Don’t be fooled by the pink shirts he likes to wear. Patrick Jardin is an angry man. Civil party in the trial of the November 13 attacks, the father of Nathalie, 31, killed at the Bataclan, will take the stand for “To spit out his hatred”, as he says, October 26. Contrary to most of the civil parties, whose pain does not spill over into the political field, the unfathomable sadness of Patrick Jardin feeds an old and virulent far-right activism. And no one knows if this devastated father will be able, at the helm, to contain the rage that drives him.
For six years now he has been acting on the sidelines of victims’ associations, their spokespersons, according to him “Stockholm syndrome” : “They have, unlike me, no hatred. For me it is incomprehensible and sometimes I find myself wondering if I am normal or if it is they who are not. “
It is particularly aimed at Georges Salines, who heads the association 13onze15, this father of a victim who wrote a book with Azdyne Amimour (We have the words left, Robert Laffont, 2020), the father of one of the Bataclan killers. “It turns me off to see them bow down like that. Me, I am incapable of forgiveness, and I refuse to bow my head ”, he insists, seated on a terrace in the south of France, where he now spends part of his time. Out of anger, he regularly sends insulting letters to victims’ associations.
From Medina concert to Christchurch
Patrick Jardin, 68, retired car salesman from the north of France, widowed for fifteen years, has been on file since June 2018. His name then appeared in the entourage of a small ultra-right group, Task Force Action (AFO), whose members planned to poison halal food on supermarket shelves.
While he campaigned in October 2018 against the concert of rapper Medina at the Bataclan which will finally be moved to the Zénith in Paris, various reactionary movements had erected Nathalie’s father into an anti-Islam icon, a role he assumes without problem. The sovereignists Nicolas Dupont-Aignan and Karim Ouchikh (of SIEL, Sovereignty, identity and freedoms), the elected RN Philippe Vardon and Stéphane Ravier, the writer Renaud Camus, one of the theorists of the “great replacement”, or Christine Tasin and Pierre Cassen, founders of Riposte laïque, “All friends”, crowded at his side. “To prevent this indecent concert, we chartered dozens of buses via the patriotic networks. We were ready to blow up the Bataclan electrical transformer ”, he remembers.
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