Anti-Semite or not anti-Semite? The controversy triggered by Jordan Bardella last Sunday over Jean-Marie Le Pen continues to create turmoil at the National Rally. The current president of the RN recognized an “awkwardness” after asserting that he did not “think that Jean-Marie Le Pen was anti-Semitic”. The party’s former number two, Bruno Gollnisch, rejected “the slightest incitement to discriminate against Jews” on the part of Marine Le Pen’s father.
Thursday evening, Jordan Bardella finally recognized that “Jean-Marie Le Pen has obviously locked himself into anti-Semitism”. Anti-Semite, the founder of the National Front, since renamed the National Rally? “He was in his comments”, “obviously anti-Semitic, revisionist and negationists”, agreed Jordan Bardella.
Bruno Gollnisch defends the “Menhir”
Bruno Gollnisch, figure of the FN and the RN, of which he is still a member of the National Council, for his part denounced in a press release sent to AFP “propaganda” regarding the supposed anti-Semitism of the “Menhir”, now aged 95 years old, who “even ends up impressing young executives and members of the RN”.
Jean-Marie Le Pen was notably condemned at the end of the 1960s for apologizing for war crimes after having published a record of songs from the Third Reich, then in 1986 after targeting journalists Jean-François Kahn, Jean Daniel in a speech. , Ivan Levaï and Jean-Pierre Elkabbach, “the shame of their profession”, by promising to “drive the merchants out of the temple”. His comments – reiterated – on the Shoah, referred to as “a detail of History”, have also earned him numerous convictions from civil and criminal courts, as well as his play on words on Minister Michel Durafour, “…crematorium!” “.
“Being anti-Semitic does not mean having made this or that statement – always the same, and taken out of context – on the history of the Second World War or in response to a malicious minister,” argued Bruno Gollnisch, but “want to harm the Jews, accuse them, discriminate against them, fight them”. However, according to the former number two of the far-right party, “in Jean-Marie Le Pen’s speeches, we would look in vain for the slightest incitement to discriminate against Jews or to harm them”.