France’s Marine Le Pen had spent a lot of time trying to put a happier face on the far-right anti-immigrant politics of the National Front (FN) party.  The results were some major gains in the recent European Parliament elections.  But a blatantly anti-Semitic remark by the party’s founder – Marine’s father, Jean-Marie le Pen – slapped the smile off that facade and replaced it with a toothbrush mustache.

The elder Le Pen had posted a video blog on the party’s website saying that Jewish actor Patrick Bruel should be put in a “fournee” – the French word for “ovenload”, as in “put into ovens”.  To some, it was an oblique reference to the holocaust.  To others it was an incredibly obvious and rather evil reference to the holocaust.

That set off a rare public spat.  Marine Le Pen publicly chastised dear old dad, saying the blog was “a political mistake that will cost the National Front” (note that she didn’t call it a moral mistake).  And she had the video blog removed from the FN party website.

“My daughter has put a knife in my back,” the nearly 86-year-old Jean-Marie Le Pen said.  “If I piss them off, they have only to kill me.. I will not commit suicide.”

He said that an open letter to his youngest child is on the way.

“The FN seems to be living in fear of being accused of anti-Semitism,” he said.  “I am not a court darling.  I react to these things in my own way, with my own temperament.”

The elder Le Pen is one of the more infamous anti-Semites in modern Europe.  In 1987, he said that nazi Germany’s “death camps were a ‘mere detail’ of World War II”.  He frequently denies the holocaust ever took place.  In 1997, Le Pen accused then-President Jacque Chirac of being “in the pay of Jewish organizations.”   Just recently he suggested that the Ebola Virus be dropped on all immigrants.

Such a charming family.