The extreme right scene was shaken by the split in January 1999 of the Front
National, one wing led by chairman Jean-Marie Le Pen, the other by his
former deputy Bruno Mégret. Groups and publications connected with the
original FN either sided with one or the other faction, or remained non-committal.
According to the annual report of the Commission nationale
consultative des droits de l'homme, since 1991 there has been a consistent
decline in the number of violent anti-Semitic acts and anti-Semitic threats. A
widely publicized event in 1998 was the trial, conviction and appeal of the
philosopher Roger Garaudy, author of The Founding Myths of Israeli Politics.
He was fined and given suspended sentences for racial libel and denying the
Holocaust.

THE JEWISH COMMUNITY
The Jews of France constitute the largest Jewish center in Europe, numbering
600-700,000 out of a total population of 59 million. The largest community
is in the Paris area (300-350,000), followed by Marseille (80,000), Lyon
(30,000), and Nice and Toulouse (20,000 each). Strasbourg, where 12,000
Jews live, is a major religious and cultural center. In cities with a FN mayor,
such as Toulon, the community has clearly stated that it does not wish to
receive subsidies or any other kind of aid from the municipality. The Toulon
Jewish community numbers some 2,000 families. The three main
organizations of French Jewry are the Conseil Représentatif des Institutions
Juives de France (CRIF), the Consistoire Central and the Fonds Social Juif
Unifié (FSJU). There are four Jewish radio stations in Paris and a dozen more
in the provinces, and several Jewish periodicals.
During the last ten years there has been a dramatic revitalization in
communal life, which is expressed in the growing number of Jewish private
schools (over 80) and synagogues (over 150 in the Paris area). Most French
universities offer courses in Judaic studies and there is also a lively Jewish
press. In late 1998, President Jacques Chirac and Premier Lionel Jospin
opened the Museum of the Art and History of Judaism in the Marais district
of Paris.

POLITICAL PARTIES AND EXTRA-PARLIAMENTARY GROUPS
Political Parties
The main event on the extreme right in 1998 was the split within the Front
National (FN), which began in December with the sacking of the party's
number two man Bruno Mégret and his followers by chairman Jean-Marie Le
Pen. The split, which was the outcome of a longtime rivalry within the party
on matters of strategy and ideology, seems to be definitive. Although things
will not be settled until a court rules who is the legal owner of the party's
name and premises, there are now two FNs, one headed by Le Pen, the
other, founded on 24 January 1999, by Mégret (named Front national--Mouvement
national), whose members sit separately in regional assemblies
and city councils. Since the split, support for Le Pen has fallen in opinion
polls from 16 percent to 8-10 percent, while Mégret receives 3-4 percent.
Thus, although the party has suffered a serious blow, the combined support
for both factions does not at present appear to be much lower than that
enjoyed by the former united FN.
Founded in 1972, the FN had a membership of around 50,000 before the
split. It has branches throughout the country including in the remote
overseas territories. The party suffered several electoral setbacks in 1998,
including the invalidation of the party's only MP, Toulon mayor Jean-Marie
Le Chevallier, in January. His wife Cendrine, who ran as his proxy in the
Toulon by-election, was defeated twice (the first time the election was
invalidated following FN accusations of fraud and cheating). A few weeks
later Jean-Marie Le Chevallier, running in a local by-election, also lost. These
election failures seem to have been connected to events in Toulon, where
several FN city councilmen have been indicted on various charges, ranging
from financial misdemeanors to sexual assault.
The FN also suffered defeats in the courts. The European Parliament lifted
Le Pen's immunity so that he could be prosecuted in both Germany and
France following his remark that "the gas chambers were a mere detail in the
history of World War II" (see ASW 1997/ 8). In addition, he was given a
suspended jail term, fined and declared ineligible to stand for public office
for one year after he kicked a woman socialist candidate to the 1997 general
election during a street brawl in Mantes la Jolie, a Paris suburb. In Aix-en-Provence,
a French court of appeal upheld a three-month probationary
sentence and fine against the FN mayor of Vitrolles Catherine Mégret (wife
of Bruno), following her conviction in 1997 for racial hatred.
The official policy of both the Le Pen and the Mégret factions are
identical: they include calls for total and compulsory repatriation of all
foreign workers and opposition to the acquisition of French citizenship by
non-European immigrants. The reference to anti-Semitism is often veiled; for
example, the Gayssot Law of 1990 which forbids incitement to racial hatred
and the dissemination of Holocaust denial propaganda would be repealed.
The FN continues to be a staunch opponent of the Maastricht Treaty and
of the EEC. Most of its recent propaganda has been directed against the Euro
and the EEC "Brussels' bureaucrats." On 17 January 1999, two days before
the European Parliament convened to vote on the Law ratifying the
Amsterdam Treaty which, according to Le Pen, incarnates "the Europe of
merchants and money lenders," the party held a demonstration attended by
3,000 people.
The Le Pen wing of FN still refuses any agreement with the conservative
right, and this is the main reason for the split with the Mégret faction. Bruno
Mégret, a 49-year-old technocrat, accuses Le Pen of being more of a liability
than an asset to the party's growth because of his bad management of the
party finances and staff. But he opposes him mainly on the ground that Le
Pen's strategy is holding the FN below the 15 percent mark, therefore
making the party a nuisance to the right, but not yet a serious contender for
participation in a coalition government. Mégret believes that the strategy of
supporting candidates on the conservative right in return for acceptance of
part of the FN's political agenda, which was applied with some success in
the March 1998 regional elections, should be promoted on the national level.
Le Pen's FN continues to maintain contacts with foreign right-wing
groups, with the aim of creating a transnational network called EuroNat. All
these groups, especially in Eastern Europe, remain faithful to Le Pen, while
Mégret does not seem to be much interested in foreign contacts. In August
1998, the party paid the campaign printing expenses of the Swedish
Sverigedemokraterna (see Sweden), but it could not prevent the complete
failure of the Swedish far right party, which polled less than 1 percent.
In July 1998, the party's youth movement, Front National de la Jeunesse,
under the leadership of Samuel Maréchal, signed a transnational agreement
with foreign groups such as the Greek Ethniko Metopo, the Spanish
Democracia Nacional and the Italian Forza Nuova.
Three factions with veiled anti-Semitic tendencies are split between the
two FNs. The Catholic fundamentalists, who rally around Bernard Antony's
Chrétienté-Solidarité (Christian Solidarity) and its bi-monthly newspaper
Reconquête, are aligned with Le Pen; the group of former New Right activists,
led by Jean-Yves Le Gallou and Jean-Claude Bardet, constitutes the core of
Mégret's FN; the National Revolutionary, or Völkisch (national) wing,
represented by Pierre Vial's Terre et Peuple movement, is also part of
Mégret's FN and controls the student movement, Renouveau étudiant, led by
Nicolas Evrard. Even membership of the Front National de la Jeunesse
(nearly 2,000 before the split) is divided between a Le Pen wing, led by
Samuel Maréchal, and a Mégret wing, led by Guillaume Peltier and
Guillaume Fiquet.

Extra-parliamentary Groups
The trend among extremist extra-parliamentary groups before the split was
to draw closer to the radical wing of the FN. Most radicals have chosen the
Mégret faction, but some observers believe that if Mégret's attempt at build-ing
a successful party fails, violent activity on their part might well increase.
National Revolutionary and skinhead groups continued to cooperate with
the aim of building a common structure, as a result of the "Appel des 31 pour
l'unité," (see ASW 1997/ 8). The merger of Nouvelle Résistance and GUD
(see below) took place, giving birth to Unité radicale, which has some 200
followers. In December 1998, this movement chose to support Mégret.
Oeuvre Française (French Society), headed by Pierre Sidos and with a
membership of only 60, has now divided into two distinct factions, one
based in Paris around Sidos, and the other, around Yvan Benedetti, in Lyon.
The monthly Jeune Nation, published by Benedetti, is staunchly anti-Israel,
anti-Semitic and denies the Holocaust. Sidos was a guest of the book fair
organized by the FN municipality of Toulon in November 1998. The Lyon
group organized a "national forum" on 28 March, with the participation of
members from the PNFE, the PNF, and other radical right groups.
The Parti Nationaliste Français (French Nationalist Party -- PNF) is a
racist, neo-Nazi and pagan fringe group whose leader, Jean Castrillo, is a
former Waffen-SS soldier, and whose members (numbering under 50)
belonged to the FN until the end of 1981. They publish the monthly Militant.
The group has been in decline since its ideological leader Pierre Pauty
returned to the FN. Pauty now has a seat on the city council of Saint-Denis,
near Paris, and on the regional council.
The Parti Nationaliste Français et Européen (French and European
Nationalist Party -- PNFE) is headed by Erik Sausset who took over from the
founder, Claude Cornilleau, when he left the party in 1998. With a membership
of about 100, the majority skinheads, this anti-Semitic and Holocaust
denying group is also on the decline. In 1998 it published only one issue of
its newspaper Le Flambeau (in November), but it opened a website.
The PNFE maintains links with the German NPD and the Greek Chrissi
Avgi. It was invited to the September 1998 European gathering of neo-Nazis
organized in Salonika by the NPD and Chrissi Avgi. The PNFE is supported
by skinzines such as Militants blancs, published near Marseille, Blitzkrieg, in
the Moselle department, and Totenkopf, in northern France.
Union des Cercles Résistance is now the legal name of Nouvelle
Résistance, since 1991 the main National Bolshevik group. It has about 120
members and its bimonthly magazine Résistance is printed in 1,500 copies.
Its leader is Christian Bouchet, a former royalist and member of GRECE (see
below). The group advocates a coalition between right and left revolutionaries
on the basis of anti-capitalism, hostility to the United States and support
for non-aligned Muslim countries. It staunchly supports the Palestinian
Hamas in the name of anti-Zionism, as well as the Holocaust denier Roger
Garaudy. The group has launched a campaign against fast-food chains,
which are seen as a mean of US colonization. The youth movement Jeune
Résistance, publishes a bimonthly by the same name, edited by Fabrice
Robert, leader of Fraction Hexagone, the most well-known far-right rock
band in France (its CDs sell around 2,000 copies). Links between Islamic
extremists and French left-wing intellectuals have been observed. For
example, Ginette Skandrani, a contributor to the Paris-based, anti-Israel
journal L'Audace, which is published by Mondher Sfar and associated with
the Tunisian London-based preacher Rached Ghannouchi, leader of the
Ennahdha Party, has close ties with Nouvelle Résistance and was among the
group of demonstrators who supported Roger Garaudy at the time of his trial.
GUD (Groupe Union Défense), a student group, founded in 1969, is
active in Paris and Nice, where it harasses anti-fascists, as well as in smaller,
university cities. It is headed by Frédéric Chatillon, the son-in-law of a FN
regional councilor, Katherine d'Herbais. Chatillon is the owner of the public
relations and publishing company Riwal. It should be noted that Syrian
money helped Riwal print Holocaust-denying material such as the books of
Roger Garaudy (see below) and Jürgen Graf (see Switzerland). The company
was instrumental in disseminating Garaudy's book The Founding Myths
of Israeli Politics and translating it into Arabic. The translation was done by
the Iraqi dissident Jawad Bashara, a notorious anti-Semite. Riwal was also the
publisher of FN's official newsheet Français d'abord (as well as the anti-Semitic
newsletter Faits et Documents (see below), until the party split.
Another GUD activist, Thomas Lagane is currently the Front National de la
Jeunesse second-in-command. GUD is a violent group with a record of
aggression against foreign and Jewish students on university campuses. One
of its most notorious members, Yvain Pottiez, is Bruno Mégret's bodyguard.
Another, Axel Loustau, was a FN candidate in the 1997 general election.
It is currently a matter of controversy among scholars whether the New
Right is still an extremist movement. Some, like the philosopher Pierre-André
Taguieff, believe that the intellectual of this movement, Alain de
Benoist, editor of the quarterly review Krisis (circulation 600 copies), who
has taken a firm stand against the xenophobic agenda of FN, is no longer an
extremist. Moreover, after having supported racism in the 1960s and the early
1970s, the New Right think-tank GRECE (Groupement de Recherche et
d'Etude pour la Civilisation Européenne) now promotes the right of each
community to live by its own standards. Although as a pagan movement, the
New Right is opposed to both Christianity and Judaism, anti-Semitism is no
longer a part of its political agenda. It publishes the quarterly Eléments and
irregularly, the anti-liberal Nouvelle Ecole. However, GRECE is also in contact
with more openly extreme foreign movements and publications, such as the
German magazine Junge Freiheit and the Flemish quarterly Tekos. Three
publications are directly linked to GRECE: Cartouches, L'Atre and Roque-favour.
GRECE's youth movement, Europe-Jeunesse, has been the training
ground for many middle-level executives of Bruno Mégret's FN-Mouvement
national.
Despite the apparently genuine change in the ideology of the New Right,
many local groups and publications devoted to pagan spirituality (especially
Odinism and Celtic religions) continue to openly promote far-right ideas.
The most widely known are L'Oracle, formerly Imperium (circulation, about
500), and Muninn.
GRECE's ideological rival Synergies Européennes is a transnational
network led by Robert Steuckers (Belgium) and Gilbert Sincyr (France). It is
close to the Nationalist Revolutionary movement and is distinctly pro-Islamic.
The number of active and politically committed skinheads is declining
and they now total fewer than 1,000. Anti-Semitism lies at the core of the
skinhead ideology and is shared by the two main branches of the movement,
the Charlemagne Hammerskins and the French section of Blood &
Honour, led by Greg Reemers. In 1998, Hammerskins' leader Hervé
Guttuso, who was jailed in Great Britain in December 1997, was released
due to lack of evidence of his involvement in a conspiracy aimed at carrying
out death threats against several prominent Jewish personalities in France. In
February 1998 nine members of his group were detained in France and
Britain in connection with these threats.
Skinhead propaganda is mainly disseminated through music of the Oi,
RAC, or metal variety, and most sales are through mail-order companies. The
main distributor in France is BoHa Records, another Reemers' outfit, which
also began publishing the newsletter Attack in 1998. Most CDs have a
strongly anti-Semitic and revisionist content.
Music as a means of promoting racial hatred, including veiled anti-Semitism,
increased its popularity in 1998 with the emergence of the so-called
Rock identitaire français (Identity French Rock), a mix between old-fashioned
skinhead music and rock'n roll which appeals to the young
militants of the FN and other far right groups. With the open support of FN,
which held a rock concert during its September 1998 annual festival, music
bands and labels are mushrooming and attracting between 100 and 500 per
concert. One concert, featuring the American Nazi-Satanist band Blood Axis,
and its lead singer Michael Moynihan, a convicted anti-Semite, was canceled
in Paris in October, after strong protests from anti-fascist movements.
The Catholic fundamentalist movement, with its sizable following and
intense intellectual activity, is divided between two branches which share a
common belief in theological, rather than racial, anti-Judaism: the followers
of the late Bishop Marcel Lefebvre, who make up the Fraternité Saint-Pie X
(Fraternity of St. Pius X), and the religious-political movement Renaissance
Catholique (Catholic Rebirth), with its youth wing, Mouvement de la Jeunesse
Catholique de France (Movement of Catholic French Youth -- MJCF) (see
ASW 1997/ 8). The leader of Chrétienté-Solidarité, a movement of tens of
thousands which remains faithful to the Vatican, is FN Euro-MP Bernard
Antony. Antony denies being anti-Semitic and even published a pamphlet to
this effect, entitled "Ni raciste, ni antisémite, le FN répond aux organisations
juives qui le combattent injustement" (Neither racist, nor anti-Semitic: the FN
replies to those Jewish organizations which unjustly attack it), co-authored
by the Jewish journalist, Jean-Pierre Cohen, a FN member.

ANTI-SEMITIC ACTIVITIES
Violence, Vandalism, Threats and Abuse
According to the annual report of the governmental Commission nationale
consultative des droits de l'homme, since 1991 there has been a constant
decline in the number of violent anti-Semitic acts and anti-Semitic threats.
The report notes also a continuous decrease in anti-Semitic prejudice, with
15 percent of the population believing "there are too many Jews in France,
compared to 18 percent in 1995 and 21 percent in 1991.
Nevertheless, already in early 1999 a serious incident was recorded: in
January a Molotov cocktail was thrown into the parking lot of the Yavné
Jewish school in Paris. According to witnesses, the perpetrators were
youngsters aged between 12 and 15.
The 50th anniversary of the State of Israel was marked by a bomb threat
to the Jewish community in Nancy. There were three desecrations of Jewish
graves -- in Troyes, Dammarie les Lys and Vitry sur Seine. Anti-Semitic
graffiti was found on the walls of synagogues in Ris-Orangis, Evry and Creil
(near Paris) and in Toulouse, and of the Jewish school at Colmar (Alsace).
On 1 May, after the annual FN demonstration in Paris, a clash occurred, in
very unclear circumstances, between young FN activists and skinheads on
one side and Betar members on the other. The latter claim that they were
beaten by the police.
In December a high court magistrate, Alain Terrail, wrote an article in the
journal of his Association Professionnelle des Magistrats (APM -- an arch-conservative
movement), which was a clear anti-Semitic attack on Albert
Lévy, a Toulon magistrate who had presided over several cases involving the
FN. Lévy, who had become the target of an anti-Semitic campaign conducted
by the extreme right press, was under investigation for allegedly leaking
information concerning a case he was handling. Terrail denied anti-Semitic
intent and it remains unclear whether the published text was his or a
deliberately falsified version. Following this incident, the APM president,
Georges Fenech, dissolved the union.

Propaganda
Newspapers which were close to the FN have all suffered greatly from the
party split and their circulation is on the decline, while publications
emanating from Muslim extremist groups are on the increase. Extreme right
periodicals associated with the FN include Présent (circulation, 20,000),
which although ideologically closer to Le Pen than to Mégret, has maintained
a non-committal stand during the crisis; Rivarol (circulation, 2,000), which
supports the Le Pen faction of FN and publishes racist and anti-Semitic
articles, including some by notorious Holocaust deniers; Minute-La France:
(circulation, probably less than 5,000) a weekly founded in 1962, which was
sold by Serge Martinez, Mégret's deputy in his faction, to its present owner,
Gérald Penciolelli and which remains non-committal; Monde et Vie, the
Catholic fundamentalist monthly faithful to the Lefebvrist movement, which
supports Le Pen's FN.
Several publications under the influence of two notorious Jew-haters, the
Catholic fundamentalists Henry Coston and Jacques Ploncard d'Assac,
specialize in the conspiracy theory. The main ones are Lectures françaises

(circulation, 8,000) and the monthly Faits et Documents, published by
Emmanuel Ratier.
The Lebanese lawyer Elie Hatem conducted an extremely anti-Semitic
interview with FN leader Jean-Marie Le Pen for the 6 May issue of the
London-based Lebanese newspaper al-Moharer, in which the FN leader
described all French Jews as agents of Israel who have no loyalty to France
and who would, under a FN government, be deprived of their right to hold
dual citizenship.

Internet. One of the more notorious extreme right-wing websites on the
Internet, that of the Charlemagne Hammerskins, was closed following the
arrest of members of the group in February 1998 (see above). In a test case
brought by a French Jewish student group, nine French servers successfully
argued in court that they merely transported information, like the postal
service, and could not be held responsible for its content.

Opinion Poll
According to a survey conducted in December 1997 by the Center of Social
Analysis, racism in France has declined in recent years. The center found that
56 percent of respondents believed there were too many Arabs in France,
compared with 76 percent in 1990; 27 percent said there were too many
blacks (46 percent in 1990), and 15 percent said there were too many Jews
(24 percent in 1990). The survey concluded that 18 percent could be
categorized as racist and 40 percent as tempted by racism. Eighty-two
percent of FN voters were categorized as racist.

ATTITUDES TO THE HOLOCAUST AND THE NAZI ERA
The Papon Trial
After a six-month trial, on 2 April a French court convicted Maurice Papon,
a former official of the Vichy government, of complicity in crimes against
humanity and sentenced him to ten years in prison. Papon was found guilty
of arresting and helping deport Jews from Bordeaux during World War II,
but was absolved of guilt for their deaths at Auschwitz. Papon remains free
pending his appeal, which could take up to a year. The trial was the first in
which a Vichy civil servant was convicted for aiding the Nazis.

Jewish Assets
A special state committee to oversee all suspect accounts in French banks
was set up in 1998. The committee will report to an official state commission
led by concentration camp survivor Jean Matteoli, who is making an
inventory of all goods seized from French Jews during the Nazi occupation
years. Meanwhile, recently opened archives from the Drancy camp indicate
that French police meticulously listed all the valuables they stripped from
Jews before deporting them to their death. The archives show that millions
of dollars in jewelry, stock and bond certificates, gold pens and other
valuables were systematically deposited into banks and credit institutions.
In another development, the French daily Le Parisien obtained files from
the French Finance Ministry's archives which revealed that some Vichy
administrators received a 10 percent commission from the sale of buildings
and businesses confiscated by the Nazis. Moreover, nearly 2,000 paintings
sent back to France from Germany are still in the possession of state-run
museums, and President Jacques Chirac said that the paintings must remain
in France. This is in spite of criticism of France, at the conference on
Holocaust-era assets held in December in Washington, for not advancing the
investigation of the ownership of paintings and other artworks seized from
Jews.

RESPONSES TO RACISM AND ANTI-SEMITISM
Court Cases
On 27 February, French philosopher Roger Garaudy was fined F120,000 for
questioning crimes against humanity, in his book The Founding Myths of
Israeli Politics. The book was published in February 1996 by the radical
leftist publishing house La Vieille Taupe, run by Pierre Guillaume, who was
indicted but not convicted. In December the Paris Court of Appeal handed
down a more severe sentence, convicting Garaudy of racial libel, denying
the Holocaust and provoking racial hatred. He was fined F160,000 and given
two suspended sentences (six months and three months). Garaudy was
enthusiastically defended in the Arab world (see Arab Countries).
Two neo-Nazis were given maximum prison sentences for kidnapping
and murdering the Toulouse Jewish car dealer Guy Levy in July 1995. The
two, Philippe Vignaud, an activist in the PNFE, and Vincent Parera, a
sympathizer, received a life sentence and 20 years, respectively. They had
targeted Levy because of his Jewish name and because they had assumed he
was among industrialists who had brought tens of thousands of North
African Arab immigrants to France in the early 1960s.
In another case involving activists on the extreme right, three FN
members were sentenced from 2 to 15 years imprisonment for shooting and
killing a French youth of African origin in Marseille during the presidential
election campaign of 1995. After the trial, Bruno Mégret attempted to
whitewash the perpetrators by claiming they had acted in self-defense. They
were, according to Mégret, "the élite of the nation" and should be treated
with due respect.

Public Activity
The prestigious Academie Française was involved in an international
controversy when it awarded a medal to Muhammad Salmawi, the editor-in-chief
of al-Ahram hebdo, an Egyptian newspaper published in French. The
medal is awarded for contributions to the French language by francophone
countries. Salmawi had published an article in February 1998 promoting the
Holocaust denial ideas of Roger Garaudy and David Irving, which had led
to the expulsion of the mother paper al-Ahram from the World Media
Association. The academy initially defended the award on the grounds that
it was intended to honor the French-language weekly rather than the work
of the journalist, but eventually bowed to pressure of Jewish and other
organizations and withdrew it.
The electoral campaign for regional parliaments in March was marked in
particular by mass demonstrations to protest power-sharing deals with the
FN. At least 20,000 marched in Paris, and 6,000 in Lyon, which was one of
five regional parliaments where mainstream conservatives made a deal with
the FN to prevent leftist candidates from gaining the regional presidencies.
Roman Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and Muslim leaders published a joint
statement expressing concern about the FN's "racist, xenophobic and anti-Semitic
ideas."
The left-oriented Ras L'Front network remains the main anti-FN force,
selling 10,000 copies of its monthly newspaper and mobilizing demonstrators
by the thousands against FN meetings. It cooperates with CRIDA (Centre de
recherche, d'information et de documentation antiraciste), whose partner is
the Reflex network, a radical left and anarchist movement. Other
organizations active against the FN are the Observatoire de l'Extrémisme and
Manifeste contre le FN, founded by the Socialist MP Jean-Christophe
Cambadélis. The former publishes a newsletter, Vigilance Républicaine, in
partnership with CERA (Centre européen de recherche et d'action sur le
racisme et l'antisémitisme), a subsidiary of the European Jewish Congress.
The best known anti-racist organizations in France today are LICRA (Ligue
internationale contre le racisme et l'antisémitisme), MRAP (Mouvement
contre le racisme et pour l'amitié entre les peuples), and SOS-Racisme (see
previous reports).