Kerry Raymond Bolton (born 1956) is a far-right activist in New Zealand.[1] He has been involved in many organisations and has written publications focused around politics and on his interest in metaphysics, religion, and the occult.[2]
Bolton founded the Order of the Left Hand Path (OLHP) in 1992,[2] following a quarrel with other members of the Temple of Set.[3] The Order of the Left Hand Path was a study group based around the ideas of Nietzsche, Jung and Spengler, with some mystical trappings.[2] Two years later Bolton renamed it the Ordo Sinistra Vivendi (Order of the Sinister Way).[2] At this time, in 1994, he created the Black Order.[2][4] It claimed to have a network of national lodges in six European countries plus Australia and the U.S.[2] It was intended to be an activist front promoting an "occult-fascist axis" by mobilising political groups and youth culture elements such as industrial music.[2] Bolton created and edited the Black Order newsletter, The Flaming Sword, and its successor, The Nexus, a journal that focused largely on the politically heretical with special attention given to figures from neo-völkisch movements like Savitri Devi, Julius Evola and Ezra Pound and which catered to the satanic-Nazi-metal movement. It later changed its name to Western Destiny.[2]
Bolton was a co-founder of the Nationalist Workers' Party,[2] and secretary for the New Zealand Fascist Union in 1997,[5] in which he promoted the 'patriotic socialism' of 1930s Labour hero John A. Lee.[6] In the mid-2000s, he was the secretary of the New Zealand National Front[7][8][9] and spokesman for the New Right group.[10][11] He also helped lead the National Front during the late 1970s and early 1980s.[12]
Bolton was educated at Hutt Valley Technical College, in Lower Hutt, and currently lives in Paraparaumu.
In 2008, a masters thesis written about Bolton that had been published by the Waikato University was pulled from the library pending an investigation after Bolton complained to the Vice-Chancellor.[1][13][14] The thesis, titled "Dreamers of the Dark: Kerry Bolton and the Order of the Left Hand Path; a Case-study of a Satanic/Neo Nazi Synthesis", dealt with the link between neo-Nazi and satanic beliefs in New Zealand.[1][14] It had been passed by the university, had been reviewed by senior academics from two other universities, and had received full class honors.[1][13] Professor Dov Bing, who supervised the thesis, called it a first-class piece of work.[1][13] Bolton said the thesis was "poorly researched" and was "a poorly contrived smear-document against a private individual, namely myself".[1][11]
Bolton speaks!
On the Holocaust (Adelaide Institute)
“…we only hear fictitious blather about the supposed “Holocaust”. Why? Whose interests are still being served after all this time? Think!”
Bolton on the instigators of WWII (Adelaide Institute)
“German Jews were rounded up as enemy aliens, since their own leaders publicly declared “war” on Hitler the very year he achieved Government, 1933, at a time when there were few restrictions put on Jews. The Jews, under Samuel Untermeyer organised a world economic boycott to try and wreck Germany economically. Jews and their communist allies organised boycotts of shops that sold Germany (sic) goods. People were beaten up by Jewish-communist thugs if they tried to resist.”
Bolton on Adolf Hitler (Adelaide Institute)
“Everyone is out for themselves, all dance around the golden calf. Jesus drove the moneychangers out of the Temple. The Pharisees had Him crucified. Hitler drove the moneychangers from the German nation. The descendants of the same Pharisees had him crucified, and are still doing so. In fact, the same criminal gang who thinks they’ve been ‘chosen’ to rule the world is crucifying our whole Western Civilisation.”
Nexus interviews Kerry Bolton
Nexus: “[Correspondence to the Listener magazine and the Adelaide Institute website comprises statements from you that could be construed as Holocaust denial.] Are you a Holocaust denier?
Bolton: “Uh, I’ve got an open mind on the subject.”
Nexus: “Okay, but what I’m asking is; would you describe yourself as a Holocaust denier?”
Bolton: “Oh no no. No. Not as such.”
Nexus: “What are your views on it then?”
Bolton: “Oh, I believe that certain aspects of it can be questioned, as can any part of history.”
Nexus: “Specifically, in your letter to the Listener, you claimed that the gas chambers at Auschwitz were insufficient to have gassed as many Jews as claimed.”
Bolton: “Mm.”
Nexus: “Would you stand by that statement?”
Bolton: “Um, well, I’m not an expert on the subject. I thought it was worth raising; I can’t even remember the context I wrote the letters there, but I… (trails off)”
Nexus: “It might be wise to. They’re still on the internet, and available.”
Bolton: “Um, I can’t recall the, um… Well, as I say. The, er – I’m not an expert on the subject but I think that, you know, questions have been raised that need addressing, and that’s about as far as I’ll go. The thing is, you see is, surely, anything to do with research and scholarship requires, you know, one to found an opinion based on what one knows at any given time, and to leave your mind open to being proven absolutely wrong at any given time.”
http://www.usu.co.nz/inunison/blog/kerry-bolton-the-man-the-myth-the-manmyth/
http://slackbastard.anarchobase.com/?p=1674
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Friday, May 22, 2009
Jean-Marie Le Pen
Jean-Marie Le Pen (born 20 June 1928, La Trinité-sur-Mer, Brittany, France) is a French nationalist politician who is founder and president of the Front National (National Front) party. Le Pen has run for the French presidency five times, including in 2002, when in a surprise upset he came second, polling more votes in the first round than the main left candidate, Lionel Jospin. Le Pen lost in the second round to Jacques Chirac. Le Pen again ran in the 2007 French presidential election and finished fourth. His 2007 campaign, at the age of 78 years and 9 months, makes him the oldest candidate for presidential office in France.
Le Pen focuses on immigration to France, the European Union, traditional culture, law and order and France's high rate of unemployment. He advocates immigration restrictions, the death penalty, raising incentives for homemakers,[1] and euroscepticism. He strongly opposes same-sex marriage, euthanasia, and abortion.
Contents[hide]
1 Personal life and early career
2 Political career
2.1 1972-present
2.2 Electoral mandates
2.3 Political functions
3 Issues
3.1 Controversial statements
3.2 Prosecution concerning historical revisionism and Holocaust denial
3.3 Prosecution, allegations of torture and association with militarists
4 Comments on the Right
5 European Reform Treaty
6 Notes
7 See also
8 External links
//
Personal life and early career
Le Pen was born in a small seaside village in Brittany, the son of a fisherman but then orphaned as an adolescent (pupille de la nation, brought up by the state), when his father's boat was blown up by a mine in 1942. He was raised as a Roman Catholic and studied at the Jesuit high school François Xavier in Vannes, then in the lycée of Lorient.
Aged 16, he was turned down (because of his age) by Colonel Henri de La Vaissière (then representant of the Communist Youth) when he attempted, in November 1944, to join the French Forces of the Interior (FFI).[2] He then entered the faculty of law in Paris, and started to sell in the street the monarchist Action française 's newspaper, Aspects de la France[3]. He was repeatedly convicted of assault (coups et blessures).[4] He became president of the Association corporative des étudiants en droit, an association of law students whose main occupation was to engage in street brawls against the "Cocos" (communists). He was excluded from this organisation in 1951.
Jean-Marie Le Pen, September 2005
After receiving his law diploma, he enlisted in the Army in the Foreign Legion in Indochina, where he arrived after the 1954 Dien Bien Phu Battle[4] (lost by France, and which prompted the President of the Council Pierre Mendès France to put an end to the war at the Geneva Conference). He was then sent to Suez (1956), but arrived only after the cease-fire.[4] He was then sent to Algeria (1957) as an intelligence officer. He has been accused of having engaged in torture, but he denied it, although he admitted knowing of its use.[4] After his time in the military, he studied political science and law at Paris II. His graduate thesis, submitted in 1971 by Jean-Marie Le Pen and Jean-Loup Vincent, was titled Le courant anarchiste en France depuis 1945 or "The anarchist movement in France since 1945".
Le Pen with his wife at a political raly in 2007
His marriage (29 June 1960 - 18 March 1987) to Pierrette Lalanne resulted in three daughters; their daughters have given him nine granddaughters. Their break-up was somewhat dramatic, with his ex-wife posing nude in the French edition of Playboy to ridicule him.[4] Marie-Caroline, another of his daughters, would also break with Le Pen, following her husband to join Bruno Mégret, who split from the FN to found MNR, the rival Mouvement National Républicain (National Republican Movement).[4] The youngest of Le Pen's daughters, Marine Le Pen, is a senior member of the Front National.
In 1977, Le Pen inherited a fortune from Hubert Lambert, son of the cement industrialist of the same name. Hubert Lambert was a political supporter of Le Pen, as well as being a monarchist, an alcoholic, and in poor health.[4] Lambert's will provided 30 million francs (approximatively 5 million euros) to LePen, as well as his castle in Montretout, Saint-Cloud (the same castle had been owned by Madame de Pompadour until 1748).[4].
In the early 1980s, Le Pen's personal security was assured by KO International Company, a subsidiary of VHP Security, a private security firm, and an alleged front organisation for SAC, the Service d'Action Civique (Civic Action Service), a Gaullist organisation. SAC allegedly employed figures with organized crime backgrounds and from the far-right movement.[5][6]
On 31 May 1991, Jean-Marie Le Pen married Jeanne-Marie Paschos ("Jany"), of Greek descent. Born in 1933, Paschos was previously married to Belgian businessman Jean Garnier.
Le Pen is the godfather of the third daughter of Dieudonné M'bala M'bala, a comedian and political activist who moved from fighting the Front National to being very close to most of its senior members.
Political career
National advertisement in Marseille, predicting the now unrealised possibility of Jean-Marie Le Pen becoming President in 2007
Le Pen started his political career as the head of the student union in Toulouse. In 1953, a year before the beginning of the Algerian War, he contacted President Vincent Auriol, who approved Le Pen's proposed volunteer disaster relief project after a flood in the Netherlands. Within two days, there were 40 volunteers from his university, a group that would later help victims of an earthquake in Italy. In Paris in 1956, he was elected to the National Assembly as a member of Pierre Poujade's UDCA populist party. Le Pen, 28 years old, was the youngest member of the Assembly.
In 1957, he became the General Secretary of the National Front of Combatants, a veterans' organization, as well as the first French politician to nominate a Muslim candidate, Ahmed Djebbour, an Algerian, elected in 1957 as deputy of Paris. The next year, following his break with Poujade, Le Pen was re-elected to the National Assembly as a member of the Centre National des Indépendants et Paysans (CNIP) party, led by Antoine Pinay. Le Pen claimed that he had lost his left eye when he was savagely beaten during the 1958 election campaign. Testimonies suggest however that he was only wounded in the right eye and did not lose it. He lost the sight in his left eye years later, due to an illness (popular belief that he wears a glass eye is untrue). During the 1950s, Le Pen took a close interest in the Algerian war (1954-62) and the French defense budget.
Le Pen then directed the 1965 presidential campaign of far-right candidate Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour, who obtained 5.19% of the votes. He insisted on the rehabilitation of the Collaborationists, declaring that:
"Was General de Gaulle more brave than the Marshall Pétain in the occupied zone? This isn't sure. It was much easier to resist in London than to resist in France."[4]
In 1962, he lost his seat at the Assembly. He created the Serp (Société d’études et de relations publiques) firm, a company involved in the music industry, which produced both chorals of the CGT trade-union and songs of the Popular Front and Nazi marches. The firm was condemned in 1968 for "praise of war crime and complicity" after the diffusion of songs from the Third Reich.[4]
1972-present
Jean-Marie Le Pen speaking at the Front National's annual tribute to Joan of Arc in Paris (1 May 2007)
In 1972, Le Pen founded the Front National (FN) party, along with former OAS member Jacques Bompard, former Collaborationist Roland Gaucher and others nostalgics of Vichy France, neo-nazi pagans, Catholic fundamentalists, etc.[4] Le Pen presented himself for the first time in the 1974 presidential election, obtaining 0.74%.[4] In 1976, his Parisian flat (he lived at that time in his castle of Montretout in Saint-Cloud) was dynamited. The affair never was elucidated.[4] Le Pen then didn't manage to obtain the 500 signatures from "grand electors" (grands électeurs, mayors, etc.) necessary to present himself to the 1981 presidential election, won by the candidate of the Socialist Party (PS), François Mitterrand.
Criticizing immigration and taking advantage of the economic crisis striking France, and the world, since the 1973 oil crisis, Le Pen's party managed to increase its votes in the 1980s, starting in the municipal elections of 1983. His popularity has been greatest in the south of France. The FN obtained 10 percent at the 1984 European elections. 34 FN deputies entered the Assembly after the 1986 elections, which were won by the right wing, bringing Jacques Chirac to Matignon in the first cohabitation (that is, of the combination of a right-wing Prime minister, Chirac, with a socialist President, Mitterrand).
In 1984 and 1999, Le Pen won a seat in the European Parliament. In 1988 he lost a reelection bid for the Parliament of France in the 8th District of Bouches-du-Rhône. He was defeated in the second round by Socialist Marius Masse.[7] In 1992 and 1998 he was elected to the regional council of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur.
Le Pen ran in the French presidential elections in 1974, 1988, 1995, 2002, and 2007. As noted above, he did was not able to run for office in 1981, having failed to gather the necessary 500 signatures of elected officials. In the presidential elections of 2002, Le Pen obtained 16.86 percent of the votes in the first round of voting. This was enough to qualify him for the second round, as a result of the poor showing by the Socialist candidate and incumbent prime minister Lionel Jospin and the scattering of votes among 15 other candidates. This was a major political event, both nationally and internationally, as it was the first time someone with such extremist views had qualified for the second round of the French presidential elections. There was a widespread stirring of national public opinion, and more than one million people in France took part in street rallies; slogans such as "vote for the crook, not the fascist" were heard in an expression of fierce opposition to Le Pen's ideas. Le Pen was then soundly defeated in the second round, when incumbent president Jacques Chirac obtained 82 percent of the votes, thus securing the biggest majority in the history of the Fifth Republic.
In the 2004 regional elections, Le Pen intended to run for office in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region but was prevented from doing so because he did not meet the conditions for being a voter in that region: he neither lived there, nor was registered as a taxpayer there.
In recent years, Le Pen has tried to soften his image, with mixed success. He has manoeuvred his daughter Marine into a prominent position, a move that angered many inside the National Front, who worry about the emergence of a possible Le Pen family dynasty.
Electoral mandates
Member of the National Assembly of France for Paris : 1956-1962 / 1986-1988
Member of European Parliament : 1984-2003 (Sentenced by the courts in February 2003) / 2004-
Regional councillor of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur : 1992-2000 (Sentenced by the courts in 2000)
Municipal councillor for the 20th arrondissement of Paris : 1983-1989
Political functions
President of the National Front (France) : 1972-
Issues
See also National Front for a summary of Le Pen's manifesto.
Le Pen remains a polarizing figure in France and opinions regarding him tend to be quite strong. A 2002 IPSOS poll showed that while 22 percent of the electorate have a good or very good opinion of Le Pen, and 13 percent an unfavorable opinion, 61 percent have a very unfavorable opinion.[8]
Le Pen and the National Front are described by much of the media and nearly all commentators as far right. Le Pen himself and the rest of his party disagree with this label; earlier in his political career, Le Pen described his position as "Neither left nor right, but French" (Ni droite, ni gauche, français). He later described his position as right-wing and opposed to the "socialo-communists" and other right-wing parties, which he deems are not real right-wing parties. At other times, for example during the 2002 election campaign, he declared himself "economically right-wing, socially left-wing, and nationally French". He further contends that most of the French political and media class are corrupt and out of touch with the real needs of the common people, and conspire to exclude Le Pen and his party from mainstream politics. Le Pen criticizes the other political parties as the "establishment" and lumped all major parties (Communist, Socialist, Union for French Democracy (UDF) and Rally for the Republic (RPR)) into the "Gang of Four" (la bande des quatre – an allusion to the Gang of Four during China's Cultural Revolution).
The international media often cites Le Pen as a symbol of French xenophobia. He is also occasionally criticized in French and foreign pop songs.
Controversial statements
Le Pen has been accused and convicted several times[9] at home and abroad of xenophobia and anti-Semitism. A Paris court found in February 2005 that his openly verbal criticisms, such as remarks disparaging Muslims in a 2003 Le Monde interview, were "inciting racial hatred",[9] and he was fined 10,000 euros and ordered to pay an additional 5,000 euros in damages to the Ligue des droits de l'homme (League for Human Rights). The conviction and fines were upheld by the Court of Cassation in 2006.[10]
In May 1987, he advocated the forced isolation from society of all people infected with HIV, by placing them in a special "sidatorium". In the same interview he incorrectly declared that AIDS was a form of leprosy.[11] "Sidaïque"[12] is Le Pen's pejorative solecism for "person infected with AIDS" (the more usual French term is "séropositif" (seropositive).[11]
On 21 June 1995, he attacked singer Patrick Bruel on his policy of no longer singing in the city of Toulon because the city had just elected a mayor from the National Front. Le Pen said "the city of Toulon will then have to get along without the vocalisations of singer Benguigui". Benguigui, a Jewish name, is Bruel's name at birth.
In February 1997, Le Pen accused Chirac of being "on the payroll of Jewish organizations, and particularly of the B'nai B'rith".[13][14]
Le Pen once made the infamous pun "Durafour-crématoire" ("four crématoire" meaning "crematory oven") about then minister Michel Durafour, who had said in public a few days before "One must exterminate the National Front".[15] This was made in reference to the crematories in which both living and dead victims of the Nazi holocaust were placed.[16]
In June 2006, he claimed that the French World Cup squad contained too many non-white players, and was not an accurate reflection of French society. He went on to scold players for not singing La Marseillaise, saying they were not 'French'.[17]
In the 2007 election campaign, he referred to fellow candidate Nicolas Sarkozy as 'foreign' or 'the foreigner' due to Sarkozy's Hungarian heritage.[18]
Arguing that his party includes people of various ethnic or religious origins like Jean-Pierre Cohen, Farid Smahi or Huguette Fatna, he has attributed some anti-Semitism in France to the effects of Muslim immigration to Europe and suggested that some part of the Jewish community in France might eventually come to appreciate National Front ideology.
Prosecution concerning historical revisionism and Holocaust denial
Le Pen has made several provocative statements concerning the Holocaust, which amount to historical revisionism and has been convicted of racism or inciting racial hatred at least six times.[9] Thus, on 13 September 1987 he said: "I ask myself several questions. I'm not saying the gas chambers didn't exist. I haven't seen them myself. I haven't particularly studied the question. But I believe it's just a detail in the history of World War II." He was condemned under the Gayssot Act on negationism to pay 1.2 million Francs (183,200 Euros).[19] In 1997, the European Parliament, of which Le Pen was then a member, removed his parliamentary immunity so that Le Pen could be tried by a German court for comments he made at a December 1996 press conference before the German Republikaner party. Echoing his 1987 remarks in France, Le Pen stated: "If you take a 1,000-page book on World War II, the concentration camps take up only two pages and the gas chambers 10 to 15 lines. This is what one calls a detail." In June 1999, a Munich court found this statement to be "minimizing the Holocaust, which caused the deaths of six million Jews," and convicted and fined Le Pen for his remarks.[20]
Prosecution, allegations of torture and association with militarists
In April 2000, Le Pen was suspended from the European Parliament following prosecution for the physical assault of Socialist candidate Annette Peulvast-Bergeal during the 1997 general election. This ultimately led to him losing his seat in the European parliament in 2003. The Versailles appeals court banned him from seeking office for one year.[21]
Le Pen allegedly practiced torture during the Algerian War (1954-1962), when he was a lieutenant in the French Army. Although he denied it, he lost a trial when he attacked Le Monde newspaper on charges of defamation, following accusations by the newspaper that he had used torture. Le Monde has produced in May 2003 the dagger he allegedly used to commit war crimes as court evidence.[22]
Although war crimes committed during the Algerian War are amnestied in France, this was publicised by the newspapers Le Canard Enchaîné and Libération, Le Monde and by Michel Rocard (ex-Prime Minister) on TV (TF1 1993). Le Pen sued the papers and Michel Rocard. This affair ended in 2000 when the "Cour de cassation" (French supreme jurisdiction) concluded that it was legitimate to publish these assertions. However, because of the amnesty and the statute of limitations, there can be no criminal proceedings against Le Pen for the crimes he is alleged to have committed in Algeria. In 1995, Le Pen unsuccessfully sued Jean Dufour, regional counselor of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur (French Communist Party) for the same reason.[23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30]
Le Pen has also been criticized for ties to suspect individuals, such as:
Roger Holeindre, a member of the political bureau of the Front National and a former member of the Organisation armée secrète (OAS), a movement against Algerian independence. However, Holeindre was also a Nazi resister during the Second World War[31][unreliable source?]
Roland Gaucher, a co-founder of the National Front in 1972 who was also a former RNP member.
Comments on the Right
Some of Le Pen's statements led other far-right groups, such as the Austrian Freedom Party,[32] and some National Front supporters to distance themselves from him. Bruno Mégret left the National Front to found his own party (the National Republican Movement, MNR), claiming that Le Pen kept the Front away from the possibility of gaining power. Mégret wanted to emulate Gianfranco Fini's success in Italy by making it possible for right-wing parties to ally themselves with the Front, but claimed that Le Pen's attitude and outrageous speech prevented this. Le Pen's daughter Marine leads an internal movement of the Front that wants to "normalize" the National Front, "de-enclave" it, have a "culture of government" etc.; however, relations with Le Pen and other supporters of the hard line are complex.[33] Over the years, Le Pen gained widespread popularity among neo-Nazis and white nationalists throughout Europe and North America.
As Le Pen, like many other European nationalists in recent years, has made statements highly critical of American foreign policy and culture, he has received notice from American conservatives. Controversial author Ann Coulter called him an anti-American adulterer but said his anti-immigration, anti-Muslim message "finally hit a nerve with voters" after years of irrelevance.[34] Paleoconservative commentator Pat Buchanan contends that even though Le Pen "made radical and foolish statements," the EU violated his right to freedom of speech.[35] He wrote:
As it is often the criminal himself who is first to cry, "Thief!" so it is usually those who scream, "Fascist!" loudest who are the quickest to resort to anti-democratic tactics. Today, the greatest threat to the freedom and independence of the nations of Europe comes not from Le Pen and that 17% of French men and women who voted for him. It comes from an intolerant European Establishment that will accept no rollback of its powers or privileges, nor any reversal of policies it deems "progressive".[35]
European Reform Treaty
Le Pen has been a vocal critic of the European Reform Treaty (formally known as the Treaty of Lisbon) which is due to be ratified by EU member states before 1 January 2009. In October 2007, Le Pen suggested that he would personally visit the Republic of Ireland to assist the "No" campaign but finally changed his mind fearing that his presence would be used against the supporters of the NO vote. Ireland finally refused to ratify the treaty. Ireland is the only EU country which had a citizen referendum. All other EU states, including France, ratified the treaty by parliamentary vote, despite a previous citizen referendum where over 55 percent of French voters rejected the European Reform Treaty.
After the Irish "No" vote, Le Pen addressed French President Nicolas Sarkozy, accusing him of furthering the agenda of a "cabal of international finance and free market fanatics."
Notes
^ Murphy, Clare (2002-05-28). "Le Pen and his feminine side". BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/2011370.stm. Retrieved on 2007-02-07.
^ Quand Le Pen voulait rejoindre les FFI, L'Express, 28 March 2007 (French)
^ Assemblée nationale - Les députés de la IVe République : Jean-Marie LE PEN
^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Le Pen, son univers impitoyable, Radio France Internationale, 2006-09-01 (French)
^ Le général croate Gotovina arrêté en Espagne, RFI, 8 December 2005 (French)
^ Le chauffeur de l’homme de la Question, L'Humanité, 10 December 2005 (French)
^ Marius Masse biography
^ Ipsos.fr - Political Action Barometer (French)
^ a b c "Le Pen convicted of inciting racial hatred for anti-Muslim remarks", Associated Press, 2004-04-02. Retrieved 2008-10-18
^ "France's far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen convicted of inciting racial hatred", Associated Press, 2006-05-11. Retrieved 2008-10-18
^ a b "Le Pen et le sida: les modes de contagion et l'exclusion", L'Heure de vérité, Antenne 2, 1987-05-06 (QuickTime video, French). Retrieved 2008-10-19
^ "SIDA" = Syndrome d'Immuno-Déficience Acquise, the French name for AIDS
^ Nicolas Domenach and Maurice Szafran, Le Roman d'un President, Pion: 1997, ISBN 2259181880
^ Douglas Johnson, "Ancient and Modern", The Spectator, 1997-03-15. Retrieved 2008-10-19
^ L'Humanité - Libres Échanges retrieved 2008-05-30
^ "'The veil? It protects us from ugly women'". The Guardian. 2002-04-25. http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,11882,690114,00.html. Retrieved on 2007-02-07.
^ Fifield, Dominic (2006-06-30). "We are Frenchmen says Thuram, as Le Pen bemoans number of black players". The Guardian. http://football.guardian.co.uk/worldcup2006/story/0,,1809453,00.html. Retrieved on 2007-02-07. [http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2073351,00.html
^ Le Pen rides to Sarkozy's rescue? Certain ideas of Europe Economist.com
^ "Jean-Marie Le Pen renvoyé devant la justice pour ses propos sur l'Occupation". Le Monde. 2006-07-13. http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3224,36-794895@51-776560,0.html/.
^ "Le Pen Convicted for Racial Hatred", Associated Press, 1999-06-02. Retrieved 2008-10-18
^ Julian Nundy, "One-year election ban for Le Pen", The Scotsman, 1998-11-18. Retrieved 2008-10-18
^ L'affaire du poignard du lieutenant Le Pen en Algérie, Le Monde, 2003-05-17 (French)
^ Le Pen et la torture, l'enquete du "Monde" validée par le tribunal, Le Monde, 2003-06-28
^ "J'ai croisé Le Pen à la villa Sésini" (I crossed Le Pen in the Sesini Villa), interview with Paul Aussaresses (whom had argued in favor of the use of torture in Algeria), Le Monde, June 4, 2002
^ "Un lourd silence", Le Monde, 2002-05-05
^ "Quand Le Pen travaillait 20 heures par jour" in L'Humanité (freely accessible), 2002-05-02
^ "New Revelations on Le Pen, tortionary" in L'Humanité, June 4, 2002
^ "Le Pen attaque un élu du PCF en justice", in L'Humanité, April 4, 1995
^ Jean Dufour: "Le Pen vient d'être débouté", in L'Humanité, 1995-06-26
^ "Torture: Le Pen perd son procès en diffamation contre Le Monde", in L'Humanité, 2003-06-27
^ René Monzat, Enquêtes sur la droite extrême, 1992 [1].
^ Bruce Crumley in Time International magazine, (2002-06-05) writes: "Denunciations of Jean-Marie Le Pen and his xenophobic National Front (FN) as racist, anti-Semitic and hostile to minorities and foreigners aren't exactly new. More novel, however, are such condemnations coming from far-right movements like the Austrian Freedom Party (FPO), which itself won international opprobrium in 1999 after entering government on a populist platform similar to Le Pen's."
^ Le Canard Enchaîné, 2005-03-09
^ Coulter, Ann (2002-05-02). "French voters tentatively reject dynamiting Notre Dame". Jewish World Review. http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/coulter050202.asp. Retrieved on 2007-02-07.
^ a b Buchanan, Pat (2002-04-30). "True Fascists of the New Europe". The American Cause. http://www.theamericancause.org/pattruefascists.htm. Retrieved on 2007-02-07.
Le Pen focuses on immigration to France, the European Union, traditional culture, law and order and France's high rate of unemployment. He advocates immigration restrictions, the death penalty, raising incentives for homemakers,[1] and euroscepticism. He strongly opposes same-sex marriage, euthanasia, and abortion.
Contents[hide]
1 Personal life and early career
2 Political career
2.1 1972-present
2.2 Electoral mandates
2.3 Political functions
3 Issues
3.1 Controversial statements
3.2 Prosecution concerning historical revisionism and Holocaust denial
3.3 Prosecution, allegations of torture and association with militarists
4 Comments on the Right
5 European Reform Treaty
6 Notes
7 See also
8 External links
//
Personal life and early career
Le Pen was born in a small seaside village in Brittany, the son of a fisherman but then orphaned as an adolescent (pupille de la nation, brought up by the state), when his father's boat was blown up by a mine in 1942. He was raised as a Roman Catholic and studied at the Jesuit high school François Xavier in Vannes, then in the lycée of Lorient.
Aged 16, he was turned down (because of his age) by Colonel Henri de La Vaissière (then representant of the Communist Youth) when he attempted, in November 1944, to join the French Forces of the Interior (FFI).[2] He then entered the faculty of law in Paris, and started to sell in the street the monarchist Action française 's newspaper, Aspects de la France[3]. He was repeatedly convicted of assault (coups et blessures).[4] He became president of the Association corporative des étudiants en droit, an association of law students whose main occupation was to engage in street brawls against the "Cocos" (communists). He was excluded from this organisation in 1951.
Jean-Marie Le Pen, September 2005
After receiving his law diploma, he enlisted in the Army in the Foreign Legion in Indochina, where he arrived after the 1954 Dien Bien Phu Battle[4] (lost by France, and which prompted the President of the Council Pierre Mendès France to put an end to the war at the Geneva Conference). He was then sent to Suez (1956), but arrived only after the cease-fire.[4] He was then sent to Algeria (1957) as an intelligence officer. He has been accused of having engaged in torture, but he denied it, although he admitted knowing of its use.[4] After his time in the military, he studied political science and law at Paris II. His graduate thesis, submitted in 1971 by Jean-Marie Le Pen and Jean-Loup Vincent, was titled Le courant anarchiste en France depuis 1945 or "The anarchist movement in France since 1945".
Le Pen with his wife at a political raly in 2007
His marriage (29 June 1960 - 18 March 1987) to Pierrette Lalanne resulted in three daughters; their daughters have given him nine granddaughters. Their break-up was somewhat dramatic, with his ex-wife posing nude in the French edition of Playboy to ridicule him.[4] Marie-Caroline, another of his daughters, would also break with Le Pen, following her husband to join Bruno Mégret, who split from the FN to found MNR, the rival Mouvement National Républicain (National Republican Movement).[4] The youngest of Le Pen's daughters, Marine Le Pen, is a senior member of the Front National.
In 1977, Le Pen inherited a fortune from Hubert Lambert, son of the cement industrialist of the same name. Hubert Lambert was a political supporter of Le Pen, as well as being a monarchist, an alcoholic, and in poor health.[4] Lambert's will provided 30 million francs (approximatively 5 million euros) to LePen, as well as his castle in Montretout, Saint-Cloud (the same castle had been owned by Madame de Pompadour until 1748).[4].
In the early 1980s, Le Pen's personal security was assured by KO International Company, a subsidiary of VHP Security, a private security firm, and an alleged front organisation for SAC, the Service d'Action Civique (Civic Action Service), a Gaullist organisation. SAC allegedly employed figures with organized crime backgrounds and from the far-right movement.[5][6]
On 31 May 1991, Jean-Marie Le Pen married Jeanne-Marie Paschos ("Jany"), of Greek descent. Born in 1933, Paschos was previously married to Belgian businessman Jean Garnier.
Le Pen is the godfather of the third daughter of Dieudonné M'bala M'bala, a comedian and political activist who moved from fighting the Front National to being very close to most of its senior members.
Political career
National advertisement in Marseille, predicting the now unrealised possibility of Jean-Marie Le Pen becoming President in 2007
Le Pen started his political career as the head of the student union in Toulouse. In 1953, a year before the beginning of the Algerian War, he contacted President Vincent Auriol, who approved Le Pen's proposed volunteer disaster relief project after a flood in the Netherlands. Within two days, there were 40 volunteers from his university, a group that would later help victims of an earthquake in Italy. In Paris in 1956, he was elected to the National Assembly as a member of Pierre Poujade's UDCA populist party. Le Pen, 28 years old, was the youngest member of the Assembly.
In 1957, he became the General Secretary of the National Front of Combatants, a veterans' organization, as well as the first French politician to nominate a Muslim candidate, Ahmed Djebbour, an Algerian, elected in 1957 as deputy of Paris. The next year, following his break with Poujade, Le Pen was re-elected to the National Assembly as a member of the Centre National des Indépendants et Paysans (CNIP) party, led by Antoine Pinay. Le Pen claimed that he had lost his left eye when he was savagely beaten during the 1958 election campaign. Testimonies suggest however that he was only wounded in the right eye and did not lose it. He lost the sight in his left eye years later, due to an illness (popular belief that he wears a glass eye is untrue). During the 1950s, Le Pen took a close interest in the Algerian war (1954-62) and the French defense budget.
Le Pen then directed the 1965 presidential campaign of far-right candidate Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour, who obtained 5.19% of the votes. He insisted on the rehabilitation of the Collaborationists, declaring that:
"Was General de Gaulle more brave than the Marshall Pétain in the occupied zone? This isn't sure. It was much easier to resist in London than to resist in France."[4]
In 1962, he lost his seat at the Assembly. He created the Serp (Société d’études et de relations publiques) firm, a company involved in the music industry, which produced both chorals of the CGT trade-union and songs of the Popular Front and Nazi marches. The firm was condemned in 1968 for "praise of war crime and complicity" after the diffusion of songs from the Third Reich.[4]
1972-present
Jean-Marie Le Pen speaking at the Front National's annual tribute to Joan of Arc in Paris (1 May 2007)
In 1972, Le Pen founded the Front National (FN) party, along with former OAS member Jacques Bompard, former Collaborationist Roland Gaucher and others nostalgics of Vichy France, neo-nazi pagans, Catholic fundamentalists, etc.[4] Le Pen presented himself for the first time in the 1974 presidential election, obtaining 0.74%.[4] In 1976, his Parisian flat (he lived at that time in his castle of Montretout in Saint-Cloud) was dynamited. The affair never was elucidated.[4] Le Pen then didn't manage to obtain the 500 signatures from "grand electors" (grands électeurs, mayors, etc.) necessary to present himself to the 1981 presidential election, won by the candidate of the Socialist Party (PS), François Mitterrand.
Criticizing immigration and taking advantage of the economic crisis striking France, and the world, since the 1973 oil crisis, Le Pen's party managed to increase its votes in the 1980s, starting in the municipal elections of 1983. His popularity has been greatest in the south of France. The FN obtained 10 percent at the 1984 European elections. 34 FN deputies entered the Assembly after the 1986 elections, which were won by the right wing, bringing Jacques Chirac to Matignon in the first cohabitation (that is, of the combination of a right-wing Prime minister, Chirac, with a socialist President, Mitterrand).
In 1984 and 1999, Le Pen won a seat in the European Parliament. In 1988 he lost a reelection bid for the Parliament of France in the 8th District of Bouches-du-Rhône. He was defeated in the second round by Socialist Marius Masse.[7] In 1992 and 1998 he was elected to the regional council of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur.
Le Pen ran in the French presidential elections in 1974, 1988, 1995, 2002, and 2007. As noted above, he did was not able to run for office in 1981, having failed to gather the necessary 500 signatures of elected officials. In the presidential elections of 2002, Le Pen obtained 16.86 percent of the votes in the first round of voting. This was enough to qualify him for the second round, as a result of the poor showing by the Socialist candidate and incumbent prime minister Lionel Jospin and the scattering of votes among 15 other candidates. This was a major political event, both nationally and internationally, as it was the first time someone with such extremist views had qualified for the second round of the French presidential elections. There was a widespread stirring of national public opinion, and more than one million people in France took part in street rallies; slogans such as "vote for the crook, not the fascist" were heard in an expression of fierce opposition to Le Pen's ideas. Le Pen was then soundly defeated in the second round, when incumbent president Jacques Chirac obtained 82 percent of the votes, thus securing the biggest majority in the history of the Fifth Republic.
In the 2004 regional elections, Le Pen intended to run for office in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region but was prevented from doing so because he did not meet the conditions for being a voter in that region: he neither lived there, nor was registered as a taxpayer there.
In recent years, Le Pen has tried to soften his image, with mixed success. He has manoeuvred his daughter Marine into a prominent position, a move that angered many inside the National Front, who worry about the emergence of a possible Le Pen family dynasty.
Electoral mandates
Member of the National Assembly of France for Paris : 1956-1962 / 1986-1988
Member of European Parliament : 1984-2003 (Sentenced by the courts in February 2003) / 2004-
Regional councillor of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur : 1992-2000 (Sentenced by the courts in 2000)
Municipal councillor for the 20th arrondissement of Paris : 1983-1989
Political functions
President of the National Front (France) : 1972-
Issues
See also National Front for a summary of Le Pen's manifesto.
Le Pen remains a polarizing figure in France and opinions regarding him tend to be quite strong. A 2002 IPSOS poll showed that while 22 percent of the electorate have a good or very good opinion of Le Pen, and 13 percent an unfavorable opinion, 61 percent have a very unfavorable opinion.[8]
Le Pen and the National Front are described by much of the media and nearly all commentators as far right. Le Pen himself and the rest of his party disagree with this label; earlier in his political career, Le Pen described his position as "Neither left nor right, but French" (Ni droite, ni gauche, français). He later described his position as right-wing and opposed to the "socialo-communists" and other right-wing parties, which he deems are not real right-wing parties. At other times, for example during the 2002 election campaign, he declared himself "economically right-wing, socially left-wing, and nationally French". He further contends that most of the French political and media class are corrupt and out of touch with the real needs of the common people, and conspire to exclude Le Pen and his party from mainstream politics. Le Pen criticizes the other political parties as the "establishment" and lumped all major parties (Communist, Socialist, Union for French Democracy (UDF) and Rally for the Republic (RPR)) into the "Gang of Four" (la bande des quatre – an allusion to the Gang of Four during China's Cultural Revolution).
The international media often cites Le Pen as a symbol of French xenophobia. He is also occasionally criticized in French and foreign pop songs.
Controversial statements
Le Pen has been accused and convicted several times[9] at home and abroad of xenophobia and anti-Semitism. A Paris court found in February 2005 that his openly verbal criticisms, such as remarks disparaging Muslims in a 2003 Le Monde interview, were "inciting racial hatred",[9] and he was fined 10,000 euros and ordered to pay an additional 5,000 euros in damages to the Ligue des droits de l'homme (League for Human Rights). The conviction and fines were upheld by the Court of Cassation in 2006.[10]
In May 1987, he advocated the forced isolation from society of all people infected with HIV, by placing them in a special "sidatorium". In the same interview he incorrectly declared that AIDS was a form of leprosy.[11] "Sidaïque"[12] is Le Pen's pejorative solecism for "person infected with AIDS" (the more usual French term is "séropositif" (seropositive).[11]
On 21 June 1995, he attacked singer Patrick Bruel on his policy of no longer singing in the city of Toulon because the city had just elected a mayor from the National Front. Le Pen said "the city of Toulon will then have to get along without the vocalisations of singer Benguigui". Benguigui, a Jewish name, is Bruel's name at birth.
In February 1997, Le Pen accused Chirac of being "on the payroll of Jewish organizations, and particularly of the B'nai B'rith".[13][14]
Le Pen once made the infamous pun "Durafour-crématoire" ("four crématoire" meaning "crematory oven") about then minister Michel Durafour, who had said in public a few days before "One must exterminate the National Front".[15] This was made in reference to the crematories in which both living and dead victims of the Nazi holocaust were placed.[16]
In June 2006, he claimed that the French World Cup squad contained too many non-white players, and was not an accurate reflection of French society. He went on to scold players for not singing La Marseillaise, saying they were not 'French'.[17]
In the 2007 election campaign, he referred to fellow candidate Nicolas Sarkozy as 'foreign' or 'the foreigner' due to Sarkozy's Hungarian heritage.[18]
Arguing that his party includes people of various ethnic or religious origins like Jean-Pierre Cohen, Farid Smahi or Huguette Fatna, he has attributed some anti-Semitism in France to the effects of Muslim immigration to Europe and suggested that some part of the Jewish community in France might eventually come to appreciate National Front ideology.
Prosecution concerning historical revisionism and Holocaust denial
Le Pen has made several provocative statements concerning the Holocaust, which amount to historical revisionism and has been convicted of racism or inciting racial hatred at least six times.[9] Thus, on 13 September 1987 he said: "I ask myself several questions. I'm not saying the gas chambers didn't exist. I haven't seen them myself. I haven't particularly studied the question. But I believe it's just a detail in the history of World War II." He was condemned under the Gayssot Act on negationism to pay 1.2 million Francs (183,200 Euros).[19] In 1997, the European Parliament, of which Le Pen was then a member, removed his parliamentary immunity so that Le Pen could be tried by a German court for comments he made at a December 1996 press conference before the German Republikaner party. Echoing his 1987 remarks in France, Le Pen stated: "If you take a 1,000-page book on World War II, the concentration camps take up only two pages and the gas chambers 10 to 15 lines. This is what one calls a detail." In June 1999, a Munich court found this statement to be "minimizing the Holocaust, which caused the deaths of six million Jews," and convicted and fined Le Pen for his remarks.[20]
Prosecution, allegations of torture and association with militarists
In April 2000, Le Pen was suspended from the European Parliament following prosecution for the physical assault of Socialist candidate Annette Peulvast-Bergeal during the 1997 general election. This ultimately led to him losing his seat in the European parliament in 2003. The Versailles appeals court banned him from seeking office for one year.[21]
Le Pen allegedly practiced torture during the Algerian War (1954-1962), when he was a lieutenant in the French Army. Although he denied it, he lost a trial when he attacked Le Monde newspaper on charges of defamation, following accusations by the newspaper that he had used torture. Le Monde has produced in May 2003 the dagger he allegedly used to commit war crimes as court evidence.[22]
Although war crimes committed during the Algerian War are amnestied in France, this was publicised by the newspapers Le Canard Enchaîné and Libération, Le Monde and by Michel Rocard (ex-Prime Minister) on TV (TF1 1993). Le Pen sued the papers and Michel Rocard. This affair ended in 2000 when the "Cour de cassation" (French supreme jurisdiction) concluded that it was legitimate to publish these assertions. However, because of the amnesty and the statute of limitations, there can be no criminal proceedings against Le Pen for the crimes he is alleged to have committed in Algeria. In 1995, Le Pen unsuccessfully sued Jean Dufour, regional counselor of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur (French Communist Party) for the same reason.[23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30]
Le Pen has also been criticized for ties to suspect individuals, such as:
Roger Holeindre, a member of the political bureau of the Front National and a former member of the Organisation armée secrète (OAS), a movement against Algerian independence. However, Holeindre was also a Nazi resister during the Second World War[31][unreliable source?]
Roland Gaucher, a co-founder of the National Front in 1972 who was also a former RNP member.
Comments on the Right
Some of Le Pen's statements led other far-right groups, such as the Austrian Freedom Party,[32] and some National Front supporters to distance themselves from him. Bruno Mégret left the National Front to found his own party (the National Republican Movement, MNR), claiming that Le Pen kept the Front away from the possibility of gaining power. Mégret wanted to emulate Gianfranco Fini's success in Italy by making it possible for right-wing parties to ally themselves with the Front, but claimed that Le Pen's attitude and outrageous speech prevented this. Le Pen's daughter Marine leads an internal movement of the Front that wants to "normalize" the National Front, "de-enclave" it, have a "culture of government" etc.; however, relations with Le Pen and other supporters of the hard line are complex.[33] Over the years, Le Pen gained widespread popularity among neo-Nazis and white nationalists throughout Europe and North America.
As Le Pen, like many other European nationalists in recent years, has made statements highly critical of American foreign policy and culture, he has received notice from American conservatives. Controversial author Ann Coulter called him an anti-American adulterer but said his anti-immigration, anti-Muslim message "finally hit a nerve with voters" after years of irrelevance.[34] Paleoconservative commentator Pat Buchanan contends that even though Le Pen "made radical and foolish statements," the EU violated his right to freedom of speech.[35] He wrote:
As it is often the criminal himself who is first to cry, "Thief!" so it is usually those who scream, "Fascist!" loudest who are the quickest to resort to anti-democratic tactics. Today, the greatest threat to the freedom and independence of the nations of Europe comes not from Le Pen and that 17% of French men and women who voted for him. It comes from an intolerant European Establishment that will accept no rollback of its powers or privileges, nor any reversal of policies it deems "progressive".[35]
European Reform Treaty
Le Pen has been a vocal critic of the European Reform Treaty (formally known as the Treaty of Lisbon) which is due to be ratified by EU member states before 1 January 2009. In October 2007, Le Pen suggested that he would personally visit the Republic of Ireland to assist the "No" campaign but finally changed his mind fearing that his presence would be used against the supporters of the NO vote. Ireland finally refused to ratify the treaty. Ireland is the only EU country which had a citizen referendum. All other EU states, including France, ratified the treaty by parliamentary vote, despite a previous citizen referendum where over 55 percent of French voters rejected the European Reform Treaty.
After the Irish "No" vote, Le Pen addressed French President Nicolas Sarkozy, accusing him of furthering the agenda of a "cabal of international finance and free market fanatics."
Notes
^ Murphy, Clare (2002-05-28). "Le Pen and his feminine side". BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/2011370.stm. Retrieved on 2007-02-07.
^ Quand Le Pen voulait rejoindre les FFI, L'Express, 28 March 2007 (French)
^ Assemblée nationale - Les députés de la IVe République : Jean-Marie LE PEN
^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Le Pen, son univers impitoyable, Radio France Internationale, 2006-09-01 (French)
^ Le général croate Gotovina arrêté en Espagne, RFI, 8 December 2005 (French)
^ Le chauffeur de l’homme de la Question, L'Humanité, 10 December 2005 (French)
^ Marius Masse biography
^ Ipsos.fr - Political Action Barometer (French)
^ a b c "Le Pen convicted of inciting racial hatred for anti-Muslim remarks", Associated Press, 2004-04-02. Retrieved 2008-10-18
^ "France's far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen convicted of inciting racial hatred", Associated Press, 2006-05-11. Retrieved 2008-10-18
^ a b "Le Pen et le sida: les modes de contagion et l'exclusion", L'Heure de vérité, Antenne 2, 1987-05-06 (QuickTime video, French). Retrieved 2008-10-19
^ "SIDA" = Syndrome d'Immuno-Déficience Acquise, the French name for AIDS
^ Nicolas Domenach and Maurice Szafran, Le Roman d'un President, Pion: 1997, ISBN 2259181880
^ Douglas Johnson, "Ancient and Modern", The Spectator, 1997-03-15. Retrieved 2008-10-19
^ L'Humanité - Libres Échanges retrieved 2008-05-30
^ "'The veil? It protects us from ugly women'". The Guardian. 2002-04-25. http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,11882,690114,00.html. Retrieved on 2007-02-07.
^ Fifield, Dominic (2006-06-30). "We are Frenchmen says Thuram, as Le Pen bemoans number of black players". The Guardian. http://football.guardian.co.uk/worldcup2006/story/0,,1809453,00.html. Retrieved on 2007-02-07. [http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2073351,00.html
^ Le Pen rides to Sarkozy's rescue? Certain ideas of Europe Economist.com
^ "Jean-Marie Le Pen renvoyé devant la justice pour ses propos sur l'Occupation". Le Monde. 2006-07-13. http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3224,36-794895@51-776560,0.html/.
^ "Le Pen Convicted for Racial Hatred", Associated Press, 1999-06-02. Retrieved 2008-10-18
^ Julian Nundy, "One-year election ban for Le Pen", The Scotsman, 1998-11-18. Retrieved 2008-10-18
^ L'affaire du poignard du lieutenant Le Pen en Algérie, Le Monde, 2003-05-17 (French)
^ Le Pen et la torture, l'enquete du "Monde" validée par le tribunal, Le Monde, 2003-06-28
^ "J'ai croisé Le Pen à la villa Sésini" (I crossed Le Pen in the Sesini Villa), interview with Paul Aussaresses (whom had argued in favor of the use of torture in Algeria), Le Monde, June 4, 2002
^ "Un lourd silence", Le Monde, 2002-05-05
^ "Quand Le Pen travaillait 20 heures par jour" in L'Humanité (freely accessible), 2002-05-02
^ "New Revelations on Le Pen, tortionary" in L'Humanité, June 4, 2002
^ "Le Pen attaque un élu du PCF en justice", in L'Humanité, April 4, 1995
^ Jean Dufour: "Le Pen vient d'être débouté", in L'Humanité, 1995-06-26
^ "Torture: Le Pen perd son procès en diffamation contre Le Monde", in L'Humanité, 2003-06-27
^ René Monzat, Enquêtes sur la droite extrême, 1992 [1].
^ Bruce Crumley in Time International magazine, (2002-06-05) writes: "Denunciations of Jean-Marie Le Pen and his xenophobic National Front (FN) as racist, anti-Semitic and hostile to minorities and foreigners aren't exactly new. More novel, however, are such condemnations coming from far-right movements like the Austrian Freedom Party (FPO), which itself won international opprobrium in 1999 after entering government on a populist platform similar to Le Pen's."
^ Le Canard Enchaîné, 2005-03-09
^ Coulter, Ann (2002-05-02). "French voters tentatively reject dynamiting Notre Dame". Jewish World Review. http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/coulter050202.asp. Retrieved on 2007-02-07.
^ a b Buchanan, Pat (2002-04-30). "True Fascists of the New Europe". The American Cause. http://www.theamericancause.org/pattruefascists.htm. Retrieved on 2007-02-07.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Nick Griffin, Racist Criminal
Nicholas John "Nick" Griffin (born 1959) is a British politician who, since 1999, has served as chairman of the British National Party (BNP).
Background
Nicholas John Griffin was born in Barnet (1959) and was educated at two Suffolk private schools: St Felix School in Southwold and Woodbridge School. Griffin was the son of Conservative Councillor Edgar Griffin. He began to show his far right affiliations early in life, attending a National Front meeting aged 15.[1]
Griffin studied History and Law at Downing College, Cambridge wherein he established the "Young National Front Students" society.[2] He eventually graduated with a lower-second-class degree in History with Law[3] and a boxing blue, having taken up the sport after a brawl with an anti-fascist party member in Lewisham, south London.[4]
He then became a political worker at the National Front headquarters. When the far-right group fragmented into splinter organisations shortly afterwards, Griffin helped to launch the International Third Position, a fascist movement claiming to oppose both capitalism and communism.
In 1990, Griffin had a serious accident, which led to his eye being surgically removed. He has worn a glass eye ever since.[5] He dropped out of politics for a while but relaunched his career five years later when the BNP founder, John Tyndall, invited him to join the party.
In 1998, Griffin was convicted of inciting racial hatred for publishing material that denied the Holocaust.[6] He received a nine-month prison sentence, which was suspended for two years. A few months later he ousted Tyndall as leader of the BNP.
Career in politics
National Front and International Third Position
Nick Griffin became involved with the far right at the age of 15 when his father, Edgar Griffin, took him to meetings of the National Front (NF). By 1978, he was a local secretary for the NF.
In 1980, he became a member of the NF governing body, the National Directorate, when he also set up the NF Student Organisation. In 1980, Griffin launched Nationalism Today with the aid of Joe Pearce, editor of the NF youth paper Bulldog and twice imprisoned for incitement to racial hatred.[7][8] Nationalism Today became the springboard for the Third Positionist ideas that the NF later adopted.[citation needed] Writing in Nationalism Today in 1985, Griffin praised the black separatist Louis Farrakhan, saying, "white nationalists everywhere wish [Farrakhan] well, for we share a common struggle for the same ends: racial separation and racial freedom".[9]
Griffin left the NF in 1989 angry at where they were heading and in a split with Patrick Harrington. Harrington went on to form the Third Way. Meanwhile, Griffin joined with Derek Holland to form the International Third Position (ITP), which developed from the Political Soldier movement that had formed within the NF. Given the secretive nature of the ITP, it is hard to establish exactly when Griffin left, although he was still part of its leadership in mid-1990.[10] International Third Position (ITP) was a neo-fascist organization formed by the breakaway faction of neofacist British National Front and Italian neofascists[11] led by Roberto Fiore.
British National Party
While still a leader of the ITP, Griffin became involved with another far-right nationalist group, the British National Party (BNP). By 1993 he was speaking at BNP meetings and writing pseudonymously for BNP publications.[10] In 1995, he officially joined the party.
For a time Griffin edited Spearhead, a publication owned by then party leader John Tyndall. Between 1995 and 1997, he was editor of The Rune, an anti-semitic weekly.[12] In 1998, he was prosecuted in connection with the magazine (see below).
In September 1999, Griffin was elected as head of the BNP. He embarked on a campaign to make the party electable by taking it away from Tyndall's agenda. These changes included an emphasis on the need to dismantle multiculturalism, which the BNP claim has a destructive influence on both immigrant and British culture. This realignment was designed to position the BNP alongside successful European far-right groups, such as the French Front National. The campaign would also involve moves against Tyndall, who was expelled from the party for a time in 2002 along with his closest allies, Richard Edmonds and John Morse.
Under the BNP's constitution, Griffin is solely responsible for the party's legal and financial liabilities, and has the final say in all decisions affecting the party. While he routinely consults with various colleagues on matters which affect them directly, he is not bound to do so. Some areas of policy have been delegated to other BNP leaders, but Griffin has retained the right to make the most important decisions.[13]
1998 public order conviction
In 1998, Griffin, along with Paul Ballard, was convicted of violating section 19 of the Public Order Act 1986, relating to incitement to racial hatred[14] for his editorship of issue 12 of The Rune, published in 1996.
The complaint regarding the magazine was made by Alex Carlile QC, who was then Liberal Democrat MP for Montgomeryshire. He had asked the police to obtain for him a copy of the magazine, which they did. After reading it, the MP called the police again and complained about its content, whereupon the police raided Griffin's home and charged him. He was convicted and received a nine-month prison sentence, suspended for two years, and was fined £2,300. Griffin claims that the law under which he was convicted "is an unjust law and he therefore has no obligation to follow it".[citation needed]
2005 prosecution and 2006 retrial
On 14 December 2004, Nick Griffin was arrested on suspicion of incitement to racial hatred, relating to a BBC documentary broadcast in July 2004, in which he was recorded at Morley Town Hall (in a constituency which later went on to elect a BNP councillor in 2006) as saying that Islam was a "...wicked and vicious faith". He was the 12th person to be arrested following the documentary and the second most prominent after BNP founder John Tyndall, who had been arrested two days earlier. Griffin was released on police bail the same day but, the following April, was charged with four offences of using words or behaviour intended or likely to stir up racial hatred.
On 6 February 2006, a jury at Leeds Crown Court returned not guilty verdicts on two of the charges and was unable to reach a verdict on the other two. The Crown Prosecution Service announced that it would seek a re-trial.[15][16]
Nick Griffin and Mark Collett leave Leeds Crown Court on November 10 2006 after being found not guilty of charges of incitement to racial hatred at their retrial.
In early November 2006, the retrial of Griffin and co-defendant Mark Collett took place and once again both men were found not guilty on all counts, which means that of all the people arrested in connection with the BBC documentary none had been convicted of any offence relating to it. Somewhat controversially, Government ministers have since called for a review of existing laws.
After the trial, Griffin celebrated outside the court with over two hundred supporters and champagne in red, white and blue bottles donated by Jean-Marie Le Pen. "What has just happened shows Tony Blair and the government toadies at the BBC that they can take our taxes but they cannot take our hearts, they cannot take our tongues and they cannot take our freedom," he told his supporters.[17][18]
Sunday Times journalist Rod Liddle wrote an article 'Alas, I must defend the BNP' supporting Griffin's right to free speech.[19]
Oxford Union debate
In November 2007, the Oxford Union invited Griffin to speak at a forum on the limits of free speech, along with other speakers including David Irving. This provoked controversy within the University as the student body was divided over the issue. Many supported Griffin's right to free speech, with some Junior Common Rooms passing motions in support of the invitations and a vote at the Oxford Union itself being carried by a majority of 2 to 1. Others, including the Oxford University Student Union (OUSU), Unite Against Fascism and the Oxford Jewish Society, staged protests and argued that Griffin and Irving should be denied a platform which they could use to provide legitimacy for their views.
The decision to allow him to speak caused such controversy that many members of the Oxford Union resigned their memberships, including several MPs. That evening, hundreds of demonstrators congregated in central Oxford, surrounding the Oxford Union, and blocking people from entering the building. The debate was delayed by more than three and a half hours, and when Nick Griffin arrived (he attempted to enter through a side door to avoid being seen), he was pelted with eggs. The Union was unable to carry out a proper debate in the usual chamber, and was forced to hold a side debate in a smaller room, as anti-BNP activitists were present on the floor. Nick Griffin would later blame "The hound-dogs of the Labour government" for persuading people to protest against him.[20]
University of Bath Barring
Mr Griffin was invited to address the meeting by first-year politics student and BNP youth leader Danny Lake at the University of Bath in May 2007, who wanted Mr Griffin to visit the university to explain the BNP's policies to lecturers and students. It was, however, widely viewed as the party's attempt to establish a foothold on the university campus.[21]
11 union general secretaries wrote to the university's vice-chancellor, Glynis Breakwell, calling on her to reconsider her decision. Student leaders and union officials said the initial decision to allow Mr Griffin, who has a conviction for inciting racial hatred, to address the meeting was naive, describing the BNP as dangerous and divisive.[21]
The Guardian reported 'The university reversed its initial decision in light of the scale of opposition. In a statement published on its website it said many students had expressed fears for their safety if the BNP leader was allowed to appear. It added: "The university has now learned that a very large number of protesters intend to arrive on campus. This creates the likelihood of substantial public order problems and real possibility of disruption ... making it impractical for the university to allow the event to go ahead. In the light of all these considerations the university has decided to refuse permission for the event to take place."'[21]
Sally Hunt, joint general secretary of the University and College Union, welcomed the university's U-turn: "We feel this is the correct decision. Allowing the BNP to speak would have compromised the safety of staff and students and sent out a very worrying message about Bath University's commitment to diversity.
"The millions of staff and students who cherish academic freedom ... deplore the presence in an institution of learning of Nick Griffin."[21]
Paul Jaggers, president of Bath Student Union, said the decision "sends a clear message that students do not want the BNP on university campuses".[21]
Recent election campaigns
In June 2001, Griffin ran as a BNP candidate in the constituency of Oldham West & Royton and received 6,552 votes (16%), beating the Liberal Democrats to third place and running a close race for second place with the Conservatives. After the result, Griffin was accused of exploiting racial tensions in Oldham that resulted in the Oldham Riots just before the vote.[citation needed]
In May 2003, Griffin stood for election again in Oldham for a seat on the local council representing the Chadderton North ward, winning 993 votes (28%). He was not elected. In June 2004, Griffin topped the BNP list for the European Parliament for the North West England Constituency. The party received 134,958 votes (6%). No one from the BNP was elected.
Nick Griffin stood in the 2005 General Election in the Keighley constituency, West Yorkshire, where he polled 4,240 votes, 9.16% of those cast.
Griffin contested the 2007 Welsh National Assembly Elections in the South Wales West region.
In October 2007, the BNP announced that Griffin had been selected as Parliamentary candidate for Thurrock in Essex.
Anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial
In issue 12 of the BNP publication The Rune (see 1998 public order conviction) he called the Holocaust "the Holohoax" and criticized the Holocaust denier David Irving for admitting in an interview that up to four million Jews might have died in the Holocaust. Griffin wrote: "True Revisionists will not be fooled by this new twist to the sorry tale of the Hoax of the Twentieth Century."[22][23][24] Griffin was eventually prosecuted for his articles in The Rune (see below).
In 1997 he told an undercover journalist that he had updated Richard Verrall's Holocaust denial book Did Six Million Really Die?. He also described his former MP, Alex Carlile, QC, who had reported The Rune to the police, as "this bloody Jew... whose only claim is that his grandparents died in the Holocaust."[25]
In his defence during his 1998 prosecution, Griffin said: "I am well aware that the orthodox opinion is that six million Jews were gassed and cremated and turned into lampshades. Orthodox opinion also once held that the world is flat ... I have reached the conclusion that the 'extermination' tale is a mixture of Allied wartime propaganda, extremely profitable lie, and latter witch-hysteria."[26]
Background
Nicholas John Griffin was born in Barnet (1959) and was educated at two Suffolk private schools: St Felix School in Southwold and Woodbridge School. Griffin was the son of Conservative Councillor Edgar Griffin. He began to show his far right affiliations early in life, attending a National Front meeting aged 15.[1]
Griffin studied History and Law at Downing College, Cambridge wherein he established the "Young National Front Students" society.[2] He eventually graduated with a lower-second-class degree in History with Law[3] and a boxing blue, having taken up the sport after a brawl with an anti-fascist party member in Lewisham, south London.[4]
He then became a political worker at the National Front headquarters. When the far-right group fragmented into splinter organisations shortly afterwards, Griffin helped to launch the International Third Position, a fascist movement claiming to oppose both capitalism and communism.
In 1990, Griffin had a serious accident, which led to his eye being surgically removed. He has worn a glass eye ever since.[5] He dropped out of politics for a while but relaunched his career five years later when the BNP founder, John Tyndall, invited him to join the party.
In 1998, Griffin was convicted of inciting racial hatred for publishing material that denied the Holocaust.[6] He received a nine-month prison sentence, which was suspended for two years. A few months later he ousted Tyndall as leader of the BNP.
Career in politics
National Front and International Third Position
Nick Griffin became involved with the far right at the age of 15 when his father, Edgar Griffin, took him to meetings of the National Front (NF). By 1978, he was a local secretary for the NF.
In 1980, he became a member of the NF governing body, the National Directorate, when he also set up the NF Student Organisation. In 1980, Griffin launched Nationalism Today with the aid of Joe Pearce, editor of the NF youth paper Bulldog and twice imprisoned for incitement to racial hatred.[7][8] Nationalism Today became the springboard for the Third Positionist ideas that the NF later adopted.[citation needed] Writing in Nationalism Today in 1985, Griffin praised the black separatist Louis Farrakhan, saying, "white nationalists everywhere wish [Farrakhan] well, for we share a common struggle for the same ends: racial separation and racial freedom".[9]
Griffin left the NF in 1989 angry at where they were heading and in a split with Patrick Harrington. Harrington went on to form the Third Way. Meanwhile, Griffin joined with Derek Holland to form the International Third Position (ITP), which developed from the Political Soldier movement that had formed within the NF. Given the secretive nature of the ITP, it is hard to establish exactly when Griffin left, although he was still part of its leadership in mid-1990.[10] International Third Position (ITP) was a neo-fascist organization formed by the breakaway faction of neofacist British National Front and Italian neofascists[11] led by Roberto Fiore.
British National Party
While still a leader of the ITP, Griffin became involved with another far-right nationalist group, the British National Party (BNP). By 1993 he was speaking at BNP meetings and writing pseudonymously for BNP publications.[10] In 1995, he officially joined the party.
For a time Griffin edited Spearhead, a publication owned by then party leader John Tyndall. Between 1995 and 1997, he was editor of The Rune, an anti-semitic weekly.[12] In 1998, he was prosecuted in connection with the magazine (see below).
In September 1999, Griffin was elected as head of the BNP. He embarked on a campaign to make the party electable by taking it away from Tyndall's agenda. These changes included an emphasis on the need to dismantle multiculturalism, which the BNP claim has a destructive influence on both immigrant and British culture. This realignment was designed to position the BNP alongside successful European far-right groups, such as the French Front National. The campaign would also involve moves against Tyndall, who was expelled from the party for a time in 2002 along with his closest allies, Richard Edmonds and John Morse.
Under the BNP's constitution, Griffin is solely responsible for the party's legal and financial liabilities, and has the final say in all decisions affecting the party. While he routinely consults with various colleagues on matters which affect them directly, he is not bound to do so. Some areas of policy have been delegated to other BNP leaders, but Griffin has retained the right to make the most important decisions.[13]
1998 public order conviction
In 1998, Griffin, along with Paul Ballard, was convicted of violating section 19 of the Public Order Act 1986, relating to incitement to racial hatred[14] for his editorship of issue 12 of The Rune, published in 1996.
The complaint regarding the magazine was made by Alex Carlile QC, who was then Liberal Democrat MP for Montgomeryshire. He had asked the police to obtain for him a copy of the magazine, which they did. After reading it, the MP called the police again and complained about its content, whereupon the police raided Griffin's home and charged him. He was convicted and received a nine-month prison sentence, suspended for two years, and was fined £2,300. Griffin claims that the law under which he was convicted "is an unjust law and he therefore has no obligation to follow it".[citation needed]
2005 prosecution and 2006 retrial
On 14 December 2004, Nick Griffin was arrested on suspicion of incitement to racial hatred, relating to a BBC documentary broadcast in July 2004, in which he was recorded at Morley Town Hall (in a constituency which later went on to elect a BNP councillor in 2006) as saying that Islam was a "...wicked and vicious faith". He was the 12th person to be arrested following the documentary and the second most prominent after BNP founder John Tyndall, who had been arrested two days earlier. Griffin was released on police bail the same day but, the following April, was charged with four offences of using words or behaviour intended or likely to stir up racial hatred.
On 6 February 2006, a jury at Leeds Crown Court returned not guilty verdicts on two of the charges and was unable to reach a verdict on the other two. The Crown Prosecution Service announced that it would seek a re-trial.[15][16]
Nick Griffin and Mark Collett leave Leeds Crown Court on November 10 2006 after being found not guilty of charges of incitement to racial hatred at their retrial.
In early November 2006, the retrial of Griffin and co-defendant Mark Collett took place and once again both men were found not guilty on all counts, which means that of all the people arrested in connection with the BBC documentary none had been convicted of any offence relating to it. Somewhat controversially, Government ministers have since called for a review of existing laws.
After the trial, Griffin celebrated outside the court with over two hundred supporters and champagne in red, white and blue bottles donated by Jean-Marie Le Pen. "What has just happened shows Tony Blair and the government toadies at the BBC that they can take our taxes but they cannot take our hearts, they cannot take our tongues and they cannot take our freedom," he told his supporters.[17][18]
Sunday Times journalist Rod Liddle wrote an article 'Alas, I must defend the BNP' supporting Griffin's right to free speech.[19]
Oxford Union debate
In November 2007, the Oxford Union invited Griffin to speak at a forum on the limits of free speech, along with other speakers including David Irving. This provoked controversy within the University as the student body was divided over the issue. Many supported Griffin's right to free speech, with some Junior Common Rooms passing motions in support of the invitations and a vote at the Oxford Union itself being carried by a majority of 2 to 1. Others, including the Oxford University Student Union (OUSU), Unite Against Fascism and the Oxford Jewish Society, staged protests and argued that Griffin and Irving should be denied a platform which they could use to provide legitimacy for their views.
The decision to allow him to speak caused such controversy that many members of the Oxford Union resigned their memberships, including several MPs. That evening, hundreds of demonstrators congregated in central Oxford, surrounding the Oxford Union, and blocking people from entering the building. The debate was delayed by more than three and a half hours, and when Nick Griffin arrived (he attempted to enter through a side door to avoid being seen), he was pelted with eggs. The Union was unable to carry out a proper debate in the usual chamber, and was forced to hold a side debate in a smaller room, as anti-BNP activitists were present on the floor. Nick Griffin would later blame "The hound-dogs of the Labour government" for persuading people to protest against him.[20]
University of Bath Barring
Mr Griffin was invited to address the meeting by first-year politics student and BNP youth leader Danny Lake at the University of Bath in May 2007, who wanted Mr Griffin to visit the university to explain the BNP's policies to lecturers and students. It was, however, widely viewed as the party's attempt to establish a foothold on the university campus.[21]
11 union general secretaries wrote to the university's vice-chancellor, Glynis Breakwell, calling on her to reconsider her decision. Student leaders and union officials said the initial decision to allow Mr Griffin, who has a conviction for inciting racial hatred, to address the meeting was naive, describing the BNP as dangerous and divisive.[21]
The Guardian reported 'The university reversed its initial decision in light of the scale of opposition. In a statement published on its website it said many students had expressed fears for their safety if the BNP leader was allowed to appear. It added: "The university has now learned that a very large number of protesters intend to arrive on campus. This creates the likelihood of substantial public order problems and real possibility of disruption ... making it impractical for the university to allow the event to go ahead. In the light of all these considerations the university has decided to refuse permission for the event to take place."'[21]
Sally Hunt, joint general secretary of the University and College Union, welcomed the university's U-turn: "We feel this is the correct decision. Allowing the BNP to speak would have compromised the safety of staff and students and sent out a very worrying message about Bath University's commitment to diversity.
"The millions of staff and students who cherish academic freedom ... deplore the presence in an institution of learning of Nick Griffin."[21]
Paul Jaggers, president of Bath Student Union, said the decision "sends a clear message that students do not want the BNP on university campuses".[21]
Recent election campaigns
In June 2001, Griffin ran as a BNP candidate in the constituency of Oldham West & Royton and received 6,552 votes (16%), beating the Liberal Democrats to third place and running a close race for second place with the Conservatives. After the result, Griffin was accused of exploiting racial tensions in Oldham that resulted in the Oldham Riots just before the vote.[citation needed]
In May 2003, Griffin stood for election again in Oldham for a seat on the local council representing the Chadderton North ward, winning 993 votes (28%). He was not elected. In June 2004, Griffin topped the BNP list for the European Parliament for the North West England Constituency. The party received 134,958 votes (6%). No one from the BNP was elected.
Nick Griffin stood in the 2005 General Election in the Keighley constituency, West Yorkshire, where he polled 4,240 votes, 9.16% of those cast.
Griffin contested the 2007 Welsh National Assembly Elections in the South Wales West region.
In October 2007, the BNP announced that Griffin had been selected as Parliamentary candidate for Thurrock in Essex.
Anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial
In issue 12 of the BNP publication The Rune (see 1998 public order conviction) he called the Holocaust "the Holohoax" and criticized the Holocaust denier David Irving for admitting in an interview that up to four million Jews might have died in the Holocaust. Griffin wrote: "True Revisionists will not be fooled by this new twist to the sorry tale of the Hoax of the Twentieth Century."[22][23][24] Griffin was eventually prosecuted for his articles in The Rune (see below).
In 1997 he told an undercover journalist that he had updated Richard Verrall's Holocaust denial book Did Six Million Really Die?. He also described his former MP, Alex Carlile, QC, who had reported The Rune to the police, as "this bloody Jew... whose only claim is that his grandparents died in the Holocaust."[25]
In his defence during his 1998 prosecution, Griffin said: "I am well aware that the orthodox opinion is that six million Jews were gassed and cremated and turned into lampshades. Orthodox opinion also once held that the world is flat ... I have reached the conclusion that the 'extermination' tale is a mixture of Allied wartime propaganda, extremely profitable lie, and latter witch-hysteria."[26]
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