Jean-Marie Le Pen accuses daughter Marine of censorship
France’s Front National (FN) founder Jean-Marie Le Pen has posted his controversial videoblog on his own website and written an open letter to his daughter complaining that he was “censored” after claims that it contained an anti-Semitic remark.
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Complaining of an “unjustified” act of “censorship”, of which he said he had received no warning, Jean-Marie Le Pen appealed to his daughter Marine to order the video to be put back up on the FN’s official website.
In the meantime he has posted it himself on his own site.
The latest moves in a family row between the former and the present president of the far-right movement appear to sharpen the tone between father and daughter … but for the fact that the FN’s official site has an advertisement and link to the offending item prominently displayed on its homepage.
The FN’s ageing founder and veteran provocateur may well be furious that his own daughter had publicly criticised a “political error” in his apparent reference to Nazi crematoriums in a polemic against Jewish singer Patrick Bruel and other opponents of the movement.
But Marine Le Pen refrained from criticising the content of his remark and the reason given for taking the videoblog down were that it could leave her open to legal action as official editor of the site.
See: Le Pen’s ‘anti-Semitic’ wisecrack throws Front National into turmoil
In his open letter Jean-Marie Le Pen reminded Marine that she herself has had legal problems.
One of those was apparently resolved her way on Thursday when a court fined anti-racism campaigner Dominique Sopo for saying that she had attended an “anti-Semitic ball” in Vienna.
The event, organised by Austria’s far-right FPO, was held on the 67th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz but the court judged that there was insufficient proof to justify the term used.
Sopo said he would appeal.
On Friday Brigitte Rinaldi, a reporter for Europe 1 radio, made a legal complaint against FN stewards, claiming that she had been thrown to the ground as Jean-Marie Le Pen arrived at a press conference in the southern city of Nice.
Le Pen accused her of inventing the incident.
Background: Has Marine Le Pen made France's Front National respectable?
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