THE JEWISH COMMUNITY

The French Jewish community numbers 600,000 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), Nice and Toulouse (20,000). Strasbourg, with 12,000 Jews, is a major religious and cultural center.

Some 80,000 of the 300,000 Jews in France before World War II perished in the Holocaust. The arrival of Jews from North Africa in the 1950s and 1960s invigorated the community and heightened Jewish awareness.

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)..

In spite of financial crises and internal feuds which have weakened the main communal organizations, the last ten years have seen a dramatic revitalization in communal life, reflected in the growing number of Jewish private schools (from 3 in 1950 to over 80 in 1996, attended by 5 percent of Jewish schoolchildren), synagogues (over 150 in the Paris area) and kosher facilities.

In the four cities of southern France administered by the Front National, Mouvement National Républicain or their former members, the Jewish communities (2,000 in Toulon) refrain from any contact with the municipality.

POLITICAL PARTIES AND EXTRA-PARLIAMENTARY GROUPS

With the split in the Front National at the end of 1998 and its subsequent decline in the polls, the French extreme right has entered a new era. The split was a serious blow to Le Pen’s credibility as a charismatic leader and to that of Mégret as a contender for the leadership of the extreme right when Le Pen retires. Moreover, the political and social dynamics which made the FN a powerful force in French politics are no longer working in its favor, possibly due to the recovery of the French economy (net growth in 1999, 2.9 percent) and the job market (now under 3 million jobless).

The theoretical debate within the various factions of the extreme right now centers on two questions. First, can power be attained by democratic means, or would direct action be more effective? Second, can the nationalist ideal be effectuated by party politics, or would cultural action, although slower, accomplish more? Although most movements still prefer political action, there is a growing tendency, especially among national revolutionary youth, to resort to other means of disseminating their ideas, such as White Power music ( the so-called Rock Identitaire Français) or even, influenced by the Terre et Peuple group, adopting an Evolian-style, idealistic, mystic and élitist attitude which favors living in close-knit communal groups (the German Wandervögel model), with an aesthetic approach to right-wing ideals.

Two rival political parties were competing for the leadership of the extreme right: Front National (FN) and Mouvement National Républicain (MNR).

Founded in 1972, the Front National had a membership of 42,000 before the split (about 20,000 now ) and was the only active ultra-right party. In 1999, its chairman, Jean-Marie Le Pen, was convicted of assaulting a Socialist parliamentary candidate and denied his political rightsfor one year, thus losing his seat as a regional councilman; as of mid-2000, he was also due to lose his seat in the European Parliament. The party's number two man is Bruno Gollnisch, who, in the March 2000 session of the European Parliament, made an anti-Semitic statement about the Jews profiting from the Holocaust.

The FN split following disagreements over party policy in regard to cooperation with the mainstream conservative right. The latter’s “containment” policy -- refusal to condone local or national agreements with the FN -- has been strictly enforced since 1986. Thus, although the FN polled up to 15 percent of the national vote and 20-25 percent in some districts, it was never in a position to hold power, resulting in a disgruntled and frustrated membership and electorate. The only way to end the party’s isolation was to break with its extremist image. For Mégret, this meant ejecting Le Pen, whose repeated anti-Semitic and racist slurs were the principal reason for the “containment” policy. Moreover, Mégret was in favor of agreements with the conservative right, while Le Pen preferred a “third way” policy. However, while Mégret may be tactically soft, he is ideologically hard line.

Both the FN and the MNR suffered serious setbacks in the June 1999 election to the European Parliament, the FN polling 5.69 percent and the MNR 3.28 percent, compared with the united FN’s 10.5 percent in 1994. Moreover, in various local by-elections in 1999, the FN lost from one-third to one-half of its electorate. A majority of those who previously voted for the FN abstained. The real strength of the FN will be measured in the March 2001 city council elections which will be held in all French towns. Le Pen announced that his party would run its own candidates even in those cities now administered by MNR. Many previously elected FN regional and city councilors have become independents or have switched to the mainstream conservative parties, such as the anti-EEC Rassemblement pour la France (RPF), created by the Gaullist Charles Pasqua and the arch-conservative Philippe de Villiers. Of the four cities in southern France the FN won in 1995, it now runs only one, Orange. Marignane and Vitrolles are MNR-dominated and Toulon, France's 13th largest city with 170,000 inhabitants, is administered by Jean-Marie Le Chevallier, currently an independent.

The split has not had any influence on the party's political agenda. The FN still supports a program based on national preference (see previous reports) and compulsory repatriation of foreign workers to their countries of origin, and opposes the acquisition of French citizenship by non-European immigrants. In August 1999, under the influence of Samuel Maréchal (who in 1995 coined the slogan “Neither left nor right”), the party attempted to dissociate itself from the extreme right by formulating a new policy supporting a multi-religious and multi-racial society (“One flag, three colors”). Intense opposition within the party effected a reversal to its previous policies, and Maréchal, who is Le Pen’s son-in-law, resigned as the party's press secretary.

At the April 2000 party convention in Paris, Le Pen, now 71, was re-elected as chairman. It is now commonly accepted that he will retain his position until after the 2002 presidential election and then retire. The principal candidates for the chairmanship are Bruno Gollnisch, who received the highest number of votes in the election to the party's Political Bureau, Marie-France Stirbois, the widow of Jean-Pierre Stirbois (d. 1989), who engineered the party's upswing in the 1980s, and Samuel Maréchal. In the new Political Bureau, the Catholic fundamentalist wing Chrétienté-Solidarité, led by former Euro-MP Bernard Antony, is more heavily represented. A new addition to the party's leadership is Farid Smahi, a French citizen of Arabic origin, known for his anti-Jewish and anti-Israel positions..

The youth movement, Front National de la Jeunesse (FNJ), led by Guillaume Luyt until his resignation in April 2000, never attracted more than 1,200 dues-paying members, and is more radical than the party itself.

The FN maintains contacts with foreign right-wing groups through the trans-Europe network Euronat. Among its sister parties are the Flemish VB and the German DV(but not the Austrian FPÖ), in Western Europe, and the Romanian PRM, the Hungarian MIEP, the Slovak SNS, the Czech Republican Party and the Serbian Srpska Radikalna Stranka (Serbian Radical Party) led by Vojislav Seselj (who was denied entry into France to attend the April 2000 FN convention).

The leaders of the Mouvement National Républicain are Bruno Mégret, chairman, Serge Martinez, vice-chairman, Jean-Yves Le Gallou, executive director and Franck Timmermans, secretary-general. The monthly publication is Le Chêne. The MNR tries to present itself as a renewal force on the far right, but the party platform, especially on the immigration issue, is as extremist as that of the FN. The most radical figures and movements on the far right chose to support the MNR from the outset. These included Pierre Vial, a senior MNR figure, who also heads the Völkisch Terre et Peuple movement; and the student group Renouveau étudiant, and its publication Offensive.

The party's youth wing, Mouvement National de la Jeunesse ( MNJ), led by Philippe Schleiter, nephew of the French Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson, claims 1,500 members, which is unlikely since the party itself has fewer than 5,000 active members. The MNJ organ is the monthly Robur. The Catholic fundamentalist Jeunesse Action Chrétienté (JAC), which publishes the quarterly Force catholique, hovers on the fringes of the MNR.

A small group Alternative Nationaliste, led by regional councilman Eddy Marsan in south-western France, split from the MNR because it was not radical enough.

In the 1990s, many extra-parliamentary groups lost members to the FN, especially its youth wing. Following the split, a handful of radical, national revolutionary and national Bolshevik militants remained within the FN, the majority joined the MNR, and the rest followed their own line; in the case of the latter, many supporters retained dual membership with either the MNR or, to a lesser extent, with the FN.

Unité Radicale, led by Christian Bouchet, which encompasses the national Bolshevik Nouvelle Résistance and Groupe Union Défense (see below), opted for critical support of MNR. Unité Radicale publishes a bi-monthly magazine Résistance, printed in 1000-1,500 copies. Staunchly anti-Israel and pro-Hamas, it promotes a “proletarian fascism” and has numerous contacts abroad, extending to far left anti-establishment movements. Recent issues of its magazine featured interviews with Adriano Tilgher, head of the Italian Fronte Nazionale, and Horst Mahler, the former Red Army Faction terrorist turned Nazi (see also Austria). Young members of Unité Radicale publish Jeune Résistance, edited by Fabrice Robert, a convicted Holocaust denier.

Much of the propaganda of the student group Groupe Union Défense (GUD), headed by Benoît Fleury, attacks Israel or Jewish organizations. It is a violent group, with a record of aggression against left-wing, foreign and Jewish students on university campuses. In autumn 1999, GUD published the first issue of its new magazine, Jusqu' à nouvel ordre (“Until further notice,” a French pun on the words “new order”) and joined in launching Front de la Jeunesse, an umbrella organization which includes Nouvelle Résistance, MNR youth, Terre et Peuple and independent radicals.

Oeuvre Française, headed by former collaborationist Pierre Sidos, has been active since 1968. This staunchly anti-Israel, anti-Semitic and Holocaust-denying group, which used to have strong Middle Eastern connections, is now almost defunct but still publishes its organ Jeune nation and has its own web page.

The Parti Nationaliste Français (PNF), a racist, neo-Nazi and pagan fringe group, whose members belonged to FN until the end of 1981, has only a handful of ageing members. Party leaders Jean Castrillo and Henri Simon are former Waffen- SS soldiers, as was its founder Pierre Bousquet. They publish the monthly Militant. The group has been in decline since its ideological leader, Pierre Pauty, returned to the FN and was elected to the city council of Saint-Denis, a city near Paris with over 100,000 inhabitants. Membership is under 50.

The neo-Nazi Parti Nationaliste Français et Européen (PNFE) is headed by Eric Sausset, who succeeded the founder, Claude Cornilleau. It now has fewer than 50 active members. Its newspaper Le Flambeau has not appeared since the winter 1998/99 issue. Its only public event in 1999 was a Paris meeting with former Faisceaux Nationalistes Européens leader Marc Fredriksen.

The activist far right is becoming increasingly organized around small, locally-targeted publications (with the exception of the glossy Réfléchir et Agir , which is aimed at younger militants disillusioned by the FN split). Such publications include Le Lansquenet in Aix-en-Provence; Avant-Garde Jeunesse in Nîmes, and Fier de l’être near Paris. All three are philosophically neo-pagan, but L'Epervier , in Châteauroux, is Catholic fundamentalist. Impakt, in Aix en Provence, is primarily devoted to nationalist music (black and death metal, “industrial music,” White Power and “Oi”-music). So-called Rock Identitaire Français (French Identity Rock), which disseminates radical ideas, is gaining ground. A publication devoted solely to this medium, Tribune musicale , was launched in April 2000. The main distribution and production labels are Bleu Blanc Rock, in Châteauroux, and Memorial Records in Paris.

The New Right think-tank GRECE (Groupement de Recherche et d'Etude pour la Civilisation Européenne), led by Jean-Claude Jacquard and Charles Champetier, publishes, irregularly, the anti-liberal philosophical reviews Eléments and Nouvelle Ecole. The main thinker of this movement is Alain de Benoist, editor of the quarterly review Krisis (600 copies), who, despite publishing articles by leading right-wingers, has taken a firm stand against the xenophobic agenda of FN. GRECE maintains contacts with similar movements and publications abroad, for example, the German Junge Freiheit , the Flemish quarterly Tekos and the Spanish Hesperides.

As a pagan movement, the New Right is opposed to both Christianity and Judaism, but anti-Semitism is no longer a cornerstone of its political agenda. The 33rd annual convention of GRECE, held in Paris on 30 January 2000, which was devoted to “the dictatorship of the fourth power” (the media), was attended by FN and MNR members of the younger generation, who are more inclined toward the “meta-political” approach of the New Right than to party politics. A rival group is Synergies Européennes, a trans-European network led by Robert Steuckers (Belgium) and Gilbert Sincyr (a former FN official), which publishes Nouvelles de Synergies européennes .

According to the annual report of the Commission nationale consultative des droits de l'homme, skinheads were responsible for most of the racially-motivated physical assaults recorded in 1999.The number of politically active skinheads is declining, totaling today fewer than 1,000. As in other countries, the skinhead movement is divided between supporters of the British Combat 18/ Blood & Honour and the Hammerskins faction. About 30 skinhead fanzines are published irregularly, and concerts are organized, mainly by Nation 88, based near Chartres. One of the more offensive skin websites is Croire, Obéir, Combattre (Believe, Obey and Fight). Other sites are devoted to the French “Oi” music scene or contain news of various skin groups.

The anti-Semitism of the Royalists is derived from the writings of Charles Maurras and from the traditional, pre-Vatican II anti-Jewish teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. The main royalist group is Restauration Nationale (National Restoration), the heir of Action Française (French Action), chaired by Pierre Pujo. It publishes the fortnightly Aspects de la France (founded in 1947), which is now very active in supporting the so-called “souverainistes” -- those who oppose the supremacy of the European Union over national sovereignty. The Gazette de France is the organ of monarchists who support FN. Lawyer Jean-Marc Varaut, who defended convicted war criminal Maurice Papon, has an Action Française background and stilattends some of the movement's functions. Another branch of royalism, closer to Catholic fundamentalism and counter-revolutionary theories, is the Legitimists, who support the Spanish branch of the Bourbon royal family.

The existence of a strong, albeit declining, Catholic fundamentalist movement is a characteristic of the French far right going back to the eighteenth century counter-revolutionary school of thought. This theologically anti-Jewish movement is divided between two branches, the Lefebvre school and Chrétienté-Solidarité.

Numbering in the tens of thousands, followers of the late Bishop Marcel Lefebvre, who rejected the validity of the 1965 Vatican Council II reforms, support the Fraternité Saint-Pie X, which is active on five continents and has its worldwide headquarters in Ecône (Switzerland). They publish numerous periodicals such as the bi-monthly Fideliter and the quarterly Certitudes. In 1999, one of their main activities was lobbying against “pornography” -- that is, anything they perceive as negating Catholic moral values. They also participated in the struggle against a law which would permit homosexuals to contract partnerships. Lay members of this school belong to the religious/political movement Renaissance Catholique and their youth, to the Mouvement de la Jeunesse Catholique de France (MJCF).

The priests of Chrétienté-Solidarité (see above), belong to the Fraternité Saint Pierre. Also influential is the semi-secretive group ICTUS (Institut culturel et technique d'utilité sociale), led by Jacques Trémollet de Villers, who was the lawyer of the Nazi collaborator Paul Touvier.

To some extent, the royalist/ Catholic fundamentalist groups share a common belief in the Jewish conspiracy theory, which appears principally in Lectures françaises (founded in 1958 by Henry Coston; circulation, about 8,000 copies), and in other publications of Coston, as well as of veteran anti-Semites and anti-Freemasons such as Jacques Ploncard d'Assac (both of whom have been active since 1928-29) and the younger Emmanuel Ratier, publisher of the monthly Faits et Documents. These publications, which draw heavily from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, devote considerable space to vilifying B’nai B’rith. Other pseudo-historical publications include L'autre histoire and Dualpha.

ANTI-SEMITIC ACTIVITIES

The year 1999 saw a rise in the number of violent anti-Semitic incidents in France, which were marked also by their severity. They included a Molotov cocktail attack on a Paris school, in January 1999, which did not cause casualties. In addition, there were three arson attacks on Jewish synagogues and one on a kosher food stall at the University of Saint Maur near Paris. There were also several cases of vandalism of Jewish synagogues and cemeteries and skinhead assaults on Jews.

Anti-Semitism is disseminated in far right-wing newspapers, leaflets and magazines . These include:

- Présent: a daily published since 1982 with a circulation of 20,000 before the FN split; edited by Jean Madiran, a wartime supporter of the Vichy regime . The newspaper’s refusal to take a stand in the FN feud resulted in the loss of much of its readership and the paper may close down.

- Rivarol: a weekly published since 1951 with a circulation of 2,000 (it claims 18,000); editor: Camille Galic. It, too, has refused to back either FN faction. Publishes racist and anti-Semitic articles, including some by notorious Holocaust deniers (who usually write under a pseudonym).

- National-Hebdo: the weekly organ of FN, with which it shares offices, is managed by Jean-Claude Varanne and has a dwindling circulation. Under the editorship of Martin Peltier, now one of the MNR leaders, the paper had become openly anti-Semitic and Holocaust distorting. Its current editor, Yves Daoudal, is a Catholic fundamentalist. The popular veteran columnist François Brigneau, an open anti-Semite, defected in January 1999 to MNR..

- Minute-La France: a weekly founded in 1962, maintains a position half-way between the FN/MNR and the anti-Gaullist right, and favors an agreement between them and the mainstream right. In 1999, the publication went bankrupt. The new owner is Catherine Barnay, a former executive of Ordre Nouveau and Parti des Forces Nouvelles.

- Monde et Vie: Catholic fundamentalist monthly, edited by Claude Giraud; supports the FN and promotes conspiracy theories.

- Le Libre Journal: a Catholic fundamentalist newspaper published in Paris by Serge de Beketch, the former public relations man for the city of Toulon. It supports the MNR but is working toward re-unification of the FN.

According to an opinion poll conducted in November 1999 by the Commission nationale consultative des droits de l'Homme and released in March 2000, 31 percent of respondents thought Jews had too much power in France, an increase of 7 percent over the 1998 poll. However, racism against North Africans was much higher than anti-Jewish prejudice, with 63 percent of respondents saying there were too many of them and 70 percent claiming they were bothered by the presence of foreigners of non-European origin. The results of the poll, however, were challenged by some experts who believe that anti-Semitism is declining in France. The increase in anti-Semitism evidenced in the poll may be linked to extensive French media exposure, at the time, of the issues of dormant Jewish assets and restitution of looted Jewish property, culminating in the release of the Matteoli Commission report (see below).

ATTITUDES TOWARD THE HOLOCAUST AND THE NAZI ERA

In 1999, the Ministry of the Interior banned Nouvelle Vision, a publication edited by Vincent Reynouard, a public school physics teacher whose teacher’s license was permanently revoked by the Ministry of Education. Reynouard boasted in the Spanish publication Mundo NS that he would flee to Spain if he was searched by the authorities, but he continues to live in Brittany.

Jean Plantin, editor ofAkribeia was fined and given a six-month suspended jail sentence by a Lyon court for Holocaust denial. It was discovered that Plantin had been awarded a Masters’ degree by the University of Lyon for a thesis which, in fact, denied the Holocaust. Following the trial, Lyon University’s Institute of Indo-European Studies, known as an ideological bastion of the extreme right, ceased its activities in October 1999.

In its report released in April 1999, the Matteoli Commission, set up by the French government two years previously to evaluate Jewish funds deposited in French credit institutions in the years 1940-44, estimated that the German and Vichy authorities confiscated some 333 million francs in cash and 2 billion francs (at wartime value) in securities. Some 2.4 million francs was restored to surviving depositors after liberation. The Matteoli Commission cited five US banks, two British banks and one Canadian bank whose French branches turned over Jewish accounts to the Nazi occupiers. The 106 French banks that operated during the Nazi occupation face a class-action suit in the US. In March 1999, the French banking association pledged speedy restitution of all assets, as well as a contribution to a French Holocaust memorial fund announced by Prime Minister Lionel Jospin. In October the government created a commission to determine compensation payments to victims of the anti-Jewish measures taken by the pro-Nazi Vichy regime.

In October 1999, a French high court upheld the conviction of former senior Vichy official Maurice Papon for complicity in crimes against humanity and the ten-year prison sentence imposed on him. Papon’s appeal was rejected following his escape to Switzerland on the eve of the hearing and his subsequent deportation back to France. Papon’s lawyer, Jean-Marc Varaut, was planning to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.

Alois Brunner, Adolf Eichmann’s deputy, is to be tried in absentia in France for his role in the deportation of 340 Jewish children from an orphanage near Paris in July 1944. Brunner was also responsible forthe arrest and deportation of tens of thousands of Austrian, Greek, Slovak and French Jews to the death camps. Demands for Brunner’s extradition from Syria, where he lives in exile, have been made by several countries, including Israel, Germany and the US.

RESPONSES TO EXTREMISM AND ANTI-SEMITISM

The left-wing Ras L'Front network remains the main anti-FN force, through its monthly newspaper which had a circulation of 10,000 copies before the FN split. It cooperates with the Centre de recherche, d'information et de documentation antiraciste (CRIDA), which was relatively inactive in 1999. LICRA (Ligue internationale contre le racisme et l'antisémitisme) has elected a new president, Patrick Gaubert, a former Jewish adviser to Minister Charles Pasqua. MRAP (Mouvement contre le racisme et pour l'amitié entre les peuples), chaired by Mouloud Aounit, is close to the Communist Party, but retains a non-sectarian stand. The Ligue des Droits de l'Homme, founded during the Dreyfus affair, considers fighting for the rights of foreigners and against institutional discrimination as its top priority. SOS-Racisme, chaired by Malek Boutih, has subsidiaries throughout Europe and is active against all kinds of racial discrimination and extremism. Its former president Fodé Sylla, elected in 1999 as a Euro-MP on the Communist slate, called in April 2000 for the creation of a European institution to monitor the far right. The Centre Européen de Recherche et d'Action sur le Racisme et l'Antisémitisme (CERA), was created in 1992 by the European Jewish Congress. It publishes a yearly report on right-wing and left-wing extremism in Europe.