France
In contrast with 1995, which saw the election to the presidency of Jacques
Chirac, there were few electoral developments of significance during 1996.
In spite of the tense social and political situation caused by the public
unrest of December 1995, Prime Minister Alain Juppé, of the Rassemblement
pour la république (RPR, Rally for the Republic), remained in office.
The two rounds of the general election have been called for 25 May and 1
June 1997.
The government is a coalition comprising the RPR and the Union pour la démocratie
française (UDF, Union for French Democracy), led by François
Léotard, elected president of the UDF in April 1996 to succeed Valéry
Giscard d'Éstaing. The UDF embraces the Parti républicain
(PR, Republican Party), the Parti radical (rad., Radical Party) and the
Force démocrate (FD, Democratic Force).
In September, Alain Juppé confirmed that he was considering introducing
an element of proportional representation in time for the next elections.
If electoral reform goes ahead, the Front national (FN, National Front)
could gain several seats in parliament. During 1996 there were increasing
efforts to establish a "republican front", grouping all mainstream
political parties in opposition to the FN.
The opinion polls continue to suggest that the majority of the population
takes an unfavourable view of the government. General disaffection with
the political class (which has swelled the support of the far right according
to many commentators) has grown sharply in response to the many scandals
and accusations of corruption that have afflicted the nation's political
leaders throughout the year. As a result of this there have been signs of
a recovery in support for the left in by-elections, strong enough to indicate
a possible victory in the May/June 1997 legislative elections. Success for
the left in these elections would open up a new period of cohabitation between
left and right in French politics.
During 1996 the situation in Corsica became increasingly tense. On 31 May,
Raymond Barre, former prime minister and currently the deputy for the Rhône,
declared: "If the Corsicans want independence, they should seize it."
On 1 July, there was a terrorist attack in Bastia with one fatality, and
less than three weeks later Juppé announced a programme of economic
aid for the island. In spite of this, the Front de libération nationale
corse (FLNC, Front for the National Liberation of Corsica) responded with
a statement that it had no intention of extending the truce.
In December 1995, the "social movement" testified to a revival
in left-wing sympathies, most notably in the many petitions of support that
were collected for striking workers. This trend was confirmed in 1996 when
a group of African immigrants without papers were given sanctuary in the
church of St Bernard in Paris from 28 June to 23 August (see RACISM AND
XENOPHOBIA).
Finally, the government has restored its traditional, very Gaullist, support
for Arabs to the heart of its foreign policy. President Chirac's tour of
the Middle East was marred by incidents in Jerusalem involving the policemen
charged with his protection. This has caused some disquiet in the French
Jewish community.
Unemployment in France grew in 1996, while inflation was pegged back from
2.1 per cent in 1995 to 1.5 per cent in 1996. The number of those without
work increased from 11.8 per cent of the population in 1995 to 12.1 per
cent in 1996. The proportion of unemployed young people under the age of
twenty-five also grew, from 23.5 per cent in 1995 to 26.4 per cent in 1996.
The first Jews settled in what is now France during Roman times. Following
the first crusades, the situation of these settlers deteriorated. Religious
antisemitism and the royal desire to appropriate the wealth of the Jews
led to a series of expulsions. With the integration of new lands into the
realm, France "acquired" Jews together with its new territories
(for example, Alsace and Lorraine). In the sixteenth century, Marranos (covert
Jews) from Spain and Portugal found shelter in France.
While some people called for the emancipation of the Jews, a trend within
the eighteenth-century Enlightenment initiated a non-Christian tradition
of antisemitism. At this time Jews were considered to be the symbol of the
obscurantism and fanaticism of religion and were equated with financial
power.
At the time of the French Revolution, the Jewish minority was highly stratified:
the small group of former Marranos enjoyed a high level of culture and wealth
and, being well integra-ted, increasingly resented the special status and
limitations imposed on them. However, most Jews in the eastern part of the
country were very poor and subject to a virulent popular antisemitism. In
1791-2 French Jews were emancipated.
The nineteenth century brought new trends in antisemitism: the identification
of the Jews with the harshness of industrial society and xenophobia towards
Jews coming from abroad (mainly from Germany and, at the end of the century,
from the Russian empire). An additional problem was the distrust of assimilated
Jews. A new conservative nationalism developed, drawing on the ideas of
race science and "Aryan" mythology. In 1886 Edouard Drumont published
La France juive , the first antisemitic "best seller" in
France, which raised myths about Jews to the status of an ideology.
The Dreyfus case in 1894 came at a time of intense antisemitic agitation
and seriously affected the position of assimilated French Jews. However,
it also led to the mobilization of forces committed to human rights. This
created a polarization of opinion according to a pattern that prevailed
at least until the Second World War and perhaps even up to 1967.
The 1930s saw a wave of antisemitism nourished by the mass immigration of
Jews from the East at a time of economic crisis, by the fears aroused by
the rise of a socialist government (led by a Jew, Léon Blum) in 1936
and by Nazi propaganda. The wartime Vichy government introduced anti-Jewish
legislation and helped its administration to identify and arrest Jews. Some
74,000 Jews who were deported from France died in the concentration camps.
After the Second World War, the far right was reduced to small groups. However,
in 1954, with the prime ministerial appointment of Pierre Mendès-France,
who was a Jew, antisemitism resurfaced in French society. A further phase
in antisemitism began in 1967: some felt that de Gaulle's remark in November
of that year, that the Jews were "an élite people, sure of itself
and domineering", opened the gates for this. What is indisputable is
that Is-rael's victory in the Six-Day War and the subsequent anti-Zionist
propaganda created a feeling of unease in the 1970s and 1980s.
In the past decade attention has been focused on the advance of the FN and
the growth of Holocaust denial. Moreover, in the last two years concern
has grown over communal tensions, particularly in suburban areas, between
Jews and a small but active minority of militant Islamic youths of North
African origin.
According to the annual report of the Commission nationale consultative
des droits de l'homme (CNCDH, National Consultative Commission on Human
Rights) the number of racially motivated violent incidents increased in
1996. The number of recorded incidents of racial threats and abuse was 284,
of which 89 were of an antisemitic nature. The report noted three violent
antisemitic incidents and four cases where racial attacks resulted in hospitalization.
The 1996 US state department annual report on human rights notes that in
the past French law-enforcement officers have used excessive force-particularly
directed against immigrants-resulting in deaths, but there is no evidence
of a pattern of such abuses. In February a Paris court found a police officer
guilty of "involuntary homicide" in the case of the death of a
seventeen-year-old youth from Zaire, shot during an interrogation at a Paris
police station in 1993. The officer was sentenced to eight years in prison,
the longest sentence given to a police officer convicted of this crime.
Judicial and administrative inquiries have been opened by the government
into the 1995 shooting of an eight-year-old Serbian refugee. Border police
have been accused of using excessive force in attempting to halt a convoy
of refugees that ran a border check point.
In April the UN special rapporteur on racism, Maurice Glélé-Ahanhanzo,
reported that there was a high level of xenophobia and racism in France,
and that this was highly prejudicial to its image as the "homeland
of human rights". His ten-day fact-finding mission found that attacks
against immigrants from former colonies in North Africa were especially
rife. Amnesty International also reported that police were abusive towards
foreigners. Glélé-Ahanhanzo insisted that the FN was not solely
responsible for the xenophobia, but that it was fuelled by the severe Pasqua
laws that restrict immigration.
In August, a five-month campaign by 220 African and Moroccan immigrants
to be granted legal residence as parents of French nationals was brought
to a conclusion. Police raided the church of St Bernard in Paris on 23 August,
which had been occupied for two months following an eviction from the church
of St Amboise in April. Ten members of the group were on a hunger strike.
Four of the protesters were deported to the frontier in a military aeroplane,
but the government refused to grant most of the other immigrants residence
papers. This has come to symbolize the French dilemma over immigration,
fuelling a desire to reform the existing laws, since some immigrants can
neither be expelled nor obtain residence permits.
In December, Brigitte Bardot was taken to court in Paris by the Mouvement
contre le racisme et pour l'amitié entre les peuples (MRAP, Movement
Against Racism and for Friendship Between Peoples) and the Ligue internationale
contre le racisme et l'antisémitisme (LICRA, International League
Against Racism and Antisemitism), accused of incitement to racial discrimination
and hatred for writing that Muslims were polluting French society. In Le
Figaro in April she condemned the ritual slaughter of sheep for the Muslim
festival of Eid al-Kebir and said that France was being swamped by foreigners.
Bardot denied the charges. Her memoirs, published in September, also provoked
criticism for her admiration of the FN leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen. Describing
him as "a charming and intelligent man", Bardot says that on the
issue of immigration, "I share his views completely". She is married
to Bernard d'Ormale, a member of the FN and aide to Le Pen. In January 1997
she was cleared of all charges.
The FN is the most powerful party of the far right in France, in spite
of its refusal to accept this description. The daily national newspapers
Le Monde and Libération were forced to appear in court
in June for having described in December 1995 the FN as a party of the extreme
right. In September a court in Paris ruled that Le Pen's demand to publish
a right to reply in protest of being labelled "extreme right"
was ill-founded. According to the political analyst Pierre Martin, xenophobia
provides the cornerstone of the FN's political support.
In the presidential elections of 1995, the party received 15 per cent of
the votes cast (compared to 14.4 per cent in the 1988 presidential election
and 10.5 per cent in the European elections of 1994).
In November, in the municipal election at Dreux, the FN, in the person of
Marie-France Stirbois, was defeated by the incumbent mayor, Gérard
Hamel of the RPR (see GENERAL BACKGROUND), the Socialist candidate having
been eliminated after the first round. The FN had actually won the first
round with 34.6 per cent of the votes. This was the only municipal election
during 1996 where the FN reached the second round.
In the local elections the FN reached the second round in Gardanne in October
with Damien Bariller. He received 39.7 per cent of the votes, a marked increase
from the FN gain of 14.5 per cent in the 1993 elections. In the regional
elections the FN reached the second round in four out of the thirty-two
elections, but lost them all in the final rounds.
Samuel Maréchal is the president of the FN's militant youth wing,
the Front national de la jeunesse (FNJ, National Front for Youth), which
claims to have the active support of 12,000 members. They make up the radical
wing of the party, with a nationalist-revolutionary position. Indeed, the
young members of the FNJ are frequently called upon by Le Pen to "prepare
themselves for revolution".
The party has launched a number of units made up of members of the police
force. Other "special interest" groups include FN for Paris transport
(currently claiming 200 sympathizers); FN for prison officers; FN for council
housing tenants; and FN circles for business people. An association for
the young unemployed was created by the FNJ to recruit those without work.
The party has developed various internal structures such as the department
of social affairs, of which Carl Lang is president. Its aim is to co-ordinate
a number of diverse initiatives aimed at establishing the movement more
securely in French society. But while the FN can point to some local successes
in the search for a receptive audience, it appears to encounter difficulties
when it seeks to develop them further.
The FN's student organization, Renouveau étudiant (RE, Student Renewal),
now part of the FNJ, manages to recruit groups of militant radicals, but
is not successful in attracting a significant following; it won only almost
3 per cent of the votes cast in the university elections of April 1996.
An opinion poll conducted by the Société française
d'enquête et de sondages (SOFRES, French Society for Surveys and Opinion
Polls) for the radio and television channel RTL, published in April, estimated
that 28 per cent of the French population were "partly or wholly in
agreement with the ideas of the FN", an increase of 9 per cent compared
to a similar poll in January 1994. The poll reported that the number of
those believing that "the FN remains a danger to democracy" remained
high at 71 per cent. The strategy of using the foreigner as a scapegoat
for deteriorating social conditions, in particular unemployment, was adopted
by the Vichy government during the Second World War, with the Jews forced
to take the blame for the country's misfortunes. It has never been properly
de-legitimized by historical analysis and France shares the melancholy distinction
of providing a substantial political base for the far right, along with
Austria (22 per cent) and Belgian Flanders (12 per cent).
A second opinion poll, conducted by IPSOS for Libération in
September, examined the political base of FN support. While 75 per cent
of those interviewed believed that the FN was a racist party, 11 per cent
felt close to, and 40 per cent approved of, "some of its ideas".
During his movement's annual Bleu-blanc-rouge (blue-white-red) autumn festival,
which was attended by 30,000 participants, Le Pen reiterated his belief
in "the inequality of the races" (see MAINSTREAM POLITICS).
In September, in an attempt to make political capital out of the death of
a fifteen-year-old in Marseille caused by a youth of Moroccan origin, the
FN organized a demonstration that attracted over 5,000 people. The theme
of the protest was to denounce the violence of the Moroccan community and
to promote FN immigration policies.
The FN's ties with far-right parties internationally were illustrated in
1996 by Le Pen's attendance at the reaffirmation of the marriage service
of Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia
(see Russia), which took place in February. As well as attending the ceremony
in a personal capacity, Le Pen held official meetings with his counterpart
Zhirinovsky. In May, Le Pen met with delegates from the Spanish Alleanza
Unidad, the Belgian Front National and the Hungarian Justice and Life Party.
He also met with the Serbian Radical Party in Belgrade (see Spain, Belgium,
Hungary, Yugoslavia).
In August the FN mayor of Orange in southern France, Jacques Bompard, used
his policing authorities to stop the distribution of anti-FN literature
in the city. These measures were suspended by an administrative tribunal.
A few weeks later, another mayor, Serge Durand, in La Grande-Motte, also
in southern France, temporarily suspended the distribution of anti-FN literature
just before the start of a one-week FN convention. This action was also
prevented by a tribunal. There have been other reported incidents of similar
efforts to suppress anti-FN speech.
Other significant groups and movements on the far right include Nouvelle
résistance (NR, New Resistance), founded in 1991 when Christian Bouchon
broke away from the Troisième voie (TV, Third Way). Until 1996 the
ideology of NR has been the embodiment of the "national-bolshevik"
current in the far right. It has also flirted with the New Right and Libyan-style
"anti-imperialism". NR has been consistent in taking up left-wing
themes and imbuing them with a fascist content; a case in point is the NR
news-sheets aimed at both a blue-collar readership and the ecologically
aware (see PUBLICATIONS AND MEDIA). In recent years, and despite NR associations
with radical foreign far-right organizations, the party has sought to align
itself with the FN. NR activist Pierre-André Beck is now municipal
communications director in the FN-controlled city of Orange. However, many
in NR were not satisfied with the party line and in the summer almost half
of the NR's membership left the party. The departure of sixteen local groups
and three federations was announced at a special congress in Alençon
at the end of the year. In the fierce legal battle that ensued the assets
of the NR and its publications were frozen. Some NR defectors joined the
Parti communautaire national-européen (PCN, National European Community
Party) run by former Belgian activist Luc Michel (see
Belgium).
Restauration nationale (RN, National Restoration), founded in 1955, is a
monarchist movement based on the ideas of Charles Maurras. Its membership
is a few dozen militants. A judgment in court ruled against its proposal
to adopt the name of the defunct movement Action française as the
title for its periodical. Among its sympathizers is Pierre Bernardi, a member
of the French parliament and mayor of Montferneuil, a suburb of Paris. Bernardi
distinguished himself by attending the funeral of Paul Touvier in July.
Touvier was responsible for the murder of Jews during the Occupation.
A shadowy network of far-right clubs sets out to provide ideological inspiration.
The Nouvelle Droite (New Right) is one such network of three or four groups
with very few activists that produces material based on Nazi racial theories.
The Groupement d'études et de re-cherches pour la civilisation européenne
(GRECE, Research and Study Group for European Civilization) is a group whose
mark is paganism and a biologically justified racism. Considerably weakened
in recent times, its principal activities are confined to the production
of articles and the organization of conferences. Synérgies européennes
(SE, European Synergy Group) is more militant but practically extinct. Its
programme consists of various activities organized abroad (see Italy) and
the publication of weighty dissertations with a geo-political agenda.
Terre et peuple (Land and People) is a cultural association on the fringe
of the FN that has secured positions of considerable influence inside the
FNJ. It is led by Pierre Vial and follows the ideological themes and religious
and symbolic practices of the "German Nordic thought" stream.
The skinhead movement in France remains marginal, with a membership of around
1,000. They constitute their own skinhead gangs, such as the Charlemagne
Hammerskins, or are members of other political organizations. Most find
the FN's political style too moderate, and have attached themselves to splinter
groups such as the Parti nationaliste français et européen
(PNFE, French and European Nationalist Party), L'uvre française (France's
Mission) and Groupe union défense (GUD, see below). A television
documentary in January following the activities of a gang of skinheads from
Le Havre revealed the hatred of these groups for "blacks, Arabs, Jews,
communists and drug addicts". According to the programme, these groups
live for music (French bands include Bifrost, Stormcore and All Spyz) and
violence.
L'Oeuvre française was founded in 1968 and is led by Pierre Sidos.
It has between 150 and 200 members, active in Paris, Lyon and Bordeaux.
The group has a complicated hierarchy, a Catholic supremacist ideology shot
through with antisemitism, and a ferocious hostility to the European ideal.
In 1996 L'Oeuvre française organized a "Forum for the Nation"
in Lyon for the third successive year under the banner of its newsletter,
Jeune nation. This went ahead on 29 and 30 March in the face of angry
opposition from local political and anti-racist organizations. The refusal
to ban the "forum" was justified "on grounds of freedom of
association guaranteed by the constitution".
A silent demonstration of 200 protesters was held on 30 March in front of
the Centre of the Resistance and the Deportation. Journalists were denied
access to the "forum".
At a press conference in Orange on 9 November, Sidos indicated his support
for Le Pen and urged members of his group to do the same. However, it appears
that a degree of conflict attends the dealings of the two parties: L'uvre
française was refused a stand at the FN's annual blue-white-red festival
(see above).
It appears that L'Oeuvre française has in recent months merged with
the PNFE. PNFE is led by Claude Cornilleau and represents a prototype of
the Holocaust-denying neo-Nazi political group. Founded in the 1980s, it
appears to number no more than fifteen or so activists based in the Paris
area, with a further 1,000 across the country. Cornilleau and co-organizer
Henri Simon are former members of the Waffen-SS. The party's third ideologue,
Pierre Danby, rejoined the FN in 1992. PNFE's activities are confined to
the organization of dinners and the production of Militant , its
news-sheet. Every year it celebrates the anniversary of Hitler's birthday.
Cornilleau was sentenced in January for incitement to racial hatred (see
LEGAL MATTERS).
Despite its practical absorption into the FN, some members of the GUD continued
to assert their independence in 1996. In January members of the group billed
posters supporting Hamas (Islamic Resistance Movement, see Palestinian Authority)
near St-Lazare railway station in Paris.
In March, the neo-Nazi organization, publisher and skinzine that share the
name Un Jour Viendra (A Day Will Come) planned "the greatest national-socialist
celebration ever held in France" in Bourges to celebrate the deaths
of Yitzhak Rabin and François Mitterrand. Publicized in a tract couched
in Nazi phraseology, the organization called for the deaths of Patrick Gaubert,
a former minister responsible for fighting racism, and Philippe Massoni,
the chief commissioner of the Paris police. The event was eventually cancelled,
but anti-racist groups criticized local authorities for failing to ban the
demonstration. Patrick Gaubert filed a complaint against Un Jour Viendra
for incitement to racial hatred and murder.
There are a number of religious far-right groups in France. Chrétienté-Solidarité
(Christianity-Solidarity) is a traditionalist Catholic movement whose motto
is "God, Family, Fatherland!" It is hostile to both Freemasonry
and Islam.
Contre-réforme catholique (Catholic Counter-Reform) is headed by
Father Georges de Nantes. A religious movement with political leanings,
this group combines hostility to Freemasonry with antisemitism.
Fraternité sacerdotale St Pie X (Priestly Brotherhood of St Pius
X) is led by the father superior of France, Father Benoît de Jorna.
The fraternity is based in Switzerland and was established in 1970 by the
late Monsignor Léfèbvre (see Italy). In France it has one
hundred priests, forty priories and twenty-two private schools. The fraternity
is hostile to liturgical reform, ecumenism and to the innova-tions introduced
by the Second Vatican Council regarding relations with Judaism. Its militant
arm is the Renaissance catholique movement, presided over by Jean-Pierre
Maugendre.
The Union nationale pour l'Europe chrétienne (UNEC, National Union
for Christian Europe) is a Léfèbvrist Catholic organization.
Since 1988 it has engaged in international campaigns against abortion, which
it describes as "genocide". Martine Lehideux, FN member of the
European Parliament, sits on its sponsorship committee.
The principal bookshops of the far right are La Joyeuse Garde, La Librairie
Française, La Librairie Saint-Nicolas, and l'Æncre in Paris,
which has recently opened a branch in Toulon. Nantes has La Librairie Dobrée.
La Librairie du Savoir, situated in Paris's fifth arrondissement, was one
of the distributors of Roger Garaudy's banned writings. In July, the bookshop
was the object of a raid whose perpetrators remain unknown. The Parisian
bookshop Lecture et Tradition (Reading and Tradition) also gives its name
to a bi-monthly newsletter.
The most significant mail-order distributor of far-right material is Diffusion
de la pensée française (DPF, Dissemination of French Thought).
Run by Jean Auguy, it is antisemitic and anti-Masonic, with a Catholic integralist
slant. It has a mailing list of 40,000 names and a catalogue of 3,000 titles.
In June, François Léotard, president of the UDF (see GENERAL
BACKGROUND), accused Le Pen of having an entourage of people who had collaborated
with the Nazis. In angry response, Le Pen called Léotard a psychotic
and schizophrenic, pledging that the FN was open to all but corrupt Frenchmen.
Le Pen was criticized across the political spectrum for his statement that
all races were inherently different, first made during an interview with
a Le Monde journalist on 30 August. The interview was later aired on several
occasions on national radio stations. His words were vigorously condemned
by the entire political class: the minister of justice, Jacques Toubon,
called for tightening of legislation to counter racism (see LEGAL MATTERS),
and Henri Emmanuelli of the Parti socialiste (PS, Socialist Party) suggested
that the FN should be dissolved, an issue discussed throughout the media.
Official figures for the number of antisemitic incidents may not present
the true picture of activity of this kind. Figures collected by the ministry
of the interior are based solely on the number of official complaints lodged
with it. Less serious threats of violence are generally omitted from official
figures. It is very difficult to establish how many of these incidents occur.
The CNCDH reported only marginal variations in the levels of antisemitic
violence in 1996. The significant increase in the number of violent incidents
in 1995 did not continue into 1996. Sixty-five acts of threatening behaviour
or public abuse through propaganda were reported in the first nine months
of 1996 (compared to 86 in 1995, 120 in 1994). As in the previous year,
most of these were committed in the region of Ile-de-France-nearly 54 per
cent-followed at some distance by Rhône-Alpes (6 per cent) and Provence-Côte
d'Azur (5 per cent).
Damage to communal property occurred at various points in the year. A Molotov
cocktail was thrown at the synagogue in Argenteuil on 22 February. In October,
seven graves in the Jewish cemetery of Delme were desecrated. Police have
been investigating the case, but have not found the perpetrators.
In 1996 there seemed to be a particularly strong link between the number
of antisemitic incidents and events in Israel. The number of bomb alerts
and threats increased between 25 February and 5 March. And on 24 April,
the day after the Israeli military bombardment of the Lebanese village of
Qana, a Molotov cocktail was thrown into the foyer of the main synagogue
in Bordeaux. Responsibility for the act was claimed by a group calling itself
the Front for the Liberation of the Lebanese people, which is, however,
unknown to the authorities.
A series of rallies and commemorative events reaffirm FN ideology and mark
the FN's calendar year. In April, the FN celebrated the 1,500th anniversary
of the baptism of Clovis, holding commemorative events throughout France.
Clovis was a Barbarian chieftain who converted to Catholicism and became
the first Catholic king of what was then Gaul. One of the keynote speakers
at the Paris meeting was the general secretary of the FN, Bruno Gollnisch.
After the rally the 1,500 participants staged a torchlight procession to
the Panthéon, where the founder of the FN, Roger Holeindre, recited
an oath of loyalty to France. Antisemitic literature was distributed at
the rally (see PUBLICATIONS AND MEDIA).
Several weeks later the FN held its annual fête of Joan of Arc on
1 May. Six thousand marchers attended a rally at the Place de l'Opéra,
and there was a strong FNJ presence. Some gave fascist salutes as they filed
past the podium where Le Pen stood. Members of the FN and FNJ chanted slogans
such as "Deauville-Sentier, occupied territories" (in reference
to the large Jewish populations of the coastal town Deauville and Sentier,
the clothes manufacturing centre of Paris) and "In Paris, in Gaza,
Intifada". These slogans appear to be taken from the Third Positionist
(see page USA) lexicon of the late 1970s and may be said to indicate the
growing influence of more radical groups such as the GUD (see PARTIES, ORGANIZATIONS,
MOVEMENTS) in the FN.
Following the Garaudy/Pierre affair (see HOLOCAUST DENIAL), in June posters
with the slogan "And what if Abbé Pierre is right?" were
billed around the capital of Hauts de Seine and Limoges.
In November, during a conference on Islamism in Caen, the following incidents
were reported by the Jewish weekly newspaper Tribune Juive : Abdel
Sahafi, a member of the Palestinian National Council, spoke in praise of
Garaudy's works of Holocaust denial, while Mahmoud Houad, minister and spokesman
of the Lebanese government, raised the spectre of a "Jewish conspiracy"
referring to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and to "Jewish
tentacles".
On 3 December an anonymous letter-bomb was sent to Tribune Juive in
Paris. Concealed in a video cassette, it was addressed to the editor, Yves
Derai. The bomb did not explode. The following day, a pro-Palestinian group
hitherto unknown to police intelligence sent a letter to the newspaper Libération
claiming responsibility for the bomb. The letter stated: "We proclaim
our solidarity with our Palestinian brothers, especially those in Hebron
. . . While Jews remain in Hebron and continue to inflict atrocities on
Palestine, Arabs in France and everywhere will inflict violence on the Jews
living here . . . " The letter concluded with a threat: "You will
be hearing from us." An inquiry into the violently pro-Palestinian
Union de défense des étudiants d'Assas (UDEA, Union for the
Defence of the Students of Assas), a branch of GUD (see PARTIES, ORGANIZATIONS,
MOVEMENTS), was inconclusive and most of those arrested were released in
January 1997.
At the Toulon Book Fair in November, plans to award a literary prize
to the Jewish author Marek Halter were cancelled by the far-right mayor
Jean-Marie Le Chevallier. Le Chevallier told Acte Public Communication,
the organizers of the event, that their choice of Halter as a prize-winner
was "inopportune". Halter responded that since arriving in France
this was "the first time I have felt I was the object of racism".
Instead, Le Chevallier offered the award to Brigitte Bardot, whose husband
is a member of the FN; however, she declined it.
Meanwhile, the Théâtre National de la Danse et de l'Image organized
a ceremony to honour Halter in Châteauvallon and sixteen towns and
villages united in La Garde to rally and demonstrate against the book fair.
Most of France's major publishing houses boycotted the book fair, which
has been running in Toulon since 1990.
In June the sports minister, Guy Drut, banned the national synchronized
swimming team from performing a routine depicting Nazi horrors at the Atlanta
Olympics. The routine involved swimmers goose-stepping into the Olympic
pool and representing Jews being selected for the gas chambers at Auschwitz.
Drut said, "we cannot risk communicating these messages, which could
be badly interpreted."
In June Le Pen accused the French football team of being foreigners unable
to sing the national anthem. His comments were condemned by Prime Minister
Juppé as "disgraceful".
In July the minister for culture, Jean-Louis Douste-Blazy, wrote to the
FN mayor of Orange, Jacques Bombard, denouncing his selection of books for
the municipal library. Bombard had removed books covering race issues, rap
music, cosmopolitan ideas, and those written by opponents of the FN. He
had also ensured the buying of far-right and antisemitic books and chosen
a far-right publishing house as the agency for ordering the library publications.
The minister warned Bombard that if he continued to impose his own ideological
orientations the town would lose state subsidies.
At Marignane, in February, the Federation nationale des musulmans de
la France (FNMF, National Federation of French Muslims) protested against
the decision of the FN mayor to deny from the beginning of 1997 special
meals in the town's school canteens to the children of Muslims and Jews.
The court case brought by eight families was dismissed in December.
In June a science teacher in the town of Maurepas, in the Yvelines region,
set a classroom task in which her pupils were asked to calculate the volume
of carbon monoxide needed to kill Jews. Whatever the teacher's intentions
(she was Jewish), her superiors de-cided to discipline her. She was suspended,
and moved to another post.
The FN has an official publication, Identité , which, after
a hiatus of two years, produced one issue in 1996, which was strongly anti-US.
There are two other significant publications that have close affiliations
with the FN, Présent and National Hebdo . Founded in
1982, Présent is headed by Jean Madiran. Most of its contributors
are Catholic integrists. It has a circulation of about 20,000. National
Hebdo (National Weekly) claims a print-run of 100,000, but estimated
sales are half that number. Produced on the premises of the FN's national
headquarters, it evinces a growing complicity with a readership that is
signifi-cantly more "radical" than the public statements of Jean-Marie
Le Pen. Its editor speaks freely of his "Nazi friends". National
Hebdo provides news and information about FN policy and local activities;
it also gives coverage to groups that are more extreme.
In December, postmen in the areas of Roubaix, Croix and Wasquehal refused
to deliver free copies of the National Hebdo on the grounds that
they posed a "threat to public order". The paper, which ordered
the post office management to appear at the commercial tribunal of Nanterre
in 1997, is demanding Fr. 1 million in damages and Fr. 200,000 in compensation.
Another weekly, Minute , has a circulation of between 7,000 and 9,000.
Currently under judicial review, it is in the hands of a team that has strong
affinities with the New Right (see PARTIES, ORGANIZATIONS, MOVEMENTS). Minute
usually echoes the FN's political opinion, but in the second round of
the 1995 presidential elections it called on its readers to vote for Chirac.
Rivarol , founded in 1951, is also a weekly newspaper that supports
the FN. It projects a more virulent tone and does not hesitate to publish
articles denying the Holocaust. Its circulation is estimated at around 18,000.
The Parti national républicain (PNR, National Republican Party) also
has its own publication, Alliance populaire (Popular Alliance), which
has a circulation of approximately 17,000.
The bi-monthly Lutte du peuple (People's Combat) is edited by Christian
Bouchet of Nouvelle résistance (see PARTIES, ORGANIZATIONS, MOVEMENTS).
Its circulation is estimated at around 3,000.
Force d'avenir (Power of the Future) publishes articles for a readership
of blue-collar workers, while a magazine called Éco-Action addresses
itself to readers with Green sympathies.
Votre Dimanche (Your Sunday) first appeared in 1995, a by-product
of France Sports Actualité. Forced temporarily to suspend
production, it made a come-back on 3 March under the control of the Quotidien
de Paris (Paris Daily), a publication that in other respects supports
the traditional right. The review's strategic aim is to sabotage Présent,
in line with the neo-paganist current in far-right thinking. At the
FN's party conference in September (see PARTIES, ORGANIZATIONS, MOVEMENTS)
the Quotidien de Paris was distributed free of charge to party members.
A legal battle between Le Monde and the FN ended in June. In May
1995 Le Monde published an article on the death of a Moroccan, Brahim
Bouaraan, who had drowned in the Seine after being pushed by a group of
skinheads who had participated in the FN March on 1 May 1995. Le Pen wrote
a response to the article that Le Monde refused to publish on the
grounds that it made no reference to the death or the FN procession. The
FN took legal action and the court in Nanterre ordered Le Monde to
publish the FN tract. The newspaper appealed, but on 7 June the president
of the appeals court in Versaille ordered immediate publication, which took
place on 9 June. Le Monde was ordered to pay Fr. 10,000 in damages
to Le Pen.
During the FN's commemoration of the 1,500th anniversary of the baptism
of Clovis (see MANIFESTATIONS), antisemitic pamphlets were freely circulated:
among them were Louis-Ferdinand Céline's Bagatelles pour un massacre
(Trifles for a Massacre), and La France juive (France in Jewish
Hands) by Edouard Drumont (see HISTORICAL LEGACY). Both of these pamphlets
are banned, and appear on a list of censured material established in 1945.
However, the law is retroactive; as Céline's pamphlet was published
in 1939, before the enactment of the first laws against antisemitic propaganda,
it is still available.
In Corsica, the weekly organ of the separatist group FLNC Canal Historique,
U Rimbombu , was accused of antisemitism in its May and July issues.
Commenting on the work of journalist Guy Benhamon, who is Libération
's Corsican correspondent, U Rimbombu declared: "Nothing seemed
to predestine this North African Jew to interfere in the affairs of Corsica,
certainly not to the point where he acts as propagandist-in-chief for the
French press." Libération 's legal department has made
a formal complaint.
Publications such as l'Empire invisibl e (The Invisible Empire) and
Je suis partout (I am Everywhere), attempting to portray Jews as
monopolizing power, cite Jewish individuals in positions of influence. Also
the journal Presse, radio, TV, ciné: l'inlassable propagande juive
(Newspapers, Radio, TV, Film: Relentless Jewish Propaganda) was posted
into letterboxes in and around Paris between January and March.
La Vieille Taupe (The Old Mole) (see also HOLOCAUST DENIAL) is the name
originally given to a bookshop first established in 1965 by Pierre Guillaume;
it became a publishing house in 1979, specializing in the publication of
works by far-left militants. In 1978 La Guerre sociale (Social War),
a review produced by La Vieille Taupe, openly embraced the brand of Holocaust
denial that originated in France with Paul Rassinier (1906-67), a former
socialist member of parliament who was a survivor of Buchenwald. Robert
Faurisson, a professor of literature and a follower of Rassinier, had several
of his Holocaust-denying works published by La Vieille Taupe, receiving
unexpec-ted support from the American Jewish libertarian and intellectual
Noam Chomsky. In spring 1995, La Vieille Taupe lent its name to a new magazine.
Garaudy's book made up the whole of its second issue.
Since the early 1990s the Internet has provided a protected site for French
antisemitic and Holocaust-denying propaganda, advertisements for Nazi memorabilia
and banned literature. In the course of 1996, the four principal network
providers (Imaginet, Calvacon, Internetway and Internet France) blocked
access to fourteen discussion forums of this kind (see LEGAL MATTERS).
An information bulletin, Global Patelin (Global Village), made up
of material downloaded from the Internet, has been published by Serge Thion
since 1995. In March, Holocaust-denier Robert Faurisson wrote: "Thanks
mainly to the Internet, the tide is turning in favour of historical revisionism.
For the first time in twenty years, I have no appearances in court to look
forward to." The bulletins contain comment on matters raised in the
press and diffuse the ideas of the various movements and groupings.
Without doubt, the most significant event of 1996 relating to Holocaust
denial concerned the support given by one of France's most popular personalities,
Abbé Pierre, to the writings of Roger Garaudy.
Garaudy was born in 1913; a former communist expelled from the party in
1971, he converted to Catholicism, then Islam, providing Saddam Hussein
with enthusiastic support at the time of the Gulf War. At the end of 1995,
he published in the privately distributed review La Vieille Taupe of
the publishing house of the same name (see PUBLICATIONS AND MEDIA)
In Les mythes fondateurs de la politique israélienne (Founding
Myths of Israeli Politics), Garaudy argues that "critical historians
[Holocaust-deniers] are treated unjustly. These enforced silences, these
persecutions, this repression directed against a critical history of Hitler's
crimes, rest on allegations that are nothing more than slander and falsehood."
Garaudy believes that "genocide" is an inappropriate term to describe
the Holocaust, "Therefore, the word was used in a completely erroneous
manner throughout the Nuremberg trials since there was never any question
of a people's total annihilation, as was the case with the Amalacites, the
Canaanites and other 'holy exterminations'." Garaudy's conclusion is
that the term "genocide" should apply only to crimes committed
by the Hebrews against the Canaanites 3,000 years ago as described in the
Book of Joshua. Garaudy is a savage opponent of Israel and of Zionism.
On 18 April, Garaudy held a press conference along with Jacques Verges (the
defence lawyer of Klaus Barbie, head of Gestapo in Lyon, whose case was
tried in 1987). Garaudy made an announcement claiming the support of Abbé
Pierre (eighty-four years old), a cleric who is well known and popular for
the help he has given to the homeless over four decades. The priest had
written a personal letter of support to Garaudy prior to the press conference.
He (Abbé Pierre) praised "the astonishing scrupulousness and
sheer intellectual brilliance of the book's erudition". "It would
be wrong, a gross deception, to describe Garaudy's book as 'negationist'
or 'revisionist'", he declared after a week of fierce controversy.
On the genocide allegedly committed by the Hebrews, Abbé Pierre said:
"But in the Book of Joshua I discovered how a veritable 'Shoah' afflicted
human existence in 'the Promised Land'." On the question of how many
Jews perished he declared on France Inter, a national radio station, that
"in their emotion, the Jews have, quite understandably, exaggerated
the figure".
Abbé Pierre's polemical intervention on the side of the Holocaust-deniers
caused a national outcry and dominated the media for several days. On 29
April, in the daily newspaper Libération , Abbé Pierre
added the observation that the Holocaust is "a question that has not
yet been resolved", and asked other historians to engage in discussion
of Garaudy's ideas. On the same day, the Church authorities issued a statement
saying that they "deplored the intervention of Abbé Pierre on
the side of Roger Garaudy". Two days later the priest was excluded
from the Honorary Committee of the League against Racism and Antisemitism.
He was also denounced by Emmaus, an organization providing aid for the disadvantaged
that he himself had helped to create.
On 18 June, Abbé Pierre launched an attack on "the Zionist movement".
Working allegedly from its stronghold in the USA, the movement had adopted
the methods of Hitler, placing its agents in all major countries so that
it could further enlarge its empire in the Middle East. For a century, he
went on to explain, "they [Zionists] have little by little adopted
racist beliefs that are identical with Hitler's. Moreover, they adopt the
same means: assassination. Zionists were responsible for the assassination
of Yitzhak Rabin . . . The Zionist movement has delegates, spies and agents
working in every country in the world of any political importance. I could
give you the names, including those working here in France. I believe that
we face more than a lobby in Zionism-it is a fully developed movement with
vast financial and political resources in New York and Washington; it is
not a lobby, it is far more than that." He also added some thoughts
about the existence of a pressure group in the press, "which gave orders".
Even exiled in a Benedictine monastery in Praglia near Padua in Italy, where
Garaudy came to see him, Abbé Pierre continued to attack "the
international Zionist lobby", which he believes influences the church
in France.
Earlier, on 17 July, a survey conducted for Le Matin, a Lausanne
daily, found that 64 per cent of the population said that their opinion
of Abbé Pierre had not changed despite the affair, while 22 per cent
reported that their opinion of him had changed for the worse because of
the views he had expressed. At the same time, 58 per cent of the population
believed that the church had not done enough to oppose the persecution of
Jews carried out by the Vichy regime.
Not until 23 July, in a letter to the daily newspaper La Croix ,
did Abbé Pierre retract his statements on Garaudy's book, asking
for "pardon from those he might have offended".
Marc Sautet, a well-known media figure who presents "philosophy cafés"-widely
popular public debates on philosophy-also became involved in the debate.
At a private dinner held on 1 February, he made ambiguous statements about
the Holocaust and the Garaudy affair. Six of those present at the dinner
wrote Sautet a letter expressing their disquiet and sent a copy to Le
Monde , where the matter was revealed on 14 June: "In the course
of a discussion on the views adopted by Garaudy, you stated on your own
account that 'no proof of the reality of the gas chambers exists'. We find
this sufficiently disquieting to insist that you clarify your thinking to
us."
In his reply, dated 13 March, Sautet professed himself "ignorant of
revisionist literature" and "could not remember" having advanced
the view that "there is no proof of the actual existence of the gas
chambers". Nevertheless, he said that he was "exasperated by the
tendency of those who deplore the genocide to ignore the destruction of
the working class movement that preceded it". Moreover, Sautet declared
his "great surprise" that he had been unable to find explicit
references to genocide in Mein Kampf . Following the publication
of his views in Le Monde , Sautet denied having questioned the existence
of the gas chambers: ". . . for the horrors of the Holocaust, which
are incontestable, were preceded by the horrors of the suppression of the
workers' movement in Germany, all of them made possible by the advent of
Italian fascism."
According to the polling evidence collected annually by the Institut Conseils sondages analyses (CSA, Institute for Advice on Survey Analysis) on behalf of the CNCHD, respondents placed Jews in fifth position when asked who were the principal victims of racism and xenophobia. Jews, at 16 per cent, were behind North Africans (83 per cent), young French men and women of Maghreb origin (71 per cent), black Africans (43 per cent) and Roma (36 per cent). The position has remained unchanged since 1990. Answering a question concerned with respondents' "sympathies", 68 per cent expressed some or considerable sympathy for Jews, while 17 per cent expressed a measure of antipathy and 12 per cent considerable antipathy. Fifteen per cent expressed no opinion. Given that this polling has a margin of error of between 1 and 2 per cent, it is possible to conclude that the position has remained stable since 1990: in that year the figure for sympathy fluctuated between 68 and 73 per cent. Finally, 20 per cent of those polled believe that there are too many Jews in France, while 67 per cent believe that there are not too many (13 per cent expressed no opinion). The number of those who believe that there are too many Jews in France has grown by 2 per cent since 1995, although by comparison with 1990 it has dropped by 4 per cent.
One of the effects of Abbé Pierre's support for Roger Garaudy
(see HOLOCAUST DENIAL) has been to reopen the controversy surrounding the
Gayssot Law.
On 26 April, judicial proceedings were brought against Roger Garaudy for
"having contested crimes against humanity". This judicial decision
was taken on the basis of the Gayssot Law, which was passed in July 1990
as an amendment to the laws concerning the freedom of the press that had
been on the statute book since July 1881. The Gayssot Law makes it an offence
"to bring into question one or more crimes against humanity as defined
in article 8 of the International Military Tribunal in the London accords
of 8 May 1946".
The French left had consistently maintained that, in spite of the vigilance
of anti-racist associations, the anti-racist Pleuven Law of 1972 was very
rarely applied and failed to deal with Holocaust denial. Since its inception,
the Gayssot Law has been a matter of widespread dispute among jurists, historians
and intellectuals. The Garaudy affair brought all these tensions to the
surface once more.
A group of historians, among them Madeleine Reberioux, honorary president
of the Ligue des droits de l'homme (League of Human Rights), take the view
that criminalization of incitement to racial hatred embodied in the Pleuven
Law should provide adequate means of dealing with Holocaust denial and that
there should be no recourse to legislation that threatens to undermine the
principles of freedom of expression. Reberioux wrote an article in Le
Monde on 21 May, attacking the present law on three main grounds: first,
"It confers on the judge charged with its application the power to
determine historical truth, despite the principle that historical truth
cannot be a matter for the authorities"; second, it would inevitably
"be applied at some future date to matters other than the genocide
of Jews"; and finally, "it allows Holocaust-deniers to portray
themselves as martyrs, or at least as the victims of persecution".
Another historian, Pierre Vidal-Naquet, argued the same position. In Le
Monde on 4 May he stated that we should not transform "those with
zero intellect into martyrs". In 1987 Vidal-Naquet wrote Les assassins
de la memoire (The Assassins of Memory) on the subject of Holocaust
denial.
A former deportee, and former president of the European Parliament, Simone
Veil, also took this view: "History must be free. It must not be forced
to accommodate itself to official versions. The Gayssot Law allows Holocaust-deniers
to present themselves as martyrs, the innocent victims of official truth."
Richard Cazenove brought together a working group to investigate possible
routes of reform for the law. The group's final proposal was to widen the
law's application so that it included other acts of genocide, for example
that of the native Americans, and crimes committed in Rwanda.
The Gayssot Law's supporters point to the protection it affords victims
and their families. Maitre Serge Klarsfeld, head of the Association des
fils et filles des déportés juifs de France (Association of
the Sons and Daughters of French Jewish Deportees), wrote in the Tribune
juive on 27 June: "This law provides us with a gag for an insidious
antisemitism treacherously disguised in the honourable name of freedom of
expression, which in-dulges in the defamation of Jews . . . the law has
worked: for five years, Mr Faurisson has not written a single line and a
number of Holocaust-denying publications have ceased to exist, all thanks
to the Gayssot Law."
Patrick Gaubert, a former member of Charles Pasqua's cabinet in charge of
combating racism, argued that while the law has no power to alter individual
opinion, it nevertheless has the merit of "punishing the impermissible
. . . Thanks to Gayssot the far-right press is prevented from peddling openly
antisemitic views . . . No other genocide is of the slightest interest to
Jean-Marie Le Pen, so to widen the law's application would be absurd."
Gaubert also recalled the fact that the few remaining deportees would soon
be gone and that "the propagation of a discourse that deals in Holocaust-denial
hatred will be all the easier".
In September, justice minister Jacques Toubon (see MAINSTREAM POLITICS)
proposed to tighten the laws against spreading racism and xenophobia, following
Le Pen's espousals of racial inequality. Inciting racial hatred is a crime
in France, but existing laws fail to prosecute racial slander and racist
material in circulation for more than three months. The bill would penalize
anyone who issued statements against an ethnic group, nation, race or religion
with up to two years' imprisonment. The bill was approved by the Consultative
Commission on Human Rights on 26 September but has yet to be debated in
parliament, since a large faction of the RPR-UDF fear this would contribute
to putting the FN at the heart of political debate. A large protest was
organized by the FN in Paris on 21 October opposing the bill, which it sees
as an infringement of the freedom of speech.
As well as the above judicial developments, during 1996 a number of court
cases against neo-Nazis and far-right offenders were brought to a conclusion.
On 24 January, following a successful complaint of incitement to racial
hatred brought jointly by the Union des étudiants juifs de France
(UEJF, Union of Jewish Students in France) and the Mouvement contre le racisme
et pour l'amitié entre les peuples (MRAP, Movement Against Racism
and for Friendship Between Peoples), the Paris tribunal imposed a six-month
suspended prison sentence and damages of Fr. 10,000 on Claude Cornilleau
and the Société européenne de diffusion et de commercialisation
(SEDC, European Society for Dissemination and Commercialization).
In January the anti-racist group SOS-Racisme was successful in a bid to
censure a computer game sold at the FN's blue-white-red festival (see PARTIES,
MOVEMENTS, ORGANIZATIONS) that glorified Le Pen shooting his enemies. A
court in Nanterre ordered the payment of Fr. 1.6 million in damages to SOS-Racisme,
whose president Fodé Sylla was one of the "enemies" portrayed
with exaggerated features, accentuating their origins and race. The game
was created by Philippe Le Gallou, the son of an FN councillor.
In March, the UEJF took out a court injunction against nine network providers
guilty of transmitting Holocaust-denial material. It was the country's first
Internet trial. No penalty has been announced, but the network providers
have been ordered to revise contracts to ensure that racist and Holocaust-denial
propaganda is removed from the sites on which they appear.
The six-year investigations into the desecration of the Jewish cemetery
in Carpentras made considerable headway in 1996. In May 1990 the Carpentras
cemetery was attacked, graves were smashed and the body of Félix
Germon was exhumed. Le Pen and the FN, who were held accountable for some
time afterwards, had insisted the entire affair was a ploy by the then ruling
socialists to discredit the FN. But in July 1996 four neo-Nazi skinheads
were arrested for their part in the affair. The four youths, all affiliated
with the PNFE (see PARTIES, ORGANIZATIONS, MOVEMENTS), were taken into custody
after the twenty-six-year-old Yannick Garnier confessed and released the
names of his accomplices (Bertrand Nouveau, Patrick Laonegro and Olivier
Fimbry) to police in Avignon on 30 July. The leader of the group, who had
been taken into police custody the day after the desecration, died in a
motorcycle accident in 1992. He had been released due to a lack of evidence.
The group had planned the cemetery rampage to mark the German surrender
on 8 May 1945.
The television personality Patrick Sebas-tien was fined Fr. 30,000 in March
for singing "Smash the blacks" while made up to resemble Jean-Marie
Le Pen. He was appearing on the Osons (Let's Dare) programme, broadcast
on TF-1 on 23 September 1995. MRAP and LICRA (see above and RACISM AND XENOPHOBIA)
brought the action against Sebastien, and he was convicted of incitement
to racial hatred.
In September an appeals court ordered Maurice Papon to stand trial for the
deportation and deaths of 1,690 Jews during the Second World War. He is
the second Vichy official to be tried for crimes against humanity, the first
having been Paul Touvier, convicted in April 1994 of killing seven Jews
(Touvier died in July from prostate cancer, aged eighty-one). It is claimed
that after the war, Papon was protec-ted by a fifty-year cover-up, involving
presidents, governments, the judiciary and the police. He became chief of
the Paris police in 1958 and a conservative minister under Giscard d'Éstaing
in 1976. Files containing Papon's crimes were discovered in 1981 by a former
resistance worker, Michel Slitinsky, but attempts to take legal action against
him were repeatedly delayed. The decision to try Papon heralded the end
of the Mitterrand government's reluctance to examine the Vichy period and
the start of Chirac's commitment to an investigation.
Papon denied the charges and appealed to the supreme court. The appeal was
overruled in January 1997. There were fears that Papon's deteriorating health
might prevent him from standing trial. Many Jewish and anti-racist groups
welcomed the decision of the supreme court. Le Pen said in a radio interview,
"I think it is unreasonable to ask an old man of eighty-five to account
for his actions fifty-three years after they took place."
In October, Georges Mathis, the editor of the weekly publication Le Réverbère
(a magazine distributed by the homeless) appeared before Paris magistrates
on charges of incitement to racial hatred with regard to the Jewish community.
MRAP, SOS-Rac-isme, LICRA, Le Grand Orient de France and the Ligue des droits
de l'homme lodged a complaint about an article published in Le Réverbère
in March. Questioning the auto-nomy of justice in France, Mathis wrote that
"it would be interesting to know the proportion of Jews directly or
indirectly involved in politics and the judiciary compared with other European
peoples". He went on to say that anti-racist laws were introduced by
Jews simply to protect their financial assets. In November he was ordered
to pay damages of Fr. 20,000.
Also in October, the lawyer Éric Dela-croix, a legal representative
of Holocaust-deniers and their editors, was fined Fr. 20,000 for "denial
of crimes against humanity". In a book edited by Franco Deana and Carlo
Mattogno entitled Die Krematoriumsöfen von Auschwitz-Birkenau (The
Auschwitz-Birkenau Crematoria-ovens) published in 1994, Delacroix wrote
"La police de la pensée contre le révisionnisme"
(Thought Police Against Revisionism), in which he describes the Holocaust
as a "myth".
President Jacques Chirac took the occasion of International Human Rights
Day on 10 December to condemn the FN as racist and xenophobic, and demanded
the government react vigorously against racial discrimination.
In Grenoble, there were demonstrations on 9 December when 20,000 marched
in the streets. They were called out by as many as seventy associations
and organizations and were protesting against the presence of Jean-Marie
Le Pen, who was holding a meeting in the city. "No fascist in this
quarter, no quarter for fascists", chanted the protesters.
The Théâtre National de la Danse et de l'Image organized a
ceremony to honour the Jewish writer Marek Halter after an FN mayor blocked
his winning the Toulon Book Fair prize (see CULTURAL AND SPORTING LIFE).
All the measurable indications available suggest that during 1996 neither
Jews nor the Jewish community were the sole or even the principal target
of xenophobic racism from the far right and its sympathizers in France.
Nevertheless, the electoral rise of the Front na-tional and the popularity
of Jean-Marie Le Pen and his ideas give ample cause for concern, particularly
in light of the political activities of elected FN mayors in the south of
the country.
During 1996, for the first time since the end of the 1970s, there were public
expressions of antisemitic feeling throughout the country as a result of
the Abbé Pierre/Roger Garaudy affair (see HOLOCAUST DENIAL). It is
too early to ascertain whether or not this represents a new stage in the
history of antisemitism in France-one in which open expression of hostility
to Jews is acceptable. It does, however, reinforce the notion that Holocaust
denial continues to be the primary mode of expression of antisemitism in
France.
© JPR 1997