ABSTRACT
Anti-Semitism has been one of the main features of the French extreme right since the end of the nineteenth century. National Front leaders, including Le Pen, strongly reject accusations of anti-Semitism, accusing the Jewish community of being overly sensitive or of trading on the memory of the Holocaust to escape legitimate criticism. In the early 1990s, some members of the French right tried to convince Le Pen that abandoning anti-Semitism might clear the way for a broad-based coalition composed of the mainstream right and the National Front. The tenacious anti-Semitism of the extreme right reflects nostalgia for Vichy and resentment at the way Vichy has been discussed by intellectuals since 1945. Three elements compose the "Vichy syndrome": a traditional, counterrevolutionary Catholic element devoted to rehabilitating the memory of Marshal Pétain, an extreme right element nostalgic for the values of the Vichy era as summed up in its "Travail-Famille-Patrie" slogan, and anti-Semitism.
