Pantheonization of Manouchian: the controversy surrounding the presence of Marine Le Pen

Missak and Mélinée Manouchian will therefore enter the Pantheon this Wednesday evening, accompanied by their 23 comrades in combat and resistance. A ceremony in which Marine Le Pen, invited according to republican custom, will participate. And this even if for Emmanuel Macron, the president of the RN group in the Assembly would be “well advised not to come, given the nature of Manouchian’s fight”. For the first time in a long time, Marine Le Pen’s “normalization” is once again being called into question.

“Intolerable”

His presence during the Republican ceremonies no longer seemed to raise any questions: march against anti-Semitism, national tribute to the French victims of Hamas at Les Invalides. But thanks to Emmanuel Macron, Marine Le Pen finds herself once again in the camp of the undesirables. For Georges Duffau-Epstein, son of Joseph Epstein, resistance comrade of Missak Manouchian, the presence of Marine Le Pen in the Pantheon is an insult to the memory of his father. “France was not his country of origin but his country of adoption. But when I hear Marine Le Pen develop her theories on national preference, for me it is unbearable,” he laments.

Absent from the national tribute to Robert Badinter last week, thus respecting the wishes of the family, Marine Le Pen this time made the opposite choice. “The tribute to Badinter was immediately after his death. On the other hand, there, we are talking about events dating from the Second World War, we are talking about pantheonization, that is to say the recognition of the entire nation , well we are stakeholders of the entire nation”, notes Laurent Jacobelli, spokesperson for the RN. And the RN denounces an attempt to re-demonize Marine Le Pen, a few months before the European elections.