The party remains thoroughly toxic, right to the top.
France’s far-right Front National (FN) has been rising in the opinion polls of late – one showing that one in four French voters would back the party in next spring’s European elections.
As part of her bid to capitalise on disillusionment with socialist President Francois Hollande’s broken promises to reverse austerity and deliver jobs and growth, FN leader Marine Le Pen has been trying hard to reposition the party, away from racism and Holocaust-denial into the political mainstream. She has even threatened to sue anyone using the term ‘extreme right’.
Yet in less than one month three FN candidates for next March’s local elections have quit the party.
“The defections demonstrate the idea that behind the official discourse, the party has not changed since Marine Le Pen took the reins in January 2011,” according to French broadcaster Europe 1.
Nadia Portheault, a 26-year-old mother from an Algerian background and head of the party’s list in Saint-Alban, in the Haute-Garonne department in the south west, got the ball rolling on November 5 after hearing one party militant say: “You and your children are good for the oven… “.
Portheault said that the party was plagued with “racism and homophobia” and that “neo-Nazis” are among its members.
She originally wanted to run to become mayor of Saint-Alban, near Toulouse, in south-west France, using her maiden name of Djelida. But FN executives said such an Arab name would be a “disability”, with one saying that immigrants from North Africa might end up in the Nazi gas chambers, like French Jews during the war.
Portheault and her husband, Thierry, said the brother of one activist boasted about his Swastika tattoo and hated “Arabs and gays”.
Now other candidates have slammed the door on the party, after seeing it from the inside.
Arnaud Clere, a militant in the country’s main right-wing party, UMP, in the Somme, announced in May 2013 his decision to ally with the FN for municipal elections in commune of Gamaches. Excluded from the UMP, he decided to join the small party Sovereignty Freedom and Independence which has been allied with the Front National since 2012. But six months later, the defector is having serious regrets.
“I made the mistake to ally myself with a sectarian, anti-republican, dictatorial party,” he said.
The second defector, Anna Rosso-Roig who was previously with the radical Left Front, announced Monday morning she was withdrawing his candidacy from the Marseille electoral list, as she not able to adhere to its “too radical political line”.
During the 2012 legislative elections, the mother of two children confided that she “have been seduced by Marine Le Pen”, who she viewed then as “much more moderate than her father”, the founder of the party, Jean-Marie.
Arnaud Clere is now clear he’d been taken in too. He “made a mistake to think that the FN was a party one could frequent.” Clere adds: “When you see Marine Le Pen on television, you cannot imagine what [the party] looks like behind the scenes.”
Marine Le Pen’s strategy of de-toxifying the party is a “sham”, Europe 1 says. ‘Behind the controlled and policed speeches of Marine Le Pen, is racism and xenophobia, which is common in local meetings.’
Arnaud Cléré recounts a meeting last month with the head of the party’s list in Henin- Beaumont, where he saw swastikas tattooed on the arms of two participants.
“When I listened to Marine Le Pen, I thought this kind of character did not exist in the National Front but unfortunately I have seen it with my own eyes,” he says. Anna Rosso -Roig recounts the humour of the Marseille’s candidate Stephane Ravier, who reportedly described rape as “love relationship that one of the two parties wishes. The other party could make an effort.”
In a book published in 2013, Bienvenue au Front-Journal d’une infiltrée, (Welcome to Front), journalist Claire Checcaglini, who infiltrated the party for several months, confided: “I found a lot of racist people who were relaxed about their racism.”
One FN electoral candidate, who too openly displayed the movement’s abhorrent politics when he declared of black justice minister Christiane Taubira that he would “rather see her in the trees than in the government” was suspended.
But Marine Le Pen hasn’t been trying that hard to hide the true nature of the party. Only last month she caused outrage with islamophobic comments in connection with the release of four French hostages held by al-Qaida for 37 months in Niger. A faux pas? No, just more evidence that the party remains thoroughly toxic, right to the top.
24 Responses to “France’s Front National brand detox is going nowhere”
TM
Good point you made. The great problem for a democracy with free speech and freedom theoretically at least as the cornerstones of that democracy is that everyone should be heard, no matter how odious, offensive or provocative their point of view, or indeed whether it just disagrees completely with our point of view. The reality is that often the voices that are heard are those that agree with those in power or influence, usually Right of centre views, or the extremists who don’t care what others think but will spout whatever they like, aka extreme Islamic stuff or BNP and EDL stuff. The moderates on all sides are literally drowned out. And so to be heard, some of the moderates become extreme. It is a serious problem for democracy, and the heart of the matter is that in general most voices outside of a narrow band of people or a narrow band of acceptable views, are just not heard anywhere accept on the Internet like here.
Skiltz1
You have the temerity to call the Labour Party – left ?! Like the Democrats in America, they are merely one of the formal political expressions of capitalism in Britain – posturing as leftists. As the British used to say (when genuine, authentic leftists, i.e. Marxist-Leninists still existed in that country) the Labour Party talk radical when they are OUT of power. The limp-wristed left in America do the same thing – they shout revolutionary slogans and then when it comes time for the elections they cave in to the Democratic Party saying that they are the lesser of two evils. This constant capitulation is the reason nobody trusts or respects the left any longer – and why anyone supporting or working with groups like UAF are working with a useless cult – they might as well join Scientology!
Doug Smith
“This constant capitulation is the reason nobody trusts or respects the left any longer”
There’s some truth in that.
Labour and Tory both end up doing the same thing when in government. Both are opinion poll led and both lack the political imagination to set the agenda. Whichever you vote for, same result.
Skiltz1
Look at what the institutional parties (Conservatives, Labour, Lib/Dem) – all of them – did to the traditional working classes in Britain. They eliminated industry in the very birthplace of the industrial revolution and abandoned their own working classes to the unemployment line, council housing and perpetual immiseration. At the same time, they flooded the country with immigrants from the worst cultures on the planet – muslims from Pakistan, North Africa, Saudia Arabia, etc. They have displaced their own people and provided free social benefits to backward third world rats. The leadership of these parties should be tried for treason.
Archibald_Cunningham
How about addressing what my comment was really about, instead of playing semantics? It’s true that no European governments are economically Marxist, but they are nearly all socially/culturally Marxist. Are you trying to say that the EU, and by extension most of Europe, is NOT currently run by far-left ideologues?