The Challenger at Work

The Greenery Theater is a tentlike structure in the heart of Nice. Its 2,000 seats are filled. The loudspeakers blare out Wagner. Images on a giant video screen proclaim, "The National Front--It's You," "Oppose Exclusion of Frenchmen," "For the Death Penalty." The candidates are introduced, and the woman sitting next to me explains that pieds noirs are numerous, both on the National Front slate and in the hall. Now the music rises--the "Hymn of the Slaves" from Verdi's Nabucco--and the people chant, "Le Pen! Le Pen!" It's time for the star.

He looks like a retired prizefighter. His face is bloated and his stylish suit does not conceal that he is overweight. Yet he is still quite a performer, a harn actor who will revel in the limelight for the next two and a half hours. Before this audience, he can get away with anything. He does not have to present a policy or a program. He can claim that the German Greens were founded by the Stasi and were linked with terrorists. He can describe Socialist politicians as "a band of thieves, gangsters and racketeers," after proudly proclaiming that his candidacy has the blessing of Jacques Medecin, presumably a symbol of moral rectitude. He is here to thrill and to amuse. He impresses his audience with Latin quotations. He makes them laugh with music-hall jokes: "When you're in muck up to your ears, you must be careful to keep your mouth shut."

Le Pen has been told that to win votes he must keep his tongue in check, so he's on his best behavior. He makes no openly racist or anti-Semitic remarks. Yet, listening carefully, you can still judge the man. His reference to Jean-Claude Gaudin as "the bearded woman"--a not so gentle hint about the incumbent's alleged homosexuality--gives an idea of his moral tone. The contempt he puts into the words "of every race and religion," describing demonstrators he saw in London, is also revealing. So is his scorn for those who stir up unpleasant memories of World War II: "They only want to talk about Petain and Touvier" (a wartime torturer, hidden for years by the clergy and only recently arrested). "Whatever the subject, it reminds them of Hitler and Vichy."

Toward the end, he becomes more dramatic. He reminds his listeners of the four plagues: immigration, insecurity, unemployment and economic degradation. He speaks in apocalyptic terms about the nomads storming the sedentary people, reciting, in a rather strange sequence, "the Huns, the Magyars, the Turks and the Persians." In Algeria, he intones, the choice was between the suitcase and the coffin--fleeing or dying. Now there is no suitcase. But we must survive for the survival of France.

Outside, the militants are pleased but complain that their hero had to pull his punches. Should one be reassured by his more "moderate" tone? Recalling the expressions of hatred on the faces of the audience when Le Pen referred to "the privileges for foreigners to the detriment of the French," the two middle-aged women hysterically chanting "Le Pen! Le Pen!", the tough-looking guards whom nobody would want to meet in a dark alley, I cannot pretend I really feel reassured.

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