Anti-racist associations and a French cabinet member have responded with outrage to new remarks by the founder and former leader of the ultra-right Front National (FN). Agence France-Presse reports that Jean-Marie Le Pen has used made anti-Semitic remarks in response to those who oppose him.
The current leader of the FN, Le Pen’s daughter Marine, is now facing calls to condemn her father’s words. In a video which was disseminated online but has since been removed, Le Pen took aim at several famous artists who oppose the FN, including the former top tennis player and now singer Yannick Noah, the humorist Guy Bedo, and the singer Madonna.
While discussing the singer Patrick Bruel, who is known to be Jewish, the seasoned politician said "we’ll do an oven load next time" and then laughed. The SOS Racisme association has said Le Pen’s remarks represent "the basest kind of anti-Semitic program" and has announced it will be suing him soon.
Le Pen has already been convicted several times of disseminating racial hatred and denying Nazi crimes, specifically for a statement in which he dismissed the gas chambers in the Nazi extermination camps as "details of history". Louis Aliot, the vice-chair of the FN who is also Marine Le Pen’s partner, said that if the former party boss really did use the term "oven load" he had once again expressed himself "inappropriately in a politically stupid way".
SOS Racisme believes the FN leaders should not sweep these anti-Semitic, racist statements by their founder under the carpet but should admit their share of responsibility for this ideology of hatred. The non-governmental Movement against Racism (MRAP) has called Le Pen a "genuine racist" and has promised to file a lawsuit as well.
French Women’s Rights Minister Najat Valaud-Belkacem tweeted that the FN "will always remain the party of disgust" unless it expels Mr Le Pen from its ranks for the statement. "I clearly used the expression ‘oven load’ without any anti-Semitic connotations, but only idiots, or my political enemies, can’t see that," Mr Le Pen responded, "and if there are people in my camp who are also interpreting what I said that way, they are idiots too!"
Marine Le Pen has long done her best to rid the FN of the extremist reputation it earned when her father led the party. Her strategy evidently contributed to the party’s recent victory during the elections to the European Parliament, in which the FN won 25 % of the vote.
