Jean-Marie Le Pen filmed singing neo-Nazi song with rock group

Social media footage shows 96-year-old in Paris home with members of Match Retour, with one member wearing T-shirt glorifying Hitler Youth

Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of France’s far-Right National Front (FN), has been filmed singing along to a neo-Nazi song with a fascist-linked rock group.
The 96-year-old is under investigation for misappropriation of public funds in a case in which his daughter, Marine, and 25 other people linked to the FN and its successor, National Rally, are on trial. 
The trial opened in Paris on Monday and Ms Le Pen and her co-accused deny the charges, which relate to alleged embezzlement from the European parliament.
Mr Le Pen is not appearing in court as it has been ruled he is not fit to stand trial for health reasons.
However, footage circulating on social media shows him at his home outside Paris singing along with members of Match Retour, a far-Right rock group from Lyon. In the clip, one of the band’s members is wearing a T-shirt glorifying the Hitler Youth.
Match Retour is known to be affiliated with an international neo-Nazi network known as Blood and Honour, which emerged from the UK’s far-Right music scene in the 1980s. Its members call for violent action to ensure the “survival of European races”.
The former far-Right leader, who shocked France when he made it to the second round of the 2002 presidential election, can be seen happily singing along with the band in the clip.
Marine Le Pen, the 56-year-old former president of National Rally, has said she will take legal action against the group and those who allowed them into her father’s house, claiming they took advantage of his frailty and alleged dementia.
She said that she had lodged a complaint against the group for “abuse of weakness”.
‘It’s a fact that (Jean-Marie Le Pen) is not in a position to give his consent to any act whatsoever,” Ms Le Pen told AFP, denouncing “the scandalous behaviour of those I will take to court to have condemned”.
“Jean-Marie Le Pen is capable of reciting Musset, but may not know what year it is,” she added in a statement.
In the video, the group’s members sing a Napoleonic song, “Fanchon”, and serenade the aged leader with a specially written piece that refers to notorious homophobic remarks he made in public in 1997.
According to Mediapart, a French investigative outlet, Match Retour performed in May 2022 at a rally in Sainte-Croix-aux-Mines (Haut-Rhin) in tribute to French SS soldiers killed by the French army in 1945.
The video clips emerged at a delicate time for the National Rally, with its leaders and dozens of staff on trial over allegations they used fake jobs to defraud the European Parliament of millions.
In their indictment, investigating judges found Mr Le Pen and his daughter were “co-decision-makers” in an alleged “system”, which began in 2004, “designed to use European Parliament funds to pay employees who were actually working for a political party”.
Ms Le Pen faces a potential 10-year-prison term, a million-euro fine and a five-year ban from elected office that could scupper her hopes of claiming the French presidency on her fourth try in 2027.
It threatens to cast a shadow over her record score in July’s snap parliamentary elections that saw the RN win 126 seats and claim a kingmaker role over Michel Barnier’s fragile minority government.
Mr Le Pen has multiple past convictions for racism, anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial, famously once dismissing the Nazi gas chambers as a “detail of history”.