the co-founder of the National Front played a role which “is now subject to the judgment of history”, declares the Elysée

Jean-Marie Le Pen was not an ideologue. He did not have a “fixed” vision of the ideas he defended. Thus, on the economy, he presented himself in the 1980s as a “French Reagan”, named after the President of the United States at the time. Later, in the 1990s/2000s he could defend an anti-liberal line. Ditto on immigration. This theme arrived very quickly in the doctrine of the National Front with the slogan “a million unemployed is a million too many immigrants”. But, for a long time, Le Pen defended a colonial and imperialist vision of immigration, where the racial dimension was secondary. Clearly, for him, a harki or a child of a harki could without problem be French. However, he made statements where he said he believed “in the inequality of races”. In the same way, regarding Islam, he happened to say that the five pillars of Islam were compatible with the Republic before warning of the danger for France of becoming an “Islamic republic”.