It was party time in Paris and elsewhere in France on Tuesday evening as hundreds of people celebrated the death of Jean-Marie Le Pen.
The figurehead of France’s far-right died earlier in the day aged 96 and within hours a jubilant crowd had assembled in the capital’s Place de la République. Champagne was uncorked, fireworks were sent into the night sky and there were chants of ‘The dirty racist is dead’ and ‘Marine, you are next’. Marine Le Pen assumed leadership of the National Front in 2011, 40 years after her father helped found the party that is now known as the National Rally.
The reason some on the left like to dance on the graves of their opponents is because they believe they are irredeemably bad
France’s Interior Minister, Bruno Retailleau, called the scenes in Paris, Lyon and Marseille ‘shameful’ and said: ‘Nothing, absolutely nothing, justifies dancing over a corpse. The death of a man, even a political adversary, should only inspire restraint and dignity.’
The response of elements of the French left to the death of Le Pen was reminiscent of how some in Britain reacted to the passing of Margaret Thatcher in 2013. People made merry in London, Glasgow and Bristol, promoting condemnation from across the political spectrum. Tony Blair said the celebratory parties were in ‘pretty poor taste… even if you disagree with someone very strongly, particularly at the moment of their passing, show some respect.’
Not everyone on the left agreed with Blair. The Guardian ran an op-ed in which it challenged the idea that to dance on the grave of the recently deceased was distasteful. Yes, respect should be shown for ‘a private person’ explained the paper, but not for a ‘controversial public figure, particularly one who wielded significant influence and political power.’
Most popular
Melanie McDonagh
Diane Abbott’s masterful Assisted Dying speech will come back to haunt us
It’s rare, however, that the right jumps for joy when an icon of the left dies. There was no partying in the Place de la République when Francois Mitterrand died in 1996 after 14 years in power. The Socialist president was as divisive for the French as Thatcher was for the British, because of his economic and social policies.
Tony Benn died a year after Margaret Thatcher but no one in Britain reached for the champagne. He was, as a 1981 newspaper profile explained, ‘as implacable an adversary as Mrs Thatcher will ever have… as much of an extremist on the left as she is – for a country like Britain – on the right.’ Benn served as a Labour minister and MP for nearly half a century and was the president of the Stop the War coalition for 13 years up to his death.
The reason some on the left like to dance on the graves of their opponents is because they believe they are irredeemably bad. After Thatcher’s death, an online campaign was launched to get the song from the Wizard of Oz – ‘Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead’ – to number one in the singles chart; it reached number two.
Analysing this attitude in an essay in 2023, the distinguished French philosopher Pierre-André Taguieff wrote that the left today regards the right ‘as the incarnation of evil… to accuse them of being a representative or agent of the forces of evil is to exclude them from any debate.’
Consequently, some left-wing politicians in France refuse to appear on television stations they regard as wickedly right-wing and others refuse to shake the hands of National Rally MPs.
All the while, they are oblivious to their own shortcomings, such as the anti-Semitism within Jean-Luc Melenchon’s La France insoumise, now so rife that 92 per cent of French Jews are fearful of the far-left party.
Some of the revellers on the Place de la Republique on Tuesday evening carried flags of the far-left New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA). Hours after Hamas terrorists had murdered 1,200 Israeli men, women and children in October 2023, the NPA issued a statement affirming its support ‘for the Palestinians and the means of struggle they have chosen to resist’. This time, they crowed, ‘the offensive is on the side of the resistance’.
Jean-Marie Le Pen’s anti-Semitism hasn’t gone away, it’s just changed political sides. But those dancing and singing in Paris last night were too drunk on hypocrisy to notice.
Comments