Death of Jean-Marie Le Pen: Hérault resident Alain Jamet, “fellow traveler since the age of 17” remembers the creation of the FN

Jean-Marie Le Pen between France and Alain Jamet, during a FN meeting in Béziers, in 2012. Midi Libre – PIERRE SALIBA

The Hérault native co-founded the National Front in 1972 alongside his friend Jean-Marie Le Pen. He remembers him and gives his testimony, as does his daughter, MEP France Jamet.

“I was his companion since I was 17, he was the person I knew best in this world. It's hard to lose your best friend”.

This is what Alain Jamet, 90, from Hérault, confided this Tuesday early afternoon, recalling “that when I met him, his name was still Jean, and I was the only one who continued to call him Jean until the end. We met as students in Paris, at the Corpo de droit, and I followed him everywhere, especially when he joined Poujade, or the Front national des combattant. Then we founded the Front national together, and in 1972 I created the movement's first office, in Montpellier” remembers the man who would become, during his long political career, municipal councillor of Montpellier or regional councillor of Languedoc-Roussillon.

“We have never been a far-right movement”

And who, within the party, will notably occupy the functions of regional secretary, member of the political bureau, or first vice-president. A faithful.

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According to him, “we have never been a far-right movement. We run in all elections, the far right does not do that, it says: “Elections, a trap for fools”. And we have never exercised violence, unlike the far right”.

“We have no lessons to receive from that side”

And of the one he considers to be “the only tribune of the Fourth and Fifth Republics”, Alain Jamet will not say anything negative on this day of mourning for him: “With the dead, either we say nothing, or we say good things. The point of detail ? He regretted it, he told me so. In 70 years, I have never heard him say anything bad about the Jews. And we have no lessons to receive from that side. On this subject, Mélenchon has exceeded, and by far, the reproaches that could be made to Jean-Marie Le Pen”.

“The first FN federation in France”

“I grew up next to this monument of French politics” recalled, also yesterday, France Jamet, daughter of Alain, and European deputy of the National Rally. “I still remember him when he came to Hérault, with Pierrette and the girls, to create the first FN federation in France with Dad”.

His excesses, his excesses ? “He was a man of convictions and passion, like Dad, with an anti-conformist spirit that sometimes led him down paths that, at times, did not really serve our cause. But he was neither anti-Semitic, nor homophobic, nor sexist. What he sometimes said did not always represent the man he was”.

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