The frightening bigotry of the French left

France’s most infamous antisemite is back in the headlines. At the weekend, the president of the National Rally, Jordan Bardella, declared in an interview that he didn’t believe Jean-Marie Le Pen was an antisemite. This came as a surprise to many given that the 95-year-old Le Pen, who founded the National Front in 1972, has been condemned on six occasions by French courts for just such bigotry. 

Le Pen’s most notorious declaration was during a television interview in 1987 when, discussing the gas chambers, he said that although he didn’t deny their existence they were nonetheless a ‘small point of detail in the second world war’. The remark caused uproar and turned Le Pen into a political pariah overnight. Fifteen years later, when Le Pen reached the second round of the 2002 presidential election, his adversary Jacque Chirac refused the traditional face to face debate because he didn’t want to normalise ‘intolerance and hatred’.