Front National's Le Pen sues left-winger for calling her fascist

A leading French left-winger was in court on Thursday to defend his right to call far-right leader Marine Le Pen a "fascist". The Front National chief is suing the Left Front's Jean-Luc Mélenchon over a remark made on television in 2011.

Don't call me fascist - Front National leader Marine Le Pen Reuters/Vincent Kessler

"Why do you think that the French people would be the only people to want a fascist as leader?" Mélenchon asked a journalist from the I-Télé news channel when asked for his comments on anopinion poll giving Le Pen first place in the 2012 presidential election.

Le Pen, a trained lawyer who has threatened to take anyone calling her "extreme" to court as part of her effort to clean up the party's image, sued Mélenchon and the TV channel for abusive language.

Her lawyer, Wallerand Saint-Just, told the court that the left-winger may not have intended to break the law but did want to "abuse, insult, belittle and pour scorn on Marine Le Pen and cause her to be scorned".

"There is no more serious term of abuse" than "fascist", he argued, claiming that to "declare support for fascism or Nazism is illegal" in France and so that Mélenchon was accusing his client of holding an "illegal opinion".

"I did not abuse Mme le Pen, I characterised her," was Mélenchon's reply, insisting that the phrase was "a political opinion".

Interactive timeline of Front National

"The founders of the Front National were self-confessed fascists," he told the court, pointing out that some of them were former collaborators with the German occupation of France during World War II and adding, "If I'd wanted to insult her, I could have said Nazi."

He also pointed out that Le Pen herself had used the term when talking of the "gilded fascism of the financial markets" and "green fascism" in reference to Islamism.

"Wanting to ban the word fascist is typically fascist," argued Mélenchon's lawyer Raquel Garrido, who is asking for 10,000 euros in damages for abusive legal action.

In a slip of the tongue Saint-Just asked for "one symbolic franc" in damages for Le Pen.

Last year the lawyer decided not to sue Socialist Party spokesperson Thierry Mandon after he called the FN a "national fascist party", saying at the time that it was slander but not abuse.

Mélenchon was unrepentant on Thursday.

Turning to Saint-Just, who is an FN candidate in this month's local elections, he declared, "You will never stop beign fascists to us, even if you ban us from saying so."