Hundreds of mourners flocked to Paris’s venerable Val-de-Grâce church on Thursday to pay their final respects to Jean-Marie Le Pen, the architect of France’s modern far-right movement who was known for his racist and antisemitic remarks.
A speaker at the requiem Mass praised Mr. Le Pen, saying he had “perceived, before all others, the dangers that threaten France today.” A choir sang a French military song asking God for “the ardor to fight.” The crowd repeated the words of a prayer to Joan of Arc, with its plea that “the people of France will always be a Christian people.”
But since Mr. Le Pen’s death on Jan. 7 at age 96, the question of how much respect he deserves in death has ignited a passionate debate in France, given Mr. Le Pen’s long history of alarming comments, his trivialization of Holocaust horrors, and his assertion that Germany’s occupation of France had not been “particularly inhumane.”
Questions about his legacy reflect broader, unresolved tensions over the party that Mr. Le Pen co-founded in 1972, the National Rally. The party has in recent years moved from the fringes to the center of French politics and currently holds the largest number of seats in the National Assembly.
Yet despite their recent success, leaders of the National Rally regularly complain that they are still denied “respect” from fellow lawmakers, are locked out of policy debates and snubbed for leadership positions.
Their peers can be blunt. In a TV interview earlier this week, François Rebsamen, the minister for regional planning and a leftist in the current center-right government, declared, “I respect all political forces, except the National Rally.”
Earning respect has been high on the National Rally’s agenda in recent years. Mr. Le Pen’s daughter, Marine Le Pen, took over leadership of the party in 2011, and kicked out Mr. Le Pen in 2015. Three years later, the party changed its name (it had originally been called the National Front) as part of an effort to soften its image, gain distance from her father, and appeal to a wider base.
The moves have helped. Millions of voters have been attracted by its anti-immigrant and law-and-order stances, and populist economics. Its supporters hope that either Ms. Le Pen or her telegenic 29-year-old protégé, Jordan Bardella, might eventually win the presidency.
But some memories are long. The night of Mr. Le Pen’s death, French TV stations showed a crowd in Paris’s Place de la République, smiling and popping champagne bottles. Similar street parties erupted in Lyon, Marseille, and elsewhere.
“The dirty racist is dead,” one protester’s sign declared. “What a beautiful day.”
The scenes of the revelers were criticized by members of the current center-right government.
“Nothing, absolutely nothing, justifies dancing on a cadaver,” the country’s conservative interior minister, Bruno Retailleau, posted on social media.
Mr. Le Pen’s death comes amid tremendous political turmoil in France. The economy is dragging, public debt is growing, and the National Assembly, the powerful lower house of the legislature, is paralyzed by a three-way split between left, center and hard right.
Last month, the government of the former center-right prime minister Michel Barnier fell after only three months, as members of the lower chamber, unable to agree on a budget, punished Mr. Barnier for trying to force one through. The National Rally joined the left in taking down Mr. Barnier’s government with a no-confidence vote. Disrespect was one big reason they did so.
Mr. Barnier’s centrist replacement, François Bayrou, is barely hanging on with a government that could capsize any day.
The National Rally hasn’t said what its next move would be. But if members decide to vote against the government again it could prove fatal to Mr. Bayrou’s hopes of staying in office.
Holding a public Mass for their xenophobic old figurehead may hurt the party in the short term. But Jean-Yves Camus, an expert on the far right at the Jean-Jaurès Foundation, said the party “had no choice but to organize a public tribute,” given Mr. Le Pen’s stature and history with the movement. “In a way, the party is a prisoner of its own history.”
Giorgios Samaras, an assistant professor of public policy at King’s College London, said the party will now be able to reinforce “its newer, more moderated brand without constant reminders of Jean-Marie’s extreme stances.”
The service focused on Mr. Le Pen’s love of France, and the combative spirit he brought to politics and war itself, having served in the French military in Indochina and Algeria.
“Yes, Mister Le Pen, you were strong-headed, you had a bad reputation, but you had the soul of a musketeer, a soldier in the service of France,” said Christophe Kowalczyk, the military priest who oversaw the ceremony, alluding to the lyrics of an old military song.
After the Mass, the mourners left the church and the square facing it. They moved down the narrow Rue Saint-Jacques, gripping their programs from the service and shaking hands with friends.
A multistory college dormitory loomed over them. And from the windows came a familiar battle cry from of the European left: “Siamo tutti antifascisti!” — We are all anti-fascists.
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