French Historians, Researchers Prosecute Far Right’s Founder

Parallel with the campaign launched by the French far right against Algeria and its interests, French historians and researchers are investigating the background of this deep-rooted hostility toward Algeria by the sons and grandsons of the terrorist Secret Army Organization, considering it their historical incubator. They will hold a discussion forum on Thursday, February 6, in Paris, to understand what is happening on the other side of the Mediterranean.
This dialogue forum is supervised by the well-known French historian, Fabrice Riceputi, and the Franco-Swedish, Neil Anderson, who is one of the most prominent witnesses to the involvement of the founder of the far right in France, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who died a few days ago, in torturing Algerians during the liberation revolution.
The forum is held under the title “Le Pen, Torture in the Republic”, and its organizers are trying to return to the key role played by Neil Anderson in the French movement that resisted the French occupation of Algeria, especially as a publisher in Switzerland of books banned in France, and as one of the prominent witnesses to the opposition to torture in Algeria, according to what the French newspaper “Media Part” reported on its website on Saturday.
Neil Anderson is considered one of the most vocal critics of the French war criminal Jean-Marie Le Pen, due to his involvement in the practice of torture in Algeria during the liberation revolution. In 1960, through a book entitled “The Pacification”, the first accusations of torture against the paratrooper deputy Jean-Marie Le Pen became known outside Algeria.
While the fierce censorship was raging in France, accompanied by legal confiscations and convictions for “undermining the morale of the army” or “incitement to rebellion” against publishers was increasing, the publisher Neil Anderson embraced many books banned in France, as part of his resistance to the French colonial war in Algeria.
What Neil Anderson said and wrote about the criminality of Le Pen, who is today considered the historical founder of the far right in France, was also confirmed by the historian and writer Fabrice Ricputi in his book “Le Pen and Torture. Algeria 1957, Fighting Against Oblivion”, and was verified by the newspaper “Le Monde” in several articles, the last of which was in March 2024.
In contrast, the war criminal Le Pen did not deny, according to the article in “Le Monde”, the accusations of torture against himself: “We received a police mission and carried it out according to the requirements of efficiency that required the use of illegal means…”, this is what he said in May 1957, amid the Battle of Algiers. “If violence is necessary to uncover a bomb nest, and if one man must be tortured to save a hundred people, then torture is inevitable, and therefore, in the abnormal circumstances in which we are asked to act, it is fair.” This is what he repeated with all impudence.
If this is what the founder of the far right said, it is not surprising today that the far right media platforms, in their written, visual, audio and electronic forms, are filled with well-known and unknown faces attacking Algeria and calling for the expulsion of its community members from French territory, in a similar operation, but with other data and considerations, to that carried out by the French occupation army throughout 132 years of brutal colonialism.
The dialogue forum, which will be held this Thursday, will expose the positions of the extreme right these days regarding the escalating diplomatic and political crisis between Algeria and Paris, as well as the party that is fueling this crisis and pouring more oil on the fire, in a dirty media war that has gone beyond all norms in a country that claims the values of freedom and equality.
Digging into the disgusting history of a person like Jean-Marie Le Pen will lead to the truth about this movement that tried to maintain its control over Algeria no matter the cost, even at the expanse of the lives of Algerians and French, as the terrorist Secret Army Organization planned and did.