the reasons which push his family to refuse the presence of the RN and LFI

A national tribute, chaired by Emmanuel Macron, will be paid on Wednesday at Place Vendôme to the former Minister of Justice. Robert Badinter’s family does not want RN or France Insoumise elected officials to participate.

Emmanuel Macron chairs, Wednesday February 14, a national tribute to Robert Badinter. A ceremony where the presence of elected officials from the RN and France Insoumise is not desired by the family of the deceased. An understandable choice given the career of the former Minister of Justice. As for the National Rally, Robert Badinter, the man who abolished the death penalty, decriminalized homosexuality, and even abolished high security units in prisons, was the target of extreme hatred right for decades.

In 1983, Jean-Marie Le Pen paraded under his windows, Place Vendôme, after the murder of two police officers, to cries of “Badinter assassin, Badinter at the post!”. The FN leaders nicknamed him “the murderers’ lawyer” Or “the minister of delinquency”. With each news item, far-right newspapers covered him with insults, often of an anti-Semitic nature. Marine Le Pen took up this anti-Badinter torch by calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty until 2017. Since then, she has said everything… and its opposite. She mentioned a popular initiative referendum, before abandoning it, while deploring that the abolition of the death penalty had “collapse the chain of punishments”as Jordan Bardella claimed Monday on franceinfo.

The RN absent, the Insoumis represented

The RN wanted to participate in this tribute because Marine Le Pen judges that all opportunities are good, all symbols useful to recover to make the RN a harmless and friendly party. Like when he slipped into the back of the procession of the march against anti-Semitism in November. This tactic she called “demonization” doesn’t work every time. And when the door is slammed in her face, like on Tuesday, Marine Le Pen keeps a low profile. No controversy, above all not to be noticed, the RN will therefore be absent on Wednesday.

The Insoumis will be represented. They decided to override the wishes of the deceased’s family, which is not very elegant. This conflict is more recent. Robert Badinter and his wife, the philosopher Élisabeth Badinter, accuse Jean-Luc Mélenchon of having betrayed secularism to compromise with communitarianism and Islamism. In 2022, the former Minister of Justice also criticized him, in the face of “Danger Le Pen”, for not having clearly called for voting for Emmanuel Macron in the second round. The head of state who is thinking, if the family agrees, of bringing Robert Badinter into the Pantheon. There he would notably find Simone Veil, another historic target of hatred from the far right and the Le Pen family.