Notre-Dame suicide a ‘wake up call’

FRONT National leader Marine Le Pen has paid tribute to a far-right historian who committed suicide in Notre-Dame Cathedral, saying it was an act to “wake up the people of France”.

Dominique Venner, 78, who shot himself through the mouth with a pistol in front of the main altar and hundreds of visitors, had written a message before he killed himself, saying: “I believe it necessary to sacrifice myself to shatter the lethargy that overwhelms us.”

He attacked the new law on gay marriage in his last blog post, saying “spectacular and symbolic actions” were needed, adding: “Acts need to follow words.”

He called on the opponents of “marriage for all” to move on to other “perils” that faced France and pointed to Islamic immigration, calling it the “great replacement of the population of France and Europe”.

Venner was a former member of the outlawed extreme-right OAS, the pro-French Algerian group who tried to assassinate President de Gaulle. He wrote Pour une Critique Positive, a book that laid the basis for a new extreme-Right politics that looked to the future instead of the past.