A-Infos (en) France, UCL AL #334 - Antifascism, Anti-Semitism: The RN, from collaborators to conspirators (ca, de, it, fr, pt, tr)[machine translation]

For years, one of the Rassemblement National's main seemingly normalization 
efforts has focused on covering up its anti-Semitism. However, it remains at the 
heart of the far-right worldview, in particular by fueling conspiracy. ---- 
"De-demonization is only about anti-Semitism.[...]It is anti-Semitism that 
prevents people from voting for us. There is only that... From the moment you 
break this ideological lock, you release the rest.»[1]---- In 2014, Louis Aliot, 
then vice-president of the FN, put at the heart of his de-demonization strategy 
the end of the far-right party's association with anti-Semitism. On October 13, 
the same, who became RN mayor of Perpignan, decorated his city's medal Beate and 
Serge Klarsfeld, Nazi hunters in the post-war period.

On November 9, in the Assembly, the RN claimed the presidency of a working group 
on anti-Semitism, which would be responsible for carrying out studies on the 
subject, allowing for example to audition personalities, without granting funds 
to the party. leading or participating in the group.

A party created by former SS
The strategy of demonization carried out for years seems to have achieved its 
objective : to make people forget a crucial aspect in the history and thought of 
the National Front, such as, for example, the fact that the FN was founded in 
1972 by a former SS [2]and number of collaborators, anti-Semites to the last degree.

This heritage is found in the unconditional defense of Pétain and in the more or 
less direct denial of the Shoah and the anti-Semitic crimes carried out by the 
Vichy regime, but also in the resumption of this vocabulary addressed to 
contemporary Jewish personalities. If it is Jean-Marie Le Pen who has most 
regularly made himself the spokesperson for these atrocities, having him 
condemned on several occasions for anti-Semitism (1986) and contestation of 
crimes against humanity (2018), he does not is not the only one [3].

Two current RN deputies have particularly distinguished themselves by their 
anti-Semitism : Frédéric Boccaletti (Var), founder of a bookstore selling 
numerous negationist works, and Bryan Masson (Alpes-Maritimes) who relays the 
theses of the "great replacement" on his social networks .

But in recent years, the RN has preferred to hide its visceral anti-Semitism 
behind a so-called past of resistance fighters and republicans, refocusing its 
own narrative on the defense of France against immigration, embodied according to 
them by the OAS during of the Algerian war.

The highlighting of their Islamophobia and their anti-Maghreb racism, yet equally 
shameful, has also enabled them to divert attention from the other forms of 
racism they embody, in particular anti-Semitism.

Another diversion, the growing support for Israel, notably led by Louis Aliot 
(him again) from 2011, with the Islamophobic justification according to which 
Israel, especially governed by the extreme right, would protect itself against 
the so-called "war of civilizations" led by the Islam, in the Middle East as in 
France.

The implicit idea is also that Israel would be the "true country" of the Jews, 
eternally foreign and foreign in France, and that it is therefore necessary to 
support its independence in order to be able to send them there ! But 
anti-Semitism returns at a gallop, as when Marine Le Pen spoke in 2017 of Macron 
as an "investment banker[qui]would serve an ambition" foreign to the good of 
France, as "globalist, oligarchic and ultra-Europeanist» [4]. A discourse 
implicitly incorporating a number of traditional words and clichés of anti-Semitism.

Jewesses and Jews, eternal strangers
Despite the facelifts, the old rancid background therefore comes out again and 
again. Anti-Semitic outings are not isolated "slippages": they are the expression 
of the ideology that irrigates the RN. Moreover, if Le Pen's party has polished 
its discourse, it is because other groups assume the most radical part of it: 
Zemmour and Reconquête, Yvan Benedetti and his French National Party, Soral, the 
Rivarol newspaper, the Catholics de Civitas, the monarchists of Action Française 
or the recently reformed GUD.

Beyond their differences, all these currents are found in anti-Semitism, which 
remains a fundamental matrix of far-right thought. Jews are thought of as 
foreigners by nature, who cannot belong to the "real country" theorized by 
Charles Maurras (an expression that is found in the idea of "French of stock" 
opposed to "French of paper") and who have no choice but to keep quiet or leave 
France.

When Macron plans to pay homage to the anti-Semites Maurras or Maurice Barrès, or 
when Darmanin promotes Napoleon's anti-Semitic policy in a book as an example of 
integration, it is because the right considers itself free to hold these 
discourses openly.

JEANNE MENJOULET
This idea joins that of many conspiracy theories, which present "the Jews" as a 
tight-knit community of enemies within who would pull all the strings, such as 
those of the "great replacement" which they would orchestrate to destroy 
Christian Europe. and white.

Without being so clear, these slogans are perfectly understood by the extreme 
right. Evidenced by the sign "Who? carried by Cassandre Fristot (former member 
and candidate in 2012 for the legislative elections for the National Front, also 
former chief of staff of Louis Aliot), or the denunciation of "bankers" and 
"global finance" against "the real economy" as well as that of enemies like the 
Rothschilds, George Soros, Jacques Attali, to whom disproportionate powers of 
influence are lent.

This discourse which claims to be social is an artificial means of diverting 
class opposition towards a conspiratorial and racist division of society which 
makes it possible to unite bosses and proletarians considered as French against 
Jews and Jews.

Macron's tributes to Maurras and Pétain
The anti-Semitism of the RN and of the entire extreme right is not an old fad 
associated with the 1930s and 1940s and whose supporters would have left the 
party with Le Pen senior: it is fundamental, always present, and this despite the 
efforts incessant facts to make people forget this sinister association with Nazism.

If the RN is less criticized today on this theme, it is not that it is absent: it 
is that the rest of the political class has become more tolerant on these issues.

When Macron plans to pay homage to the anti-Semites Maurras or Maurice Barrès, or 
when Darmanin promotes Napoleon's anti-Semitic policy in a book as an example of 
integration, it is because the right considers itself free to hold these 
discourses openly.

This is why we must be vigilant: giving free rein to anti-Semitism and especially 
to its most hidden expressions, is to offer an avenue to the strategy of 
demonizing the far right. The anti-racist and anti-fascist fight obviously 
involves the fight against anti-Semitism, by bringing it to light and by constant 
denunciation.

UCL Antifascist Commission and Antiracist Commission

To validate

[1]Valérie Igounet, The National Front from 1972 to the present day, Seuil, 2014.

[2]"50 years of F-Haine, a discreet anniversary", Alternative libertarian, 
October 2022

[3]Marine Turchi, "Founded by a former Waffen-SS, the RN seeks the presidency of 
a working group on anti-Semitism", Médiapart, November 9, 2022.

[4]Renaud Dély, "The "insensitive investment banker", this old anti-Semitic 
cliché that Marine Le Pen recycles for Macron...", Marianne, April 28, 2017.


https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Antisemitisme-Le-RN-des-collabos-aux-complotistes
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