Defending the Nazis - again

Jean-Marie Le Pen, who got 19% of the vote in the last French Presidential election, says the Nazi occupation of France wasn't so bad:

France threatened on Wednesday to take legal action against far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen for saying the Nazi occupation of France during World War Two had not been "particularly inhumane."

The government, anti-racism organisations and Jewish groups sharply condemned Le Pen's latest controversial comments, made in an interview with right-wing weekly magazine Rivarol.

"It's not only the European Union and globalisation we have to free our country of. It's also the lies about its history, lies that are protected by exceptional measures," Le Pen said in comments published in Rivarol's Jan. 7 edition.

"In France, at least, the German occupation was not particularly inhumane, although there were some blunders, inevitable in a country of 550,000 sq km."

The Justice Ministry called for a preliminary police inquiry to determine whether Le Pen's comments broke the law.
[...]
Le Pen, who in 1987 dismissed the Holocaust as a "detail" of history, alarmed Europe in 2002 by reaching the second round of France's presidential election on an anti-immigrant and anti-Europe platform.

During the Nazi German occupation of France from 1940 until 1944, about 76,000 Jews were deported. Only some 2,500 returned.

I have a fundamental problem with prosecuting anyone, even a troglodyte like Jean-Marie Le Pen, merely for expressing an opinion. On the contrary, I'm kind of glad when people like this say what they're really thinking - because then we know who must be kept out of power at all costs.

Posted by damian at January 12, 2005 08:30 PM