This is the first time that an elected representative of the National Rally has publicly taken a position contrary to that of Jordan Bardella held on Sunday. Mathilde Paris, National Rally deputy for Loiret, estimated Wednesday “on a personal level” to think that Jean-Marie Le Pen “was” anti-Semitic. “Jean-Marie Le Pen, was he anti-Semitic or not? », BFMTV journalists asked Mathilde Paris several times. “I have my opinion on the question,” the MP finally replied. Asked to clarify her thoughts, after a long silence, she blurted out: “I, personally, think that he was, that’s it.”
A few minutes earlier, Mathilde Paris had nevertheless affirmed “No, he was not anti-Semitic, but he had an ambiguity”, about the founder of the National Front, condemned several times for having compared the Shoah to “a detail” Of the history. Mathilde Paris, 38, also indicated that she “marched when [elle] was a high school student against Jean-Marie Le Pen when he reached the second round of the presidential election” in 2002.
Quacks at the RN
“I don’t believe that Jean-Marie Le Pen was anti-Semitic,” said Jordan Bardella, the boss of the RN. Since then, the RN officials interviewed have kicked in, with MP Laurent Jacobelli getting annoyed, for example, on Wednesday that we want to “do archaeology”. Wednesday morning, Marine Le Pen recalled on RTL that she had excluded her father from her party in 2015 after he had reiterated his comments on the Shoah, considering “that there are subjects on which we cannot allow to arise no ambiguity.”
In an interview with JDD Wednesday afternoon, Jordan Bardella affirmed “to recognize the convictions of Jean-Marie Le Pen by the courts”, “a fact that we cannot, by definition, refute”, without going back on his initial remarks.