French nationalists who consider Le Pen a sell-out

Trying to verify the New York Sun’s report that Jean-Marie Le Pen and his “neo-fascist” faction in the National Front have surrendered to the Islamizaton of France and are now siding with Muslims, and that, in response to this treason, the “Christian right-wingers” in the NF are leaving the party in favor of Phillipe de Villiers, I asked our reader who has done French translations for us if she know anything about this. She sent back this very interesting e-mail:

I can’t give you the definitive information you want. I quickly browsed through some websites, but could not find proof of a collusion with Islam. However, I refer you back to the VFR post of December 3, 2005. The author of that quote was Denis Greslin, the administrator of the website Occidentalis. There is another (long) article there, by Greslin, from July 22, 2005 which discusses the Islamo-Marxist group called MRAP, its agenda, its anti-Semitism, its witch hunts. He names Phillipe de Villiers as the new target of MRAP for having said that the Third World War against Islam has been declared. Greslin closes by saying that de Villiers has to decide if he is just talking or if he is in the fight to the finish.

However, the interesting thing about the article are the comments. The readers noted that Greslin was placing his hopes on de Villiers and did not mention Le Pen at all. Greslin replied:

“I don’t want to return to the endless debate on Le Pen. I don’t think the objectives of the two men are the same: Mr. Le Pen has never condemned Islam, au contraire, he has always boasted of having much respect for this religion. In his authorized biography we learn that he made it a point of honor to bury Muslims according to Islamic law during the Suez conflict and that he was close to pro-French Muslims during the Algerian War. More recently he aided in the election to the Regional Counsel of Ile-de-France of Farid Smahi, who shocked many by demanding that Muslims be appointed to ministerial positions in the government. In short, I am deeply convinced that Jean-Marie Le Pen is favorable to the idea of an alliance with Islam so long as that allows him to continue to fight against the United States and the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy which are his real enemies…”

Greslin then received some unfavorable replies. But another staff member of occidentalis who calls himself (herself) “Marianne” replied:

“If Mr. Greslin has no love for Le Pen, he knows what he’s talking about since he has closely followed the history of the National Front. And I know what I’m talking about because I too was close to those people. The cult of the personality, every conceivable type of Jewish conspiracy theory, anti-Semitism with the Protocols of Zion as a reference, support for Saddam—Chirac’s close friend who had furnished what was needed to build a nuclear reactor for the purpose of destroying Israel…No thank you, I took my leave… Whether you believe this or not, the Front National served Mitterand in the destruction of the authentic right in France…Jean-Marie Le Pen’s gaffes happen regularly, just at the wrong moment, before important elections…(a) subtle maneuver…I know that it is difficult to admit that you’ve been fooled, but you must look at the truth squarely in the face; and the truth is that Jean-Marie Le Pen has done everything to be an opposition, to monopolize the discontent of the majority of Frenchmen, without ever wanting power…”

“Marianne” then quotes these lines of de Villiers: “I too respect the Muslim world: they can do whatever they want in their own lands, but they can’t impose it on us! As long as our interests and way of life are not threatened, everything is fine. Otherwise I’m a believer in doing to them as they do to us—no churches in the Muslim world, no mosques in our country, no religious freedom for non-Muslims, then the same thing here for Muslims, the Muslim world attacks, us, we attack them…”

If I find anything concrete I’ll let you know, of course, but that article from the Sun seems to fit what Greslin has said. Greslin, I believe, was in politics and worked for a while with Le Pen. He is one of the few politicians at these patriotic websites that dares to use his own name.

Reading the above e-mail with its charges against Le Pen, I am reminded of something I wrote at VFR in October 2005:

Since the condemnations of Le Pen that I have kept hearing from various sources were too vague and general, and since I am not willing to accept that Le Pen is an anti-Semite and pro-Nazi solely on the basis of people self-assuredly telling me that he is, I’ve been doing some research on him.

In that entry, I found that the entire case that Le Pen is anti-Semitic seemed to revolve down to a handful of endlessly recycled quotes. I considered these quotes and determined that while Le Pen makes obnoxiously anti-Semitic comments from time to time,—or, at least, comments that are deliberately offensive to Jews—I could not detect any actual anti-Jewish agenda in his politics and program, and therefore that he or someone like him would still be vastly preferable as leader of France over the current pro-Islamic, anti-Israel leadership.

And now once again we read apparently knowledgeable persons charging that Le Pen is anti-Semitic and pro-Islamic, with no evidence or proof. What is different in this case, however, is that the charges come from French nationalists rather than from the left.

It is embarrasing, to say the least, that after Le Pen has been a leading figure for decades, I and other observers still don’t have a definite sense of who and what he is, and are dependent on hearsay from third parties.

VFR’s French expert adds:

You need another quote from Le Pen like a hole in the head. But here is one more from Wikipedia:

We must tell the Algerians that it is not the case that they need France, but that France needs them. They are not a burden, and if they are for now, they will on the contrary be a dynamic part as well as the young blood of the French nation into which we will have integrated them. I claim that in the Muslim religion there is nothing, in the moral point of view, that would be incompatible with making a believing or practicing Muslim a full French citizen. Very much on the contrary, its basic principles are the same as for Christianity, which is the basis of Western civilization. On the other hand, I do not believe that there exists an Algerian race, any more than there exists a French race… I conclude: let us offer to Algerian Muslims entrance and integration in a dynamic France. Instead of telling them as we do now: “you are very expensive, you are a burden”, let us tell them: “we need you, you are the youth of the nation”. [Jean-Marie Le Pen, Journal officiel de la République française, January 28, 1958. Said when Algeria was still a part of Metropolitan France before it attained independence.]

Of course he said this fifty years ago. He may feel differently now. The website of the Front National has much information about his policies and the goals of the party. It is all very carefully worded and strongly anti-immigration. But the words “Islam” and “Muslim” are never mentioned. I could not access the website of de Villiers.

One more thing. It’s interesting that De Gaulle adopted the point of view of the French monarchy when he let Algeria go. King Louis-Philippe had not wanted anything to do with Algeria in 1830 when the conquest took place. Years later (1870s to 1890s), it was the left that began to sing the praises of imperialism. Men like Léon Gambetta, Victor Hugo, and Jules Ferry spoke of the need to expand and spread the glory of France to all the backward peoples. It was “progressivism” that was imperialistic, not monarchism. Le Pen, in 1958, sounds more like a progressive.

As my reply to the above launches into a new subject, I am putting it in a separate blog entry.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 19, 2006 12:49 AM | Send