Le Pen On The Issues

Some of extreme-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen's most controversial comments, as quoted by the French media:

ABORTION: "The idea that your body belongs to you is completely pathetic. It belongs to life, and, also, in part, to the nation." (1996)

AIDS: "AIDS sufferers, by sweating the virus through their pores, threaten the stability of the nation .... AIDS can be spread through sweat, saliva, contact. It is a type of leprosy." (1987)

HOLOCAUST: "I'm not saying that gas chambers didn't exist. I haven't been able to see them myself. I haven't particularly studied the question. But I believe that it was a detail of history of the Second World War." (1987)

IMMIGRATION: "This worrying phenomenon imposes on us its customs, its habits, its religion and is stealing our soul .... The tide of immigration is going to submerge us after ruining us." (1996)

"Do we want for tomorrow a multiracial society, which we must know will come undone and inevitably lead to a fracture, and then to an ethnic war?" (1996)

"What really worries me is that we are being progressively submerged by immense masses from the Third World, and this massive immigration is creating very desocializing conditions." (2002)

Illegal immigrants should be placed in "relatively comfortable transit camps," and, "I think we could make a special train to send them" to Britain. (2002)

RACES: "Yes, I believe in the inequality of the races.... At the Olympic Games, there is an evident inequality between the black race and the white race; it's a fact." (1996)

SPORTS: "I find it artificial to bring over foreign players and to baptize them the French team.... Most French players don't even know or want to sing the Marseillaise (the French national anthem.)" (1996)