The Woman Who Is Changing The Face Of France's Far Right

[Richard]

2012 may prove to be an interesting year on both sides of the Atlantic.

Richard

The Woman Who Is Changing The Face Of France's Far Right
Time, 30 Dec 2010

It isn't a full house at the Center of Permanent Education in the northern French city of Lille, but on this snowy December evening, the main attraction emphatically works the crowd from uproarious laughter to gasps of horror, from murmured outrage to standing ovations. But the speaker who has the audience of 250 or so hanging on every word isn't a stand-up comic or a self-improvement guru. She's Marine Le Pen, the youngest daughter of extreme-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, and she's wrapping up a three-month tour of France in a campaign to succeed her father as the leader of their reinvigorated National Front Party.

"Three years ago, the National Front was declared finished — emptied out and pillaged by Nicolas Sarkozy," Marine Le Pen tells the rapt room, harking back to the 2007 presidential election Sarkozy won after seducing a huge number of National Front (FN) voters to his side by tilting toward hard-line positions on immigration and crime. Now, Le Pen notes, polls show support for the FN surging anew with the 2012 presidential contest in view. "Together," she says to loud cheers, "we will make France's political class tremble!"

To a large degree, it already is — with a whole lot more shaking in store if Le Pen has her way. Her emergence as the face of the far right started in 2009, when she won a municipal councillor's seat in the northern French town of Hénin-Beaumont and narrowly missed claiming the mayor's office from the left for the FN. Now, Le Pen, 42, looks virtually certain to fill her father's post as president of the party during its congress on Jan. 15 and 16, thanks to a campaign drive that speaks to the FN's core while also catching the attention of mainstream France. The FN, its voters and Jean-Marie Le Pen have long been vilified as the untouchable neofascist pariah of France's political scene. But the younger Le Pen has a way of defending extreme-right policies with a moderate tone. As a result, many voters who once dismissed the FN as illegitimate find its positions are to starting to sound almost acceptable.

To a growing minority, Le Pen is a peculiar oxymoron: a kinder, gentler extreme rightist. She rejects claims from critics that she's earned that reputation only by peddling a repackaged platform of FN Light. Le Pen stresses that the positions she and her father hold are virtually identical. Yet she also readily acknowledges that being a twice divorced working single mother with three children provides her a more modern-looking public outlook than those of her father and the older generation of FN politicians. "I'm anchored in the reality of most people today," she tells TIME after the Lille meeting, saying that firsthand perspective is one reason she, unlike older FN leaders, supports abortion rights. "I'm a product of my times and defend the policies of the National Front and its voters from that experience."

And she's good at it, which is a big reason Sarkozy and his conservative government have repeatedly moved in Le Pen's direction over the past 18 months. To the horror of those who oppose any pandering to extreme-right voters, Sarkozy has been stealing pages from the FN's playbook by vowing to cut back immigration, appearing to stigmatize foreigners and minorities in last year's national debate on French identity and expelling thousands of European Roma under what he called a "war against crime."

"Those and other measures inspired by the extreme right were intended to halt Marine Le Pen's spreading influence, but they produced the opposite effect," says Stéphane Rozès, a political analyst and the president of the Paris-based CAP consultancy. "They made Sarkozy appear to validate National Front claims of immigration being responsible for rising crime and loss of French identity and led many unhappy voters to view Marine Le Pen as a credible voice mainstream conservatives are trying to imitate."

In turn, that has helped Le Pen's "de-demonization" of the FN among mainstream voters — "breaking with the radical, excessive, anachronistic groups" of notorious neofascists, racists and revisionists whose support, she says, "has always acted as a brake on our progression." That is the biggest point of conflict in her battle for the party leadership against Bruno Gollnisch — a 60-year-old longtime lieutenant to Jean-Marie Le Pen whose strongest support has been from hard-core FN traditionalists. But Marine Le Pen's expanding allure with the wider party base (and increasingly partisan endorsements by her father) has her heavily favored to capture the FN presidency in January. A mid-December poll of National Front sympathizers showed a whopping 91% wanting Marine to assume the party's top spot and become its candidate in France's 2012 presidential election.

Even more significant for France's wider political scene is Le Pen's growing appeal among voters who have historically shunned the FN's ideology and considered the Le Pen name a symbol of everything that's wrong with the extreme right. A poll in early December found 27% of people expressing a favorable opinion of Marine Le Pen — a better score than her father enjoyed at his peak. The same survey found 35% seeing Le Pen fille as less extreme in both her political positions and her language than her father — the latter view perhaps not surprising, given Jean-Marie's hate-speech convictions for calling World War II gas chambers a "detail of history" and characterizing the Nazi occupation of France as "not particularly inhumane."

But Le Pen rejects suggestions that she's softening the party's tenets. She echoes traditional FN calls to halt immigration, withdraw France from the euro zone, wrest French sovereignty back from the European Union, restore the death penalty for certain crimes and practice "national preference" to reserve jobs, financial aid and public housing for French citizens over foreigners — all of which her father championed to the jeers of most of France for nearly 40 years. Also like her father, Le Pen has been at the center of several roiling controversies — the most explosive of them provoked by anti-Muslim language that sounds even more overtly Islamophobic than her father's. She rails against "a minority people who want to impose religious law — notably the Shari'a favored by radical Islamists — on the French majority" and makes it clear that she feels Islam is incompatible with "the values and traditions rooted in the Christian history" of France. Most recently, Le Pen sparked a storm of protest worthy of her father in mid-December when she compared Muslims who pray in the streets when their mosques are full to the illegal "occupation of territory" by the Nazis during World War II.

"Marine Le Pen is her father!" says Jean-François Copé, general secretary of the ruling Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), in response. "It's exactly the same personality, the same techniques, the same amalgams and same speech." Le Pen brushes off Copé's comments as a tactic designed to "distract people from what we're actually saying — especially our position against the euro, which, right now in particular, has them terrified the public will realize we've been right on that all along."

Still, despite the softening of public opinion of Le Pen, most in France still agree with Copé, meaning Le Pen's divisive message and repositioned xenophobia will likely win the backing of only a minority of voters. Nevertheless, should the number of people who say they will or might vote for Le Pen — 17% in a recent poll — continue to grow, she could provoke major political shifts to the right without ever holding national office. And the perfect storm to bring that about could well be forming on France's horizon.

With the next presidential election just 18 months off, Sarkozy is suffering historically low approval ratings of scarcely 25%. Just as bad, polls show that any of the several Socialists seeking their party's nomination for the 2012 race would beat him if the election were held today. The situation could get even stickier for Sarkozy if rival candidates from his own camp decide to run as well and split the center-right vote.

Where does Le Pen fit in? A recent poll found that 30% of UMP supporters want the party to end its ostracism of the FN and form an alliance that would span extreme right to center. So even if Le Pen doesn't replicate her father's 2002 coup of exploiting a divided mainstream field to qualify for a runoff, a sufficiently strong showing in 2012 could make the FN an irresistible coalition partner for conservatives struggling to stay in power — or looking for a way back to it from defeat.

"Linking up with Marine Le Pen is something some of Sarkozy's advisers and a certain number of UMP members are already considering," says Rozès, though the analyst notes that a clear majority of conservatives dismiss the idea as political suicide. "That partnership would likely strengthen the extreme right at the expense of the traditional right and risk splitting conservatives who support dealing with the FN and those who reject it as a dangerous, antidemocratic force. But it's undeniable some conservatives are already contemplating it."

For nearly 40 years, France's mainstream rightists — and general public — have made it a point of honor to shun Jean-Marie Le Pen and his band of reactionary backers. But if Marine Le Pen keeps persuading voters to hear her out into 2012, French conservatives may finally decide they can no longer afford to shun the new-look extreme right.

http://www.time.com/time/world/artic...sletter-weekly

[Matt B]

The far right seems to be on the rise in France. I've spoken with quite a few people that are thinking to vote for the far right next year, and these are people who would never have considered it before...A lot of folks are really fed up now. Understandably so...

[greenlight]

With the amount of immigration I really can't blame the French people voting for national front. They're coming in their thousands from the middle east to Italy, then moving up through Europe. I am by no means racist and don't agree with right wing views but I can understand what the French people are thinking.

[greenlight]

Just looked her up and I dont care what her views are... I would lol

[mojaveman]

Good for Jean-Marie Le Pen and the National Front Party. I really wonder though if it's just a little too late to really do anything to solve their Muslim problem.

[greenlight]

Here's what we're up against... (from muslims against crusades website)

Q. If you hate this country so much why don't you get out?

A. as Muslims, we are obliged to speak the truth wherever we are. We believe that Britain and the entire world, belong to Almighty God and that His Law should reign supreme i.e. Shari'ah; in light of this, we are also working to transform Britain into a flourishing Islamic State and we urge anyone who does not like this to leave.
http://www.muslimsagainstcrusades.com/faq.php



Don't know about you but that makes me laugh, I'm going nowhere, I'll look forward to them trying to make us leave.

[Sigaba]

Ms. Le Pen has compared Muslims praying in France to the Nazis' occupation of that country while her dad has argued that the Nazis weren't so bad after all.

Ms. Le Pen attempted to square the circle in an interview for Haaretz.com earlier this year. That interview is available here. In that interview, she manages to disagree with her father until she finally agrees.

[greenlight]

From what I've read she seems to have a better head on her shoulders than her dad had. I've said I don't agree with far right wing views but she seems to be getting the people on her side.

Sarkoze wants to regulate the internet, my guess is there's too many looking up his wifes pictures lol.

[greenberetTFS]

La Vie Francais.......

Big Teddy

[PRB]

Liberal socialism is destroying France...its productivness, its will to confront issues internally and abroad.
There are numerous huge enclaves of legal/illegal foreigners that are predom Muslim
that are no go areas for the police...where the streets are shut down 5 times a day by those praying in the streets. Riots take place, people robbed and non Muslims run out of business all in the name of multiculturalism without any attitude toward assimilation (sound familiar).
I have not much info on this lady, and I'm pretty sure the Nazi's will not return to France anytime soon but a strong and direct infusion of conservative attitude can d nothing but improve France.

[baba85]

Originally Posted by PRB

Liberal socialism is destroying France...its productivness, its will to confront issues internally and abroad.
There are numerous huge enclaves of legal/illegal foreigners that are predom Muslim
that are no go areas for the police...where the streets are shut down 5 times a day by those praying in the streets. Riots take place, people robbed and non Muslims run out of business all in the name of multiculturalism without any attitude toward assimilation (sound familiar).
I have not much info on this lady, and I'm pretty sure the Nazi's will not return to France anytime soon but a strong and direct infusion of conservative attitude can d nothing but improve France.

Add "Germany" to "France" and you've perfectly summed up the situation in two european countries.......

Concerning Mrs. Le Pen:
Election day won't be her biggest challenge. Can she win? Currently the odds are 50/50 and she seems to know that. But she might be in trouble if she wins. Sarkozy also tried to act as the rebel and it worked. But soon after becoming president he started adapting to the system. If she wins she'll have to change the political system instead of just applying to it. Otherwise she'll be gone soon.
But since Sarkozy's people (especially the minister for the interior) are starting to give sugar to right wing voters- I'm actually losing faith she's got a real chance.

[Sigaba]

Originally Posted by baba85

Add "Germany" to "France" and you've perfectly summed up the situation in two European countries.

If Germany is in the same state as France, what did Foreign Affairs and The Economist miss in their recent analyses of Germany's ability to stave off the worst of the global recession?

[baba85]

Originally Posted by Sigaba

If Germany is in the same state as France, what did Foreign Affairs and The Economist miss in their recent analyses of Germany's ability to stave off the worst of the global recession?

I was focussing on the subject of enclaves starting to pop up in nearly every bigger city and the situation with not well integrated immigrants in general, as well as the lack of honest and responsible governing concerning these issues.

Concerning the economy:
The moment Asian markets (especially China of course) start to lose their drive we're in a very bad situation. Obviously we're in a better position than France but we depend on others as well and one might come to the conclusion that not even the U.S. depend on Asian markets as much as we do. Our current situation might be "OK" but according to the most recent numbers we're going to loose drive again soon. In case the Chinese economy "implodes" the French will actually have a better chance of making it through such a crisis.

But as I've stated I was mostly referring to PRB’s remarks concerning the enclaves and the overall political situation.
In case this didn’t come out clear enough- apologies.