Behind the Headlines a Frightening Political Figure

The Paris student revolt of May 1968 marked Jean-Marie Le Pen’s political comeback. After a month of anarchy and near revolt, France was ready to listen to a voice preaching discipline and nationalism.

Le Pen created his current party, the National Front, with the backing of some strange allies: the Sidos brothers who set up a small neo-Nazi group, “New Europe”; the openly neo-fascist “New Order” and even a formerly highly respected politician, George Bidault, who during World War II led the anti-Nazi resistance in France but later, during the Algerian War, fought tooth and nail General Charles De Gaulle’s policy of independence for its North African possession.

Some of these new followers were openly and vehemently anti-Semitic. There is no doubt that some of them made violently anti-Jewish statements. Some of his “allies” had served with the French volunteers in the Waffen SS, while others, younger followers, sympathized with neo-Nazi organizations abroad.

Le Pen stressed, in his interview, that all of these cumbersome allies have abandoned him, accusing him of playing the game of “decadent democracy.” He added, “I am prepared to accept full responsibility for everything I have ever said or done, for what my party’s paper has written and what my spokesmen have said. I am not to be held responsible, however, for what some of the people who supported me, generally without my formal approval, said.”

PORTRAYED AS THE LEADING RACIST

Although Le Pen’s own publication, The Militant, in 1980 accused his former allies of being “small-time Nazi supporters,” matters are not all that simple. Some of the people still close to him have racist backgrounds and Le Pen himself, not on the Jewish question but on the basis of his anti-Arab stand.

He makes no bones and does not even try to hide the fact that “there are too many foreigners in France and far too many Arabs.” Such an openly anti-Arab and xenophobic platform evokes support among some of the poorer working class elements in the country who view immigrant workers as competitors for shrinking job opportunities during a period when unemployment is unusually high.

FUTURE ROLE IS SOURCE OF CONCERN

It is Le Pen’s future role that worries the Jewish community. Alone, even if he were to repeat his past electoral successes, he can command only some II percent of the national vote.

The continued unemployment, the increased insecurity, the economic crisis and France’s political unrest for which many blame “foreign influences” or, in plain words, the immigrant workers, could give him another three or four percent of the vote. With 16 or 17 percent he would be numerically stronger than the Communists and emerge as France’s fourth political power.

Some opposition leaders, such as former Health Minister Simone Veil who is close to former President Valery Giscard d’Estaing’s political party, has made her position clear: no coalition agreement with Le Pen and no joint electoral campaigning either.

Most other opposition leaders, including many belonging to Giscard d’Estaing’s party, have been more discreet, refusing to take a clear-cut stand on the issue. The three main opposition leaders, Giscard d’Estaing, and former Premiers Raymond Barre and Jacques Chirac, the three main contenders for the opposition nomination in the next Presidential race, have all remained silent on this issue.

It is Le Pen who is trying to force them out of them out of their discretion by threatening to field men of his own in the next legislative elections in spring of 1986 unless the other opposition parties strike some sort of deal with him.

ATTITUDES IN THE JEWISH COMMUNITY

A handful of extreme rightwing Jews support his stand. One actually ran on his ticket last summer and after losing is now preparing to run again in 1986. A small minority believes that Le Pen’s action does not run contrary to Israel’s and their own interests. “He is anti-Arab and so are we,” are among some of the comments heard.

The overwhelming majority of the Jewish of the Jewish community and practically all its authorized spokesmen and leaders, community presidents, rabbis, and representatives of the various Jewish associations, are openly and vehemently opposed to his thesis.

“No Jew can accept such racist theories as those advocated by Le Pen. We have to fight them,” is the opinion expressed by many including a majority of rabbis. The Chief Rabbi of Dijon publicly called Le Pen a “Nazi and a devil.” Others, more politically-minded, say that “it starts with the others, but will at one point turn against us.”

Le Pen himself is amused by the fear and animosity he inspires in many Jews. He reads the local Jewish papers, has Jewish friends and acquaintences and claims “I am fighting on their side (that of the Jews) whether they like it or not.” For many Jews, this is the trouble. They would give a lot to get rid of this occasional but invariably cumbersome ogre who claims to be their friend.