Marine Le Pen, the former leader of France's far-right National Rally party, plans to attend France's 'grand civic march' against antisemitism on Sunday. Her decision to attend has sparked controversy across the French political spectrum, Jewish and non-Jewish, over how sincere her commitment to Jewish safety can be, and whether Le Pen's attendance at the march affects the legitimacy of her party, which is expected to play a major role in the next national elections in France, or potentially the legitimacy of the rally itself.
Citing Le Pen's participation in the demonstration, several far-left parties have declined to join. A major Jewish group in France also said her attendance was unwelcome.
Le-Pen inherited the leadership of her party, then called the National Front, from her father, Jean-Marine le Pen, who consistently downplayed the Holocaust and was convicted several times of antisemitic hate speech. The party has been courting Jews in recent years, however, arguing that the National Front's opposition to immigration from Muslim countries and general hostility towards public Muslim life in France is a matter of security for the country's small and often targeted Jewish community.
In 2014, the younger Le Pen addressed French Jews in an interview, saying her party was "without a doubt the best shield to protect you against the one true enemy, Islamic fundamentalism.” Then, in 2015, Marine Le-Pen presided over the party as it expelled from its ranks its founder, her father, for his dismissal of the Holocaust as a mere "detail" of history, although week Jordan Bardella, the party's current president, said that he did not think the elder Le Pen is antisemitic.
Jewish umbrella org rejects Le Pen's participation
The Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF) has rejected the party's attempt to ingratiate itself with Jewish voters. "We do not want people who are heirs to a party founded by former collaborators [with Nazi Germany] to be present,” CRIF's president said on Thursday. Last year, in the run-up to France's presidential election between Le Pen and the incumbent Emmanuel Macron, the organization called Le Pen "an existential threat to the Jews of France." Yael Braun-Pivet, the President of the French National Assembly, herself Jewish, said that while the march on Sunday is non-partisan, she would not "march next to" Le Pen.
Far-left leaders, however, are planning to skip the march altogether. Jean-Luc Melenchon, the leader of France's left-wing populist party France Unbowed, said on X that he would not be attending the march, calling it a "rendezvous for unconditional supporters of the massacre [of Gazans.]" Olivier Veran, a communist leader who is spokesperson for the prime minister's government, cited Le Pen's participation in his announcement that he would not attend, saying he would "not march alongside" the National Rally party.
Antisemitic acts have surged in France since Hamas's massacre of Israeli civilians on October 7 and the subsequent war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. The country has recorded nearly 12,250 antisemitic incidents since the attack. Tens of thousands are expected to demonstrate on Sunday, and more than 3,000 members of France's security forces will be deployed to maintain security. In advance of the march, France's president, Emmanuel Macron, condemned the country's "unbearable resurgence of unbridled antisemitism" in a letter for Le Parisien on Saturday.
"A France where our Jewish citizens are afraid is not France," Macron said, adding that the march "will express what is the very essence of the French project: the defense of universalism." The president said that he will not personally be at the march, but will attend in spirit.