pen posted on his video blog Journal de Bord, finding it "very strange that Hamas continues to fire rockets or missiles onto wastelands, which have no effectiveness." He speculated, "Who is really firing these rockets?" suggesting they might serve as a "pretext used by Israel."
By this time, Le Pen had become honorary president of the FN, with Marine Le Pen, his daughter, taking over as president in January 2011. She sought to give the party a new direction, free from her father’s constant controversial remarks.
In January 2015, the Russian tabloid Komsomolskaïa Pravda, known for its Kremlin ties and fondness for conspiracy theories, interviewed Le Pen about the "unclear aspects" of the official version of the Charlie Hebdo attacks. Le Pen stated, "This story of an ID card forgotten by the Kouachi brothers reminds me of the passport of one of the 9/11 terrorists, miraculously found in a devastated New York." He added, "The entire operation bears the signature of secret services. (...) I’m not saying that French authorities are behind this crime, but they might have allowed it to happen." He later claimed his comments had been misrepresented but maintained the idea of a "prodigious manipulation of public reaction (…) to boost the ratings of the Socialist Party and those of (Prime Minister Manuel) Valls and (President François) Hollande."
Three months later, in an interview with Jérôme Bourbon for Rivarol, Le Pen attempted to rehabilitate the collaborationist Vichy France leader Maréchal Pétain: "I never considered Maréchal l Pétain a traitor. He was treated very harshly during the Liberation. And I have never considered as bad Frenchmen or undesirable people those who retained esteem for the Maréchal (…) In my opinion, they belong in the National Front."
Following this statement, Marine Le Pen summoned her father for disciplinary action. He responded by accusing his daughter of "submitting to the system" and denounced what he called "a maneuver, an outside plan designed to herd the FN into the mainstream." He blamed Florian Philippot, then the FN's second-in-command, for orchestrating a campaign to permanently sideline him, adding cryptic homophobic insinuations. Shortly afterwards, Le Pen was expelled her father from the party he had co-founded in 1972. The intervention was revealed after his death to have been an exercise in pure political expediency, just like the broader de-demonization strategy, aimed at burnishing the surface image - not the core - of the National Rally ideology. Marine Le Pen herself let the media know that "she would never forgive herself" for having banished Le Pen père from his personal political edifice.
Unshackled from official roles, Le Pen indulged in conspiracy-laden commentary on various topics. He dismissed global warming as a hoax, claimed the U.S. moon landing was fabricated, and called the Notre-Dame fire an "arson bearing the signature of a service."
In 2020, he supported far-right activist Hervé Ryssen, convicted of Holocaust denial, comparing his plight to "a drift toward dictatorship." His media appearances on outlets like Kremlin propaganda outlet Sputnik and French far right online platform TV Libertés further cemented his legacy as a conspiracist icon.
Le Pen’s conspiratorial worldview, steeped in suspicion of hidden powers and veiled domination, became a hallmark of his political identity. But it was more than a belief system; it was a strategy. Le Pen famously dismissed the idea of a "gentle Front," arguing that such an approach would fade into irrelevance. His constant provocations—whether fueled by antisemitism, racism, and conspiratorial thinking—were his way of ensuring his voice was heard, regardless of the backlash and the damage done to the fabric of French and European political discourse and civil society.
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