What did we witness on the Place du Trocadéro in Paris, in the evening of Monday, October 9, amidst the crowd gathered in solidarity with Israel after the Hamas terrorist attack? A step further in the normalization of the far right party Rassemblement National (RN), represented by MPs who were enthusiastically welcomed by some participants? Or, on the contrary, a demonstration of the pariah status of Marine Le Pen's party, which was kept out of the leading procession and whose two recognizable figureheads did not show up?
Jordan Bardella (the RN's president), who remained in Brussels, and Le Pen, who said she did not want to overshadow the demonstration with her presence, did not take part in the Paris rally. The RN was represented by its MPs who are members of the France-Israel friendship group, who were less clearly identified as RN members. According to journalists on site, they were not directly subject to hostile statements, with some like Julien Odoul – a regular on CNews, a news channel allegedly linked to far-right figures – even granting a few requests for selfies. In the eyes of RN politicians, this is proof that the stigma of anti-Semitism, seen as a barrier on the road to power, is gradually fading. Eric Zemmour, president of the Reconquête! far-right party, also took part in the march when most of the demonstrators had already dispersed, with his team immediately relaying the applause of a few admirers on social media.
The first secretary of the Parti Socialiste (PS), Olivier Faure as well as the PS mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo were heckled meanwhile, being associated by some demonstrators with Jean-Luc Mélenchon. The Far Right is therefore delighted to see accusations of anti-Semitism leveled at Mélenchon, leader of the radical left party La France Insoumise (LFI): the accusations are not new, but have intensified after his initial ambiguous statements on the Hamas attack.
Back in the days of Jean-Marie Le Pen's (Marine Le Pen's father) presidency of the Front National (the original name of the RN), the party had already tried to forge closer ties with the Jewish community or with Israel – without the slightest success. As recently as 2018, Marine Le Pen was booed at a march against anti-Semitism following the Paris murder of Mireille Knoll, an 85-year-old Jewish woman. Protected by an imposing security detail, she had to temporarily leave the procession. At the time, the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions (CRIF), through its then-president Francis Kalifat, declared Ms Le Pen a persona non grata, just as he did Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
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