Jews are not the principal targets of xenophobia and racism in France. Nevertheless, the xenophobic rhetoric of the Front national (FN) continues to contribute to a deep-seated concern among many groups, including Jews. High unemployment, disenchantment with mainstream parties and exaggerated fears of globalization have boosted the FN's support, especially in the South of France, Alsace and the suburbs of Paris and Lyons. In the 1997-8 elections the FN's influence increased with the defeat of the traditional centre-right parties at every level of government. Mainstream political parties have clearly failed to devise a joint strategy against the FN, and the barrier between it and the centre-right is ever more porous: the temptations of an alliance seem to be increasingly irresistible for many members of a traditional right now in disarray.
Research has shown that increases in antisemitism are generally linked to specific events, such as the 1987 trial of Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, the 1990 desecration of the Jewish cemetery in Carpentras or the Gulf War. However, neither the high-profile 1997 trial of Maurice Papon for war crimes nor the more recent media attention given to Holocaust deniers Roger Garaudy and Robert Faurisson seems to have fuelled antisemitic activity.
The trial of Maurice Papon was constantly in the news in 1997-8, fostering a climate of collective soul-searching and atonement as France attempted to come to terms with its war-time past. Politicians and numerous institutions, including the church, took steps to end 'many years of heavy silence' on the subject.
Total population: 58,370,000
Jewish population: 600,000 (1 per cent of the total population)
Other minorities: according to the 1990 census, there were 4,165,950 immigrants in France, including those from Portugal (14.4 per cent of immigrant population), Algeria (13.3 per cent), Italy (11.6 per cent), Morocco (11 per cent), Spain (9.5 per cent), Tunisia (5 per cent), Turkey (4 per cent), and South-east Asia (3.7 per cent); regional minorities include Corsican, Alsatian, Basque and Breton groups; 1 per cent of the population was Muslim (mostly from North Africa).
Political system: constitutional democratic republic with a directly elected president and national assembly
Head of state: President Jacques Chirac (Rassemblement pour la république, RPR, Rally for the Republic) since May 1995
Government: since June 1997, a coalition of the Parti socialiste (PS, Socialist Party), Parti communiste français (PCF, French Communist Party) and Les Verts (Green Party) headed by Lionel Jospin (PS)
Other major parties: RPR, Union pour la démocratie française (UDF, Union for French Democracy), Force démocrate (FD, Democratic Force), Front national (FN, National Front), Parti radical (Radical Party), Parti républicain (PR, Republican Party), Parti social-démocrate (PSD, Social Democratic Party). In May 1998, following the centre-right's disastrous showing in legislative, regional and departmental elections (see below and Parties, organizations, movements: Mainstream political life), the RPR and UDF announced the formation of a confederation called L'Alliance (The Alliance) to unite all the forces on the traditional right that oppose compromise with the FN (see Opinion polls).
June 1997 legislative election: PS won the election with a large majority and Lionel Jospin was declared the new prime minister; the official results for the 577 seats in the national assembly are as follows (1993 figures in brackets):
PS: 241 (54)
RPR: 34 (247)
FN: 1 (0) (see also Parties, organizations, movements)
UDF: 108 (213)
PCF: 38 (23)
Les Verts: 7 (0)
Parti radical socialiste (PRS): 12 (-)
Other right-wing parties: 14 (24)
Other left-wing parties: 21 (16)
Independents: 1 (0)
Regional elections (15 March 1998): the left-wing coalition of Prime Minister Jospin (comprising PS, PCF and Les Verts) narrowly defeated the centre-right opposition, winning 39.6 per cent of the vote to 35.6 per cent. (The centre-right had previously controlled all but two regional councils.) The success of the FN, which secured 15.5 per cent of the vote, meant that, in those regions where neither the government coalition nor the centre-right opposition had gained a clear majority, it was in a position to influence who was elected as regional president. In the ensuing elections by regional councils of their presidents, 7 of the 21 mainland regions elected a president from the left-wing coalition; 9 elected presidents from one of the centre-right parties (RPR or UDF) without the support of the FN; and 5 elected presidents from the UDF with the backing of the FN (see Parties, organizations, movements: Mainstream political life). The official results for the 1,671 seats in regional councils are as follows (1992 figures in brackets where available):
PS: 395 (318)
RPR: 285 (318)
FN: 275 (239)
UDF: 262 (305)
PCF: 147 (115)
Les Verts: 68 (106)
Other right-wing parties: 101
Other left-wing parties: 70
Other extreme right-wing parties: 2
Extreme left-wing parties: 23
Diverse: 43
Departmental elections (22 March 1998) for the councils of one-third of the country's 99 departments: the left-wing coalition won control of 10 departments previously held by the centre-right, giving it control of a total of 33
Next legislative election: 2002
GDP 1997: FF8.2 trillion (US$1,456 billion)
GDP per capita 1997: c.US$25,000
Inflation 1997: 2 per cent
Unemployment February 1998: 12.2 per cent
Currency: US$1=FF5.63 (22 September 1998)
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 (Alsace and Lorraine, for example). In the sixteenth century Marranos (covert Jews) from Spain and Portugal found shelter in France.
During the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, while many called for the emancipation of the Jews, a non-Christian tradition of antisemitism was also initiated. At this time Jews were considered religious fanatics and were equated with financial power.
At the time of the French Revolution, the Jewish minority was highly stratified: a small group of former Marranos enjoyed a high level of culture and wealth and, being well integrated, 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 xenophobic reactions 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 conservative nationalism developed, drawing on the ideas of race science and 'Aryan' mythology. In 1886 Edouard Drumont published La France juive (Jewish France), the first antisemitic 'bestseller' in France, which raised myths about Jews to the status of an ideology.
The Dreyfus affair 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 (see Countering antisemitism). 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, the fears aroused by the rise of a socialist government (led by a Jew, Léon Blum) in 1936 and Nazi propaganda. The war-time Vichy government introduced anti-Jewish legislation and co-operated with the occupying Germans in identifying and arresting 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 appointment of a Jewish prime minister, Pierre Mendès-France, antisemitism resurfaced. A further phase began in 1967: some felt that de Gaulle's remark in November of that year, that the Jews were 'an elite people, sure of itself and domineering', opened the floodgates. What is indisputable is that Israel's victory in the 1967 Six Day War and subsequent anti-Zionist propaganda created a feeling of unease amongst the Jewish community in the 1970s and 1980s.
In the past decade, attention has focused on the advance of the FN and the growth of Holocaust denial. Moreover, in the last few years, concern has grown over communal tensions, particularly in suburban areas, between Jews and a small but active minority of militant Islamist youths of North African origin.
Steps are being taken by major French institutions to assess France's war-time history and atone for collaboration with the Nazis during the Vichy regime.
In January 1997 Prime Minister Alain Juppé announced the establishment of an eight-member commission to trace property seized from French Jews by the Vichy government in 1940-4. Speaking at the inauguration ceremony in March, Juppé said that the idea of the investigation was 'to learn or relearn history, not to rewrite it'. Calls for such an investigation had increased since July 1995 when President Chirac acknowledged that France was responsible for the deportation of thousands of Jews to concentration camps.
As part of this project a commission was set up in March 1997 to investigate the looting of property from Jews in Lyons. A prerequisite for joining the commission was the signing of a bill acknowledging 'the Shoah and the inhuman crimes committed against Jews during the Second World War'. In May 1997 the FN's general-secretary, Bruno Gollnisch, refused to sign the bill because he said he did not understand the true significance of the Hebrew term 'Shoah'.
In March 1997 a report in Le Monde said that French banks, like their Swiss counterparts, hold substantial assets in their reserves which formerly belonged to victims of the Holocaust. French accounts belonging to Jews were blocked by German orders in 1941. Under French law all accounts inactive for thirty years must be turned over to the government, but the report in Le Monde said there was no evidence of transfers to the state in the 1970s when this thirty-year period expired. The French banking association responded that individual banks would be investigating unclaimed accounts. It also emerged that unclaimed works of art taken from Jews during the Second World War remain in French museums.
In response to the September 1997 'declaration of repentance' made by the bishop of Saint Denis (see Countering antisemitism) FN leader Jean-Marie Le Pen said it was 'incredible that people who were not even born at the time of these events should come, in total disregard for historical truth, to ask for pardon when it is well known that the general attitude of the French church was one of compassion to those who were persecuted, including the Jews'.
In December 1997, in a ceremony attended by Jewish leaders and government officials,
President Chirac handed over files containing the names of all the French Jews arrested
and deported during the war to the Centre de recherche et de documentation (Centre for
Research and Documentation) in Paris. The files were discovered by Nazi-hunter Serge
Klarsfeld in 1992. Chirac called the files 'testimony to the moral abdication of a state'
and added that France's attempts to come to terms with its past had been 'too long
postponed'. Under current legislation only relatives of Holocaust victims have access to
the files, something that Prime Minister Jospin has promised to change.
In January 1997 Maurice Papon, a Vichy official accused of deporting 1,690 Jews to Nazi death camps during the Second World War, made a final appeal to the supreme court to avoid standing trial for crimes against humanity. It is widely believed that, after the war, Papon was protected by a 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. 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. The court upheld the September 1996 ruling of an appeal court that Papon should be tried. Papon claimed that he knew nothing about the Holocaust, never embraced Nazi ideology and was merely following orders.
In August 1997 a Bordeaux court barred Papon from leaving the country, and ordered him to hand in his passport and identity documents. In the same month he claimed damages from the Paris newspaper Le Soir for calling him a 'zealous servant of the Nazis'. The court found the newspaper guilty of endangering Papon's presumption of innocence. It ordered the newspaper to publish a statement by Papon, but it did not award him the 1 million francs (US$177,600) in damages he had sought.
Papon's trial began on 8 October 1997. The court decided that, because of his poor health, he could be released from prison for the duration of the trial. Demonstrators protested against the decision and the public prosecutor appealed against the ruling. Papon stayed in a luxury hotel upon his release, but was forced to move more than once because of threatening telephone calls.
During the trial the prosecution presented their case, compiled over sixteen years, detailing the eagerness with which the Vichy regime, including Papon, had collaborated with the Nazis. In his defence Papon claimed that he had attempted to save as many Jews as possible. Michel Bergès, a historian who had helped expose Papon sixteen years earlier, told Le Monde that recent research had convinced him that the prosecution's case was flawed. He claimed that Papon had been made to seem responsible for the deportation of Jews because he had signed the file copies of documents, the originals of which were signed by Papon's superior, Maurice Sabatier. He also said that Papon had worked with the chief rabbi of Bordeaux and the head of the office of Jewish affairs to remove names from lists of Jewish deportees. Papon's lawyer presented in court a submachine gun which he claimed was given to Papon by Israeli officials for helping them in a secret mission. Papon testified that the legislation enacted by the Vichy regime against Jews had 'shocked me politically, intellectually and emotionally'.
FN leader Jean-Marie Le Pen expressed his opposition to the trial, and called for a thirty-year statute of limitations to be applied to the war-time crimes with which Papon was charged.
The trial concluded in April 1998 when Papon was found guilty of complicity in the deportation of Jews, but not the more serious charge of complicity in their subsequent deaths. He was sentenced to ten years in prison and ordered to pay FF4.6 million (US$817,000) in damages to the victims and court costs. In July 1998 Papon's lawyers demanded that the fine be paid by the French government on the grounds that Papon's acts were 'indissolubly linked to his function' as secretary-general of the Gironde region under the Vichy regime and, in effect, working for the French state at the time. Papon will not go to prison until his appeals are exhausted, which could take many years. In July 1998 Serge Klarsfeld's request that Papon be stripped of his Légion d'honneur was turned down. Papon is the second Vichy official to be tried for crimes against humanity. The first was Paul Touvier who was convicted in 1994 of killing seven Jews. Touvier died in 1996 from prostate cancer, aged eighty-one.
According to the latest figures, published in La Lutte contre le racisme et la xenophobie (1997) by the Commission nationale consultative des droits de l'homme (CNCDH, National Consultative Commission on Human Rights), the number of racially motivated violent crimes decreased from 9 in 1996 to 5 in 1997. One death was attributed to racism in 1997. The report shows that Arabs, followed by Gypsies, are the primary targets of racism.
The number of recorded incidents of racial threats and abuse also declined from 199 in 1996 to 112 in 1997. These incidents occurred principally in the regions of Île-de-France (31 per cent), Lorraine (23 per cent) and Provence-Alpes-Côte-d'Azur (18 per cent). Only Corsica registered an upward trend in racially motivated attacks: there were 27 recorded incidents in 1997 compared to 22 in 1996, the primary targets being Arabs and Portuguese immigrants.
According to a survey carried out by the CNCDH and published in March 1997: 40 per cent of respondents described themselves as 'slightly' racist; 61 per cent felt 'there are too many Arabs in France'; and 79 per cent believed the behaviour of certain ethnic groups justifies racist attitudes (see also Opinion polls). The CNCDH also reports that racial discrimination is rife in the workplace. In Roubaix, for example, 90 per cent of youths with qualifications but nonetheless unemployed are of Arabic origin. The report adds that many job advertisements in newspapers specify racial preferences.
In December 1997 concern was raised about the excessive use of force by law enforcement officers following the death of two youths in suspicious circumstances: a North African youth was shot trying to run a roadblock near Fontainebleau, and a twenty-four-year-old was killed during interrogation by police in Lyons.
In 1997, for the first time since 1989, the number of requests for refugee status increased. According to the annual survey of the Office français de protection des réfugiés et apatrides (OFPRA, French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Expatriates), 21,416 people requested asylum in 1997 compared to 17,416 in 1996.
In February 1997 a proposed immigration law, introduced by the former interior minister, Jean-Louis Debré, was criticized as being a sop to the FN. One particularly objectionable clause required that French citizens inform the local town hall of the departure date of any foreign visitors. In protest, a campaign of civil disobedience was initiated by French filmmakers and later widened to include writers, doctors, lawyers, musicians and artists; the bill was also criticized by the European Parliament. Demonstrations against it led to violent confrontations with riot police. The clause was dropped from the bill as approved by the national assembly on 27 February, and replaced by one that requires foreign guests themselves to report their departure date and shifts the responsibility for monitoring foreign visitors from locally elected mayors to government-appointed prefects.
In June 1997 Lionel Jospin, the newly elected prime minister, ordered local authorities to accelerate the granting of residence papers to immigrants who complied with conditions established by the CNCDH. These conditions provide faster immigration procedures for families well integrated into society, spouses of immigrants with legal status, children born in France and their parents, students, patients receiving medical care and refugees who would be in danger if sent home. In the ensuing year, 80,000 illegal immigrants (sans papiers) were granted residence permits while 70,000 were refused the right of abode. In June 1998 the latter were awaiting deportation (see Countering antisemitism).
A law adopted in November 1997 grants automatic French nationality to children born in France of foreign parents once they reach the age of eighteen, provided they have lived in France for at least five years since the age of eleven. The new law relaxes legislation passed by a conservative government in 1993. Teenagers will have the right to reject French nationality in the six months before turning eighteen or within the year afterwards. A foreigner who marries a citizen can claim French nationality one year (instead of two) after marriage.
In October 1997 CNCDH criticized the forced return to Algeria by the French authorities of refugees whose lives might thereby be put at risk. In February 1998 several other organizations also condemned the expulsions, including the European Council on Refugees and Exiles and Amnesty International.
Illegal immigrants demanded the regularization of their status in demonstrations held in March and August 1998 marking the second anniversary of, first, the occupation of the church of Saint-Ambroise in Paris by illegal immigrants and, second, their violent expulsion by French police six months later. In March churches were occupied in Paris and Le Havre; the cathedral in Evry, south of Paris, was occupied with the approval of the diocese.
In a June 1998 interview - in a move widely seen as an attempt by the traditional right to cultivate links with the FN - former prime minister Edouard Balladur (RPR) called for a special commission to consider the FN's policy of 'national preference', a euphemism for legal discrimination against immigrants. Under such a scheme, social security benefits and housing and employment would be available to the 'native French' before anyone else. An opinion poll, conducted by SOFRES and published in Le Figaro the same month, showed that one-third of the electorate was in favour of 'national preference'.
The FN is France's most powerful party on the far right. Founded twenty-five years ago, it is a grouping of disparate strands: royalist, fundamentalist Catholic, Pétainist, antisemitic and ex-colonialist. In addition to its already complex ideological profile, the FN has recently begun to exploit fears that national culture and economic identity will be overwhelmed by the European Union; according to the FN, it is Jews and Freemasons who promote European integration. The FN continues to claim that its policies are primarily designed to rid politics of corruption and strengthen law and order, a claim that shifts attention from its traditional racist and anti-immigrant policies, which are still evident despite sometimes being conveyed by euphemism (i.e. the policy of 'national preference', see Racism and xenophobia).
In addition, there is hardly a special interest group for which the party has not established a FN-linked association or trade union. These include: organizations of Paris transport workers, prison officers, railway workers, teachers, farmers and hunters; associations for council housing tenants and pensioners; and so-called 'circles' for business people. FN-linked police and prison workers' associations are especially strong. The FN has been prohibited from setting up trade unions of their own, a prohibition upheld in April 1998 by the highest appeal court in the country.
One of the most effective products of the party's diversification has been its youth wing, the Front national de la jeunesse (FNJ, National Front for Youth), run by Le Pen's son-in-law, Samuel Maréchal (see also Czech Republic). With the active support of 12,000 members, it claims to be the biggest youth movement in French politics. The FNJ has two feeder movements for youngsters, starting at the age of eight with the Cadets de France, a nationalist scouts and guides movement.
At the FN's annual congress in Strasbourg in March 1997 - at which Le Pen was re-elected party leader - he called for the repatriation of immigrants, the repeal of laws banning the incitement of racial hatred on the grounds that they infringe freedom of speech, and the replacement of the ministry of culture with a ministry of French identity. A total of 2,200 party activists attended the three-day congress, including representatives from other European far-right parties, such as Frank Vanhecke of Belgium's Vlaams Blok (VB, Flemish Bloc, see Belgium) and Ricardo Sáenz de Ynestrillas of Spain's Alianza para la Unidad Nacional (AUN, Alliance for National Unity, see Spain). Le Pen also advocated the establishment of a pan-European National Front: 'Why not call this "Euronat" - a grouping of nationalists in Europe', he told the party congress. In November 1997, Le Pen repeated his call for Euronat in Bucharest at the party congress of the Partidul Romania Mare (PRM, Greater Romania Party, see Romania), and he spent time in Slovakia cultivating links with Jan Slota, leader of the Slovenska narodna strana (SNS, Slovak National Party, see Slovakia). He also formed an alliance with Gerhard Frey's far-right Deutsche Volksunion (DVU, German People's Union, see Germany) following its success in the German regional elections in April 1998; Le Pen and Frey signed an agreement in Strasbourg in June 1998 to support each other in the 1999 European parliamentary elections and to fight the introduction of the European single currency.
Since the 1997 conference, however, a power struggle within the FN - between Le Pen's 'neither right nor left but France first' strategy and deputy leader Bruno Mégret's project of forging an FN-dominated alliance with the traditional right - has been intensifying. Although Le Pen is considered the most charismatic of the FN's leading lights, Mégret is the key party ideologist and, as the party's unrivalled number two, seems set to replace the ageing leader. In the run-up to the May/June 1997 legislative election Mégret and general-secretary Bruno Gollnisch publicly contradicted Le Pen's advice to electors to vote for left-wing candidates in the second round in order to 'paralyse Chirac's project of submerging France in the Europe of Maastricht'. At the beginning of April 1998 Mégret was quoted in the Italian right-wing weekly Il Borghese as saying that the FN 'could find a route to power via an alliance with the RPR and a renewed UDF'. If Le Pen's being barred by the courts from public office for two years (see Legal matters) stands, his demise could be accelerated. In August 1998 a confrontation seemed to be brewing when Mégret said that - in the absence of the suspended Le Pen - he would lead the roster of FN candidates in the June 1999 European parliamentary elections; Le Pen had already stated that his wife Jany Le Pen would head the FN slate in his place.
Revelations about the FN's security organization, Département protection et sécurité (DPS, Protection and Security Department), were published in the mainstream daily Libération in mid-November 1997 in an interview with an unnamed former DPS member. The ex-DPS man described how members often carry weapons, and told of 'special missions' - undertaken by 'shock groups' composed mainly of former military personnel - to infiltrate anti-FN demonstrations and attack leaders of anti-fascist organizations and journalists unsympathetic to the FN. The FN categorically denied the allegations and launched an internal enquiry to establish the identity of the 'whistle-blower'. The DPS apparently has approximately 1,700 members, most of whom are ex-soldiers, gendarmes or police officers. Its leader, ex-parachutist Bernard Courcelle, claims to have rid the DPS of skinheads and neo-Nazis in favour of 'professionals', and to be concerned solely with protecting FN meetings and events against counter-demonstrations. In May 1998 the national assembly voted to set up a commission of enquiry into the organization.
The FN's traditional May Day march in Paris attracted over 8,000 followers in 1997, and more than 12,000 in 1998. The parade is traditionally led by a Joan of Arc figure supported by guards on horseback, and Le Pen lays flowers at the Joan of Arc statue. The crowds wave tricolores and chant 'France for the French'. In 1998 the far-right splinter groups participated, having chosen to cancel their own separate annual demonstration scheduled for the following week.
In the February 1997 mayoral election in Vitrolles, the FN strengthened its grip by taking control of this, its fourth provincial town (in addition to Toulon, Marignane and Orange). Vitrolles's new mayor, Catherine Mégret (see Legal matters) - the wife of the FN's deputy leader and now her chief adviser, Bruno Mégret - took almost 52 per cent of the votes, representing an important FN victory. Mainstream parties played down the FN victory in Vitrolles, asserting that support for the FN did not undermine mainstream democratic political life (see Antisemitic incidents: cultural manifestations).
In January 1998 the Vitrolles municipal council approved a racially discriminatory one-off subsidy of FF5,000 (US$890) for children born to at least one French or European parent, making couples without European nationality, including immigrants, ineligible. In mid-April, however, the administrative court in Marseilles judged the measure to be 'illegal' and annulled it. About thirty payments were made before the ban and at least one couple refused to accept the subsidy. The Vitrolles council vowed to continue the payments until an appeal against the ban was completed.
In the September 1997 local election in Mulhouse (Alsace), the FN candidate, Gérard Freulet, was elected to the council with 53 per cent of the vote.
In the May/June 1997 legislative election (see General background) - called in April by President Chirac partly in the hope that the FN would be unable to organize itself quickly enough and would be thereby revealed as a marginal force in political life - the FN's campaign focused on unemployment, European integration and political corruption. The party contested 570 of the 577 seats of the national assembly, qualified for the second round in 133 constituencies and won one seat for Jean-Marie Le Chevallier (see below), the mayor of Toulon. The FN received 3.78 million votes, 15 per cent of the overall vote, making it France's third largest party. (The RPR was only two points ahead of the FN.) In Alsace the FN came second with 23 per cent of the votes.
Following the socialist victory, however, there was growing speculation about the establishment of a coalition between the FN and the parliamentary right (RPR-UDF). Some mainstream newspapers, broadcast media and politicians cultivated links with FN personalities, eroding the taboo once associated with Le Pen's party.
The 15 March 1998 regional elections provided fresh evidence of the new-found power of the FN to shake up mainstream politics (see General background). The FN came third with 15.5 per cent of the vote nationwide - securing as much as 25 per cent in the south-east region of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur - which represents a steady increase over the last twelve years: the FN polled 9.7 per cent of the vote in the 1986 regional elections, and 13.9 in 1992. In the 20 March election of the presidents of regional councils - which determines who controls the councils - the FN was in a position to play kingmaker in all those regions in which neither the ruling left-wing coalition (39.6 per cent) nor the centre-right opposition (35.6) had won a clear majority. Although the opposition leaders of the RPR and UDF issued orders to their members not to make deals with the FN - President Chirac described the FN as 'racist and xenophobic' and a danger to democracy - a number of UDF incumbents defied the instruction. In the end five UDF presidents were elected with the support of the FN. Two resigned under pressure and the three who refused to resign were expelled from the party in April (see Opinion polls). One of the three, Charles Millon of the Rhône-Alpes region, subsequently set up a new centre-right party, La Droite (The Right) - whose first convention was held in Paris in June 1988 - which advocates closer ties with the FN. Alain Madelin, leader of Démocratie liberale (DL, Liberal Democracy), a grouping within the UDF, congratulated the five rebels as the UDF leadership was denouncing them. In June 1998 the government passed a measure reforming the way regional councils are elected to lessen the influence of parties receiving a minority of votes.
In the departmental elections held a week later (22 March 1998, see General background), the right had its worst showing since 1958. Of the 3,857 seats it won, some one-third went to the FN. Although dozens of local centre-right politicians reportedly made alliances with the FN in order to ensure their re-election, many lost their seats.
In April/May 1998 a by-election was held in Toulon to replace Jean-Marie Le Chevallier, the FN's one member of the national assembly (see above), who was forced to resign due to financial irregularities (although he remains mayor of Toulon). Standing for the FN was his wife, Cendrine Le Chevallier (see Legal matters), who won the first round with nearly 40 per cent of the vote but was beaten (50.06 per cent to 49.93 per cent) in the second round by the PS candidate, leaving the FN temporarily without representation in the national parliament. In July 1998 however the French constitutional court declared the result invalid on the grounds that a television programme screened on polling day in Toulon, urging voters to 'block' the FN, amounted to 'electoral propaganda'. In the new by-election in September 1998 the PS candidate won by an increased majority (53 per cent).
Other significant groups and movements on the far right include Nouvelle résistance (NR, New Resistance), founded in 1991 when its leader, Christian Bouchet, broke away from the Troisième voie (TV, Third Way), formerly the principal proponent of so-called national revolution on the French far right. In recent years, and despite NR associations with foreign far-right organizations, the party has sought to align itself with the FN. NR activist Pierre-André Beck continues to be municipal communications director in the FN-controlled town of Orange. After almost half of the NR's membership left the party in the summer of 1996 due to dissatisfaction with its direction, a fierce legal battle ensued during which the party's assets and publications were frozen. Some NR defectors joined the Parti communautaire national-européen (PCN, National European Community Party) run by former Belgian activist Luc Michel.
Restauration nationale (RN, National Restoration), a monarchist movement that considers Jews, Protestants and Freemasons 'anti-French', continues to operate with a membership of a few dozen militants. Pierre Bernardi, a member of the French parliament and mayor of Montferneuil, a suburb of Paris, is a sympathizer.
The Nouvelle Droite (New Right) is one of the shadowy far-right networks that act as disseminators of ideological material. Under its aegis, three or four groups, all run by a handful of activists, produce material drawing on Nazi racial theories.
The Groupement de recherches et d'études pour la civilisation européenne (GRECE, Research and Study Group for European Civilization, see also Belgium) is a racist think-tank which attempts to introduce far-right ideas into the intellectual mainstream. It opposes the influence of the United States and 'cosmopolitanism', and is concerned with socio-biological ideas and the promotion of 'Indo-European' - a terminological replacement for 'Aryan' - culture. Considerably weakened in recent times, it confines its principal activities to the production of articles and the organization of conferences although many of its former leading lights are now close to the FN.
Terre et peuple (Land and People), led by Pierre Vial, is a cultural association on the fringe of the FN that has consolidated an influential position inside the FNJ.
The neo-Nazi skinhead movement in France continues to be a marginal phenomenon. Skinheads form gangs or join other political organizations. Most find the FN too moderate, and attach themselves to splinter groups such as the Parti nationaliste français et européen (PNFE, French and European Nationalist Party, see Legal matters) and L'Oeuvre française (France's Mission) - which have apparently now merged - and Groupe union défense (GUD, Group for the Defence of the Union). L'Oeuvre française, founded in 1968 and led by Pierre Sidos, is marked by a Catholic supremacist ideology shot through with antisemitism and a bitter hostility to European union; PNFE, founded in the 1980s and led by Claude Cornilleau, is a prototypical Holocaust-denying neo-Nazi group.
In France the international far-right and satanist skinhead group Charlemagne
Hammerskins is based in Toulon and comprises some 1,500 members devoted to the memory of
Hitler. The group publishes (both in print and on-line) the magazine Wotan (Will of
the Aryan), a mélange of racism, neo-Nazism, Holocaust denial and satanism. The group has
close ties to the British faction of neo-Nazis led by Charlie and Steve Sargent (National
Socialist Movement (NSM), see United Kingdom), and one of its leaders, Hervé Guttoso, has
lived in London since 1995. Joint British and French police raids on the groups in
November 1997 and February 1998 resulted in a dozen members being caught in Paris, Rouen,
Marseilles, Lyons and Toulon, as well as the gathering of a great deal of evidence which
led to further arrests in subsequent months. Guttoso himself was arrested and held by
British police in February 1998 awaiting extradition to France. Another far-right skinhead
group with satanist connections is Ad Majorem Satane Gloriam (AMSG, For the Greater Glory
of Satan), a sect based in Rouen.
According to the latest figures by CNCDH, there were three reported incidents of violence against Jews in 1997 compared to one in 1996. Eighty acts of antisemitic behaviour, intimidation or public abuse were reported, representing little variation over the last three years. As in previous years, most antisemitic acts were committed in the region of Île-de-France (59 per cent).
Two synagogues in Nice were daubed with antisemitic graffiti in August 1997, and the Deloye synagogue in Paris was vandalized in October; although police suspected a group of neo-Nazi skinheads who were seen chanting and making Nazi salutes in the vicinity of the synagogue, no arrests were made. Other targets for antisemitic vandalism in 1997 included synagogues in Évry, Venissieux, Villeurbanne and Athis-Mons, and a Jewish school in Créteil.
In July 1998 about fifty gravestones were desecrated and vandalized in the Jewish cemetery in the FN-controlled town of Orange. In a statement, the local council suggested that 'those hoping for another Carpentras will probably be disappointed'.
In March 1997 twenty-one Paris school directors alerted the board of education that their schools were being sent antisemitic and Holocaust-denial propaganda which attributed judicial proceedings against Roger Garaudy and Brigitte Bardot (see Legal matters) to a 'Zionist lobby'.
In April 1998 students at the University of Lyons protested the presence, within the university, of the Institut d'études indo-européennes (Institute for Indo-European Studies) which they described as an 'ideological laboratory for the FN'. The director of the institute is Jean Haudry, a member of the scientific committee of the national council of the FN; several staff members are also associated with that committee.
In June 1997 a fire was started in Deville-Lès-Rouen at the premises of Jonathan Frips, a company run by Avner Sabban, who is Jewish. Previously the company had been subjected to antisemitic graffiti and threatening telephone calls.
In February 1997 the FN mayor of Toulon, Jean-Marie Le Chevallier, dismissed Gérard Paquet from his post as director of the Châteauvallon Théâtre national de la danse et de l'image, and applied to have the theatre disbanded. Jacques Higelin, a rock musician and a supporter of Paquet, described the dismissal as 'typical of a totalitarian or fascist state'. In April, following mass demonstrations in support of Paquet (see Countering antisemitism), a court rejected the mayor's bid to shut down the theatre. Paquet had declared his opposition to the FN after the party criticized him for providing a forum for multi-ethnic projects such as Jewish writing and Afro-Caribbean music. In June 1997, following the socialist victory in the legislative election, the new government sacked the Gaullist prefect for the region of Var, Jean-Charles Marchiani, on account of his support for Le Chevallier's efforts to close the Châteauvallon theatre.
Following the FN's gaining control of Vitrolles in February 1997 (see Parties, organizations, movements: Mainstream political life), the party's cultural preferences - for arts and other practices that celebrate traditional French and so-called 'Indo-European' civilization - became increasingly apparent. In September 1997 the municipal council renamed several streets in an attempt to 'reaffirm its French identity'. New street-names included those of deceased FN members and French nationalists. Projects that the council has supported include a festival celebrating the solstice, an 'Indo-European' ballet and a centenary celebration for Julius Evola. In October 1997 the Sous-Marin café, a popular meeting place in Vitrolles for rock and jazz musicians from the minority communities, was forced to close after the new mayor cut off its municipal subsidies. The minister for culture, Catherine Trautmann, denounced the closure as a 'new form of racism'.
Many cultural institutions in the four regions whose councils emerged from the March 1998 elections in the control of the FN are likewise in danger of losing their public funding. Alain Jamet, the FN leader in Languedoc-Roussellon, said he hoped to break the 'cultural dictatorship' of the left, and that the council would not 'be dictated to by a bunch of cultural trendies who hold out their bowl and spit into the soup with impunity'. Jamet said he would not support public funding of the regional philharmonic orchestra, the Centre chorégraphique national (National Centre for Choreography), the prize-winning Théatre des Treize-Vents in Montpellier or that city's dance and Mediterranean film festivals, all of which have directors who have criticized FN policies. In April 1998 a demonstration of some 20,000 was held in Montpellier, organized by regional artists and anti-fascist organizations, to demand the removal of the regional president.
By the end of June 1998 the cultural institutions in Lyons, the urban centre of Rhône-Alpes, that had lost their public subsidies were the Rhône-Alpes Cinéma (a foundation for aiding the production of films), Image aiguë, a multiracial youth theatre company, the Lyons Biennale de la danse and several artistic projects based in the city's most deprived districts.
In September 1997 the far-right, FN-affiliated, Catholic daily Présent condemned the apology offered by the French church for its war-time collaboration with the Nazis (see Publications and media and Countering antisemitism). It described the apology as an 'episcopal capitulation' to pressure from the Conseil représentatif des institutions juives de France (CRIF, Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France).
A number of religious far-right groups exist in France, including: Chrétienté-Solidarité (Christianity-Solidarity); Contre-réforme catholique (Catholic Counter-Reform), headed by Father Georges de Nantes; Fraternité sacerdotale St Pie X (Sacred Brotherhood of St Pius X, see also Belgium) - established in 1970 by the late Monsignor Lefèbvre and led by the father superior of France, Father Benoît de Jorna - and its militant wing, Renaissance catholique, headed by Jean-Pierre Maugendre; Union nationale pour l'Europe chrétienne (UNEC, National Union for Christian Europe), which includes among its sponsors Martine Lehideux, a FN member of the European Parliament; and the Chevaliers de Notre Dame (Knights of Notre Dame), a Christian fundamentalist group that helped convicted war criminal Paul Touvier to escape justice.
The Gayssot law passed in July 1990 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'. This includes questioning, doubting or trivializing the Holocaust. Despite efforts by the authorities to enforce the law, however, there were ten incidents of Holocaust denial in 1997 recorded by the CNCDH.
In May 1997 the Conseil supérieur de l'audiovisuel (CSA, Supreme Council for Audio-visuals) issued a warning to Radio Courtoisie for broadcasting Holocaust-denial material (see Publications and media). During its programme Libre journal, a guest interviewee, Pierre de Villemret, had expressed doubts about the existence of the gas chambers.
Three teachers were suspended from their posts in 1997 for 'teaching Holocaust denial', including the director of studies at the Institut d'études politiques in Toulouse in February and a history teacher in Montoir-de-Bretagne in June. A mathematics teacher in Honfleur in Normandy, Vincent Reynouard, was dismissed in April 1997 for asking pupils to calculate the number of Jews murdered by the Nazis. Reynouard, who five years earlier served a one-month prison sentence for inciting racial hatred and spreading Nazi propaganda, said the exercise was useful because the numbers involved were 'so impressively large'. He had also used the school's facilities to disseminate Holocaust-denial material. In April 1998, an administrative tribunal in Caen rejected his appeal for reinstatement.
In June 1997, a humanities teacher in Nantes, Michel Adams, was suspended from René-Guy-Cadou college after questioning, during a lecture to students given by a former deportee, whether the deportation of Jews to concentration camps really occurred.
The trial of Holocaust-denier Robert Faurisson, formerly a professor at the University of Lyons, began in Paris in November 1997 following the publication on the Internet - on the Holocaust-denial web-site AAARGH - of his Les visions cornues de l'Holocauste (Distorted Images of the Holocaust) in which he wrote: 'The Holocaust of the Jews is a fiction.' In another text posted on the same web-site, 'Maurice Papon et Yves Jouffa: deux poids, deux mesures?' (Two weights, two measures?), Faurisson accused Jouffa, honorary president of the Amicale du camp de Drancy (Drancy Association) and the Ligue des droits de l'homme (League of Human Rights), of having been a 'guard at the Drancy concentration camp'.
In April 1998 Faurisson was convicted of denying crimes against humanity in an article published in Rivarol (see Publications and media) in July 1996. He was fined FF20,000 (US$3,600).
In December 1997 Le Pen provoked outrage when he repeated his 1987 remark that the crematoria in the Nazi death camps were 'a detail of history'. His comment was made at a press conference in Munich held to mark the launch of former SS officer Franz Schönhuber's book, 'Le Pen, the Rebel: The National Front, a Model for Germany'. (Schönhuber is the founder of the German far-right organization Die Republikaner (REP, The Republicans, see Germany).) Anti-racist organizations took immediate legal action against Le Pen (see Legal matters), who responded: 'The gas chambers have nothing to do with antisemitism . . . If you take a book of 1,000 pages on the Second World War you will have four pages on deportation, and on these four pages you will have six lines on the gas chambers.' The German public prosecutor in Munich requested that Le Pen's European parliamentary immunity be lifted so that he could be tried for Holocaust denial in the German courts. In October 1998 the European parliament voted overwhelmingly (420 to 20) to lift Le Pen's immunity.
In his January 1998 trial on charges of denying crimes against humanity, the eighty-five-year-old Roger Garaudy was found guilty and fined FF120,000 (US$21,300). In his 1995 book, Les Mythes fondateurs de la politique Israelienne (Founding Myths of Israeli Politics) - published by La Vielle Taupe (The Old Mole), publishers of numerous Holocasut-denial works (see below) - Garaudy denies the existence of Nazi gas chambers and claims that the number of Jews killed by the Nazis has been grossly exaggerated on behalf of the Zionist cause. '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 the term 'genocide' is inappropriate for describing the Holocaust, '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"'. The term 'genocide', he concludes, should apply only to crimes committed by the Hebrews against the Canaanites 3,000 years ago as described in the Book of Joshua. The trial sparked a wave of support throughout the Arab world for Garaudy, an ex-Communist, ex-Catholic, Islamic convert (see Egypt, Iran, Morocco, Syria).
Pierre Guillaume is also to stand trial for denying crimes against humanity. Guillaume
is the director of the publishing house La Vieille Taupe, which distributes antisemitic
and Holocaust-denial literature.
There are more than 300 far-right publications in France espousing the views of neo-Nazis, Catholic nationalists, monarchists and Holocaust deniers, including in particular Minute, National-Hebdo, Rivarol, Monde et Vie, L'Action française and Présent. These periodicals are often antisemitic and xenophobic, and very often support or have close ties to the FN. Most of them, furthermore, are freely sold in newpaper kiosks, a phenomenon unique in Western Europe to France.
There are also several official FN publications, including Identité edited by Bruno Mégret. Français d'abord! La Lettre de Jean-Marie Le Pen (French First! Jean-Marie Le Pen's Letter) is the only periodical expressing the party's official positions; its twelve-page issues are published bi-monthly and are disseminated to a restricted readership. Its 'youth' supplement Agir is aimed at FNJ members. Some local branches of the party also publish their own papers.
Minute, the most popular far-right publication, was created in 1962 and has been edited since 1993 by Gérald Penciolelli. At its peak in the 1960s Minute's circulation reached 200,000 although, according to Le Monde in March 1998, its readership in 1997 had dropped to 50,000 with kiosk sales of 22,000. Subtitled 'The politically incorrect weekly', it is anti-Gaullist and populist, and acts as a bridge between the FN and the traditional right.
National-Hebdo (National Weekly) has been affiliated with the FN since its first appearance in 1984: it is produced at FN headquarters and up to 40 per cent of its funds come from the party. It was originally subtitled 'The official journal of Jean-Marie Le Pen', but this was changed to 'The official journal of the FN'. Eventually all explicit references to the party were dropped to allow for more editorial freedom, especially the freedom to publish Holocaust-denial material. Jean-Yves Camus described National-Hebdo as 'an official FN journal, expressing the most radical elements of the FN which the party cannot publicly assume' (Le Front national, 1996). National-Hebdo, now edited by Roland Gaucher, provides news and information about FN policy and local activities, and gives publicity to more extreme groups. It has a circulation of almost 20,000 and kiosk sales of at least 9,500. Among its contributors, past and present, are Jean-Claude Varanne, a member of the FN's central committee, the monarchist Martin Peltier and the antisemite Emmanuel Ratier (see also Belgium), editor of Encyclopédie, which catalogues so-called 'Judeo-Masonic conspiracies'.
There was an outcry following the publication in National-Hebdo (8 August 1998) of an article in which 'round-ups' and 'concentration camps' were called for to effect 'the immediate expulsion of illegal immigrants'. Among the many individuals and groups condemning the article was Charles Pasqua, a former RPR hardliner (see Countering antisemitism).
The bi-monthly L'Action française, originally founded by Charles Maurras after the war and now edited by Pierre Pujo, has a circulation of approximately 5,500 and kiosk sales of about 600.
The weekly Rivarol was established in 1951 to restore the 'good name' of the Vichy regime, and was overhauled in 1962 when it began to publish Holocaust-denial articles by Paul Rassinier and Robert Faurisson (see Holocaust denial). Its circulation is estimated at 2,000 with only a few hundred copies sold at kiosks (see also Belgium).
Présent, a daily paper founded in 1982 by Bernard Antony (see Religious antisemitism and Legal matters) and edited by Jean Madiran, is primarily an organ of Catholic nationalism with a circulation of about 10,000.
Monde et vie is a bi-monthly journal of Catholic nationalism, closely associated with Monsignor Lefèbvre, edited by Claude Giraud (see below). It is sold in kiosks throughout the country.
The Parti national républicain (PNR, National Republican Party) publishes Alliance populaire (Popular Alliance), with a circulation of approximately 17,000.
In 1997 the antisemitic tract L'Empire invisible (The Invisible Empire), which denounces the alleged influence of Jews in politics, media and finance, was found circulating in fourteen regions, including Rouen, Bourges and Paris. Another libellous document entitled 'Brigitte Bardot traînée devant les tribunaux! Les Français culpabilisés et humiliés. L'Islam manipulé et instrumenté par le lobby sioniste!' (Brigitte Bardot dragged before the courts! French citizens turned into criminals and humiliated. Islam manipulated and controlled by the Zionist lobby!) was also widely circulated. In September 1997 copies of the pamphlet 'Comité de défense contre les agresseurs juifs' (Defence committee against the Jewish aggressors) were placed at the entrance of a rugby stadium and in telephone booths in Dijon.
The Internet continues to provide, as it has since the early 1990s, a protected site for French antisemitic and Holocaust-denying propaganda, advertisements for Nazi memorabilia and banned literature. In June 1997 judicial proceedings were initiated by the Union des étudiants juifs de France (UEJF, Union of Jewish Students in France) against the presence of racist material on the Internet. A web-site sponsored by the rock singer Costes hosted songs deemed by the UEJF to be 'particularly injurious to Arabs, Jews and Japanese people'.
The Paris branch of the far-right bookshop l'Æncre (which also has a branch in Toulon) continues to sell antisemitic and Holocaust-denial works despite a court ruling in May 1996 that it stop disseminating racist materials (for Belgian affiliates, see Belgium). The UEJF notified a commercial tribunal that the bookshop was offering works such as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, How to Recognize a Jew by George Montandon and Le Péril juif (The Jewish Danger) by Marcel Jouhandeau.
The other principal far-right bookshops in Paris are La Joyeuse Garde, La Librairie française, La Librairie Saint-Nicolas and La Librairie du Savoir (in the affluent fifth arrondissement); La Librairie Dobrée continues to operate in Nantes. The most significant mail-order distributor of far-right material continues to be Diffusion de la pensée française (DPF, Dissemination of French Thought) run by Jean Auguy.
A subscription radio station, Radio-Courtoisie (Radio Civility) - which has been
broadcasting for ten years via five transmitters in Normandy - is, according to its
director Jean Ferré, devoted to 'defence of the French language and culture' and supports
'patriotic sentiment and French nationalism' (see also Holocaust denial). Ferré says that
the FN 'occupies a place in its broadcasts that corresponds to its place in the country'.
The station's most extreme presenter, Serge de Beketch, introduces his programme as
follows: 'Welcome to Radio-Courtoisie, the free radio of the real French-speaking nation.'
Beketch describes himself openly on the air as 'racist, anti-democratic and anti-liberal',
and punctuates his programmes with references to, for example, a 'Judaeo-Masonic lobby' or
the 'occupied territories' (suburban council estates). In November 1996 he declared: 'in
France in 1943 the Jews were not treated as badly as the FN is today'. Among the station's
senior staff are Claude Giraud (editor of Monde et vie, see above) and Jean-Gilles
Malliarkis, formerly the leader of the national-revolutionary Troisième voie (Third Way).
Radio-Courtoisie - which claims 100,000 listeners and supporters - is funded by
subscriptions and sales of cassettes of its broadcasts; it does not advertise and eschews
publicity.
An opinion poll carried out by the Conseils sondages analyses (CSA, Advice on Survey Analysis), following the FN's victory at Vitrolles in February 1997, shows that the success of the FN is a cause for concern among the general population: 78 per cent of respondents saw the FN as a far-right party, 70 per cent believed it to be racist and 64 per cent believed it to be a danger to democracy; on the other hand 70 per cent agreed that the FN should be represented in the national assembly because 'it is a party of the electorate'.
Among the results of a poll of supporters of the traditional centre-right parties following the March 1998 regional elections (see Parties, organizations, movements: Mainstream political life), conducted by the principal French polling organization SOFRES for Le Nouvel Observateur, were the following: 63 per cent of respondents disapproved of RPR and UDF candidates making alliances with the FN; 55 per cent thought it right that such candidates be expelled; 61 per cent thought that the centre-right should fight the FN in future elections although 25 per cent thought that electoral alliances might be made in certain circumstances; 37 per cent thought that a pact between the FN and the centre-right was unacceptable under any circumstances, while 23 per cent thought that it might be acceptable if Le Pen was no longer the FN leader.
Among the results of an annual poll by SOFRES for the television channel RTL and Le Monde conducted in April 1998 were the following: 42 per cent thought the FN were a political party like any other, and 53 per cent thought it was not; 79 per cent described themselves as mostly or wholly against lepéniste politics, and 20 per cent as mostly or wholly in agreement with them (among supporters of the centre-right parties 64 per cent were mostly or wholly against and 34 per cent were mostly or wholly in favour); 73 per cent perceived the FN as a threat to French democracy while 24 per cent thought it was not; as for the contest between Le Pen and Mégret, 59 per cent characterized Le Pen as a handicap to the FN (against 27 per cent who thought him an asset), while opinions on Mégret were evenly divided (39 per cent thought him an asset and 39 per cent thought him a handicap).
A June 1998 poll, conducted by SOFRES, showed that 68 per cent were against 'national preference' in matters of employment, housing and family allowance and nearly one-third were in favour of it (see Racism and xenophobia).
The results of the ninth annual survey conducted by the CSA for CNCDH and the Service d'information du gouvernement (SIG, Government Information Service) demonstrate a marked contradiction: on the one hand, French society is shot through with racism and xenophobia, and such notions are far from confined to those supporting the extreme right; on the other hand, an attachment to the values of 'republican generosity' remain strong. An analysis (Le Monde, 2 July 1998) of the survey - carried out on a sample of 1,040 persons between 24 November and 6 December 1997 - divided respondents into three groups (leaving to one side the 9 per cent who were too unsure of their opinions to be categorized). The first group (nearly one in five at 18 per cent) comprises those who describe themselves as 'very racist' and who are in complete, or nearly complete, agreement with lepéniste ideas: they no longer feel 'at home' in present-day France, they think there are too many Arabs and Blacks in the country, that immigrants come to France to collect welfare benefits, that it is hardly, if at all, necessary to fight racism, and that most immigrants are too different to be integrated into French society. The second group (40 per cent) includes those described as 'tempted by racism': they are likely to share many opinions with the first group but they describe themselves as only 'slightly' (as opposed to 'very') racist and they do not support lepénisme. The third group (33 per cent) is described as 'anti-racist': it includes those who reject out of hand the ideas held by the first group.
Some of the particular results are worth noting: 73 per cent believe that many immigrants come to France to collect welfare benefits; 67 per cent think that the health of a democracy can be judged on its ability to integrate 'others'; 68 per cent think that foreign workers are no different to other workers; 54 per cent believe that the presence of immigrants is a source of cultural enrichment; 28 per cent of those who voted for the left-wing coalition in the 1997 legislative election 'often' approve of racist sentiments, and 35 per cent of those who voted for the centre-right 'often' do so.
Despite the obvious widespread currency of racist ideas, a comparison with the 1990 results is encouraging: 56 per cent think there are now too many Arabs in France (compared with 76 per cent in 1990); 27 per cent think there are too many Blacks (compared with 46 per cent in 1990); and 15 per cent think there are too many Jews (compared with 24 per cent in 1990). Also encouraging is that fact that anti-racist sentiments are stronger in those parts of the country with large (over 10 per cent) immigrant populations than they are in those parts where relatively few if any immigrants live.
For those charged under the Gayssot law with denying crimes against humanity, see Holocaust denial.
Religious and racial discrimination is prohibited under French law, and incitement to racial hatred is a criminal offence. Desecrating grave sites of a specific ethnic, religious, national or racial group is also a criminal offence punishable by imprisonment and fines.
In March 1997 the trial began in Marseilles of Yannick Garnier, Bertrand Nouveau, Patrick Laonegro and Olivier Fimbry, accused of the 1990 desecration of the Jewish cemetery in Carpentras, during which graves were smashed and the body of Félix Germon was exhumed. All four defendants - affiliated with the PNFE (see Parties, organizations, movements) - expressed remorse, and Garnier and Nouveau said they had since abandoned their neo-Nazi views. In April 1997 each received a custodial sentence: Fimbry and Laonegro, the ring-leaders, were sentenced to two years in prison, the maximum term; Garnier and Nouveau received twenty-month sentences. The court described the desecration as 'stemming from a primitive and violent antisemitism so relentless that it pursued individuals beyond death'.
In April 1997 a court in Toulon rejected a bid by the FN mayor Jean-Marie Le Chevallier to close the Théâtre national de la danse et de l'image in Châteauvallon (see Antisemitic incidents: cultural manifestations).
In May 1997 a court in Montpellier found FN official and founder of Présent Bernard Antony guilty of incitement to racial hatred. He was given a six-month suspended prison sentence and fined FF50,000 (US$8,880). In a reference to the 1996 occupation of the church of St Bernard in Paris by illegal immigrants, Antony told the local paper that French nationals 'should invade mosques and synagogues because their members are taking over our churches'. He added: 'I denounce any liberal Christian who welcomes Negroes into their communities.' The Mouvement contre le racisme et pour l'amitié entre les peuples (MRAP, Movement against Racism and for Friendship between Peoples) and the Ligue des droits de l'homme (League of Human Rights) filed a civil complaint against him.
In June 1997 a court in Marignane overturned the FN policy, initiated by the deputy-mayor Jean-Christian Tarelli in 1996, of replacing mainstream political journals in the local library with the far-right publications Présent, Rivarol and National-Hebdo (see Publications and media). The prosecuting lawyer at the hearing, initiated by eleven users of the Marignane library, described the FN's initiative as 'a violation of pluralism and neutrality'.
At the end of June 1997 the FN mayor of Vitrolles, Catherine Mégret (see Parties, organizations, movements: Mainstream political life), went on trial, accused of inciting racial hatred in a newspaper interview. Three anti-racist associations and more than 700 private citizens had complained following her interview with the German daily Berliner Zeitung (reprinted in Le Monde, 26 February 1997), in which she called immigrants 'colonizers'. She said that Blacks were genetically different to Whites, and that benefits for immigrants should be withdrawn and given to French people. In September 1997 Mégret was given a three-month suspended prison sentence and fined FF50,000 (US$8,880), a sentence upheld on appeal in March 1998.
In November 1997 the Paris court of appeal toughened the sentence imposed on Georges Mathis, the editor of the journal Le Réverbère (a magazine distributed by the homeless), in which he had written 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'. Mathis was found guilty of incitement to racial hatred in November 1996, fined FF20,000 (US$3,550) and given a suspended prison sentence. At an appeal hearing in October 1997 his suspended sentence was dropped. The Paris court of appeal reinstated it following further racist comments published in his journal.
Also in November 1997 a Paris court of appeal found Brigitte Bardot guilty of racial provocation. She was fined FF10,000 (US$1,775) for an article she wrote in Le Figaro in April 1996 protesting the ritual slaughter of sheep during Muslim festivals. Bardot wrote: 'Ritual slaughters are turning abattoirs into chambers of horror where animals face the most appalling pagan rituals . . . France is now once again invaded by an overpopulation of foreigners - notably Muslims.' The appeal court overturned a January 1997 ruling in her favour.
Bardot was once again found guilty of inciting racial hatred and fined FF20,000 (US$3,550) in January 1998, following another protest against Muslim ritual slaughter in which she claimed that Muslims would, one day, cut the throat of everyone in France.
Jean-Marie Le Pen remains busy in the courtroom. In July 1997 a Paris court fined him FF5,000 (US$890) for racist remarks about the president of the anti-racist organization SOS-Racisme; Le Pen had described Fodé Sylla as a 'big mad zebu' at a press conference. In December 1997 he was again found guity by a court in Nanterre of reiterating his 1987 comment that Nazi gas chambers were a 'detail of history', and fined FF300,000 (US$53,300) (see Holocaust denial). In April 1998 a court in Versailles barred him from seeking or holding public office for two years after being found guilty of physically attacking Anette Peulvast-Bergeal, a PS candidate, during the run-up to the 1997 legislative elections. Le Pen was also fined FF23,000 (US$4,100), given a three-month suspended prison sentence and stripped of his right to vote. If upheld at the September 1998 appeal, the ruling would require that Le Pen resign as a councillor in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region and as a member of the European parliament (see Parties, organizations, movements: Mainstream political life).
Le Pen has also had some legal success: in November 1997 a Paris court awarded him FF40,000 (US$7,100), ruling that he had not made the antisemitic slurs attributed to him in the book Le Roman d'un président (A President's Tale), a biography of Jacques Chirac by Nicolas Domenach and Maurice Szafran, published in 1997. The book quoted Le Pen as saying: 'Chirac is in somebody's grasp. And whose? Jewish organizations and especially the notorious B'nai B'rith.'
In April 1998 Cendrine Le Chevallier, wife of the FN mayor of Toulon and in charge of youth affairs in that city's administration, was found guilty of political discrimination, given a three months' suspended sentence and fined FF50,000 (US$8,880). Her conviction was based on her letter to a local youth group in which she said that empty posts should be filled by those 'sympathetic to the FN and not by totally neutral elements'. Her sentence and fine were reduced on appeal in May to one month's suspended sentence and FF30,000 (US$5,300).
In June 1998 three FN members were found guilty in Aix-en-Provence of the murder of Ibrahim Ali in February 1995. The three were putting up election posters when they encountered a group, including Ali, waiting for a bus. They claimed to have shot him in self-defence. Robert Lagier (66) and Marco d'Ambrosio (51) were convicted of murder and sentenced to 15 and 10 years respectively. Pierre Giglio (41) was convicted of complicity in homicide and possession of an illegal weapon, and sentenced to two years in prison, one of which was suspended. FN deputy leader Bruno Mégret appeared as a defence witness and described the three as 'the elite of our people'.
Also in June 1998 two hard-core neo-Nazis were sentenced to lengthy prison sentences in Bordeaux for murders committed as part of a kidnapping and extortion plot. Philippe Vigneaud and Vincent Parera, both PNFE members who had left the FN for being too moderate, were convicted of kidnapping and murdering car salesman Guy Levy in July 1995 as part of a plan to force Citroën to pay a ransom for having brought thousands of North African car workers to France in the 1960s and 1970s. Vigneaud also murdered another man, Gerald Mifsud, in order to steal his identity papers. (In addition the two men were convicted of beating an Asian doctor in their 'trial run' for the kidnap of Levy.) Vigneaud received a life sentence, and Parera was jailed for twenty years.
There were large-scale protests throughout 1997 in response to the bill put forward by Jean-Louis Debré in February to tighten immigration procedures in order to stem illegal immigration. A petition signed by fifty-nine filmmakers called for a campaign of civil disobedience against this 'inhuman and unacceptable' law, which led to demonstrations by 100,000 artists, intellectuals and immigrants in Paris (see Racism and xenophobia). Eight undocumented foreigners who staged a hunger strike in Lille were evacuated by police two months later.
In February 1997 a large anti-racist march in Toulon, organized by the Ligue internationale contre le racisme et l'antisémitisme (LICRA, International League against Racism and Antisemitism), was held to protest the cultural and social policies of FN mayor Jean-Marie Le Chevallier. The marchers condemned the presence of far-right material in public libraries, the suspension of subsidies for immigrants in Marignane, Orange and Toulon, and the re-introduction of pork on school menus in Marignane, thus discriminating against Jews and Muslims. Over 1,000 actors, singers and authors demonstrated against Le Chevallier's sacking of Gérard Paquet from the Châteauvallon Théâtre national de la danse et de l'image (see Antisemitic incidents: cultural manifestations and Legal matters).
Following the FN's February 1997 victory in Vitrolles, the socialists Jean Luc Mélenchon and Marie-Christine Blandin, together with the author François Cavanna, announced the creation of the Mouvement pour la dissolution du Front national (MDFN, Movement for the Dissolution of the FN) to encourage anti-FN demonstrations in the streets and in the media. Another new watchdog organization named Fahrenheit 451 was established by anti-racist and human rights organizations to monitor the FN's repressive cultural policies.
The FN party congress, in Strasbourg in March 1997, was disrupted by a demonstration of more than 50,000 anti-racist activists. The rally marked the climax of ten days of anti-FN mobilization in Alsace and a general rise in anti-racist activity in France. The FN used its congress to present itself as a democratic party in an attempt to deflect calls for its banning by the MDFN.
In March 1997, during the annual book fair at the Salon du livre in Paris, anti-racist campaigners demolished stalls of racist and xenophobic books that were sponsored by the FN. Members of Ras l'Front (Get Rid of the Front) smashed the booth of the Société anonyme National-Hebdo (Anonymous Society for the National Weekly), and drove its exhibitors out of the building. Following this episode a movement to ban all far-right publishers and authors from book fairs is gaining momentum.
In April 1997 postmen in Montpellier refused to deliver the far-right magazine Le Journal de la colère (The Magazine of Anger) despite a contract agreed by post office officials to distribute 16,000 free copies. Edited by Gabriel Favier, the publication defends the FN and argues for the expulsion of immigrants. A spokesman for the postal workers' union said: 'What is written here incites racism and xenophobia.'
In September 1997 the Catholic Church requested forgiveness for its acquiescence in the Nazi persecution of Jews. The 'declaration of repentance' given by Olivier de Barranger, bishop of Saint Denis, was the first statement of its kind by a leader of the French church (for reactions, see Legacy of the Second World War and Religious antisemitism).
In October 1997 the national association of police expressed regret for 'the active collaboration by some police in the deportation of Jews', but the Paris police trade union said that 'it would be stupid, maybe even dangerous, to claim general responsibility on the part of the entire police force for the actions of only some police during the Second World War'.
In the same month the president of the professional association of doctors, Bernard Glorion, apologized for his profession's support of laws during the German occupation that barred Jewish doctors from practising. Glorion said he regretted 'the barbarity some of our colleagues and their families lived through'. A 1941 law by the Vichy regime restricted the number of Jews who could practise medicine to 2 per cent of all doctors.
An anti-fascist book fair in Gardanne in November 1997 attracted almost 60,000 visitors. The fair was organized by Cap 250 and Ras l'Front. The attending director of cultural affairs for the region of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, Jean Jacques Boin, denounced 'the numerous irregularities in the management of libraries, mainly executed by people adhering to fascist ideologies'. The president of the Association des bibliothécaires de France (Association of Libraries in France) added that the FN was using libraries as 'instruments of ideological control by censoring lists of proposed book acquisitions'.
The centenary, in January 1998, of the publication of Emile Zola's incendiary 'J'Accuse' article, written in defence of the unjustly incarcerated Jewish military officer Alfred Dreyfus, was commemorated by a ceremony at the Panthéon, a conference at the Sorbonne, an exhibition at the national library and a re-enactment of Zola's libel trial organized by the Ligue des droits de l'homme. In an open letter to the descendants of Dreyfus and Zola, President Chirac apologized in the name of France for the Dreyfus affair, 'a dark spot, unworthy of our country and its history . . . We know that dark forces, intolerance and injustice can insinuate themselves in the very highest ranks of the state. But we also know that France can recover for the better, and in moments of truth become great, strong, united and vigilant.' The Catholic daily La Croix - which had opposed Zola and Dreyfus in 1898 - published a special issue (11-12 January) devoted to the affair in which its religious editor-in-chief Michel Kubler published an editorial apologizing for the earlier antisemitic stand of his paper: 'We must remember it. We must atone for it.'
Anti-FN demonstrations organized by anti-fascist organizations, left-wing parties, trade unions, collections of artists and intellectuals and others regularly accompany the public appearances of the FN's leading lights, and regularly protest the objectionable measures implemented in FN-controlled towns and regions. New anti-FN organizations and campaigns are continually being formed. About 5,000 gathered in Rouen in February 1998 to protest Bruno Mégret's visit to the Norman capital; the socialist mayor Yvon Robert draped the town hall with a banner containing Martin Luther King's words: 'Let us learn to live together like brothers or we will die together like fools.' In the same month another 5,000 gathered in Avignon to protest a visit by Le Pen. On 1 March 5,000 participated in an 'anti-fascist carnival' in Nantes organized to protest the arrival there of the FN leader. That same weekend several thousand participated in a demonstration in Saint-Étienne to oppose a visit by Bruno Mégret, and hundreds joined a counter-demonstration against the FN in Marseilles. In April and May 1998 hundreds of thousands participated in anti-FN demonstrations throughout the country following the regional and departmental elections at the end of March 1998 (see Parties, organizations, movements: mainstream political life).
In May 1998 Léon Dietsch, the mayor of Spicheren (Moselle) on the French-German border, banned, for 'reasons of security', a joint demonstration by the FN, the German Die Republikaner (see Germany) and the Belgian Vlaams Blok (see Belgium) planned for that week. The demonstration was to be held near the former Nazi concentration camp at Neue Bremm.
The victory of France's 'rainbow' soccer team - composed of players of European, African, Arab, Caribbean and New Caledonian origin - in the World Cup held in France in June-July 1998 brought a dramatic surge of public support for multiculturalism, and an equally welcome moment of embarrassment for the FN. The star player, Zinedine Zidane - born in Marseilles to poor Algerian immigrants - became a national hero. The multiracial team was fêted by President Chirac, who praised 'this tricolour and multicolour team that has provided such a beautiful image of France and its humanity'. The team's coach Aimé Jacquet was awarded the Legion d'honneur and congratulated for his longstanding resistance to pressure from the FN to exclude players with immigrant origins.
In mid-July 1998, in the wake of the French World Cup victory, former interior minister and the author of tough anti-immigrant legislation, Charles Pasqua, came out in favour of granting residency to the 70,000 illegal immigrants awaiting expulsion (see Racism and xenophobia: refugees and immigration). In a statement Pasqua reminded French citizens of the contributions immigrants had made to the country, and said that a strong France was a generous France.
Institute for Jewish Policy Research and American Jewish Committee
© JPR 1999
