The tribute to Le Pen is an indication of his daughter's power

The far-right leader leaves behind a less hospitable and less tolerant France - one that may be ready to elect Marine Le Pen as president

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Jean Marie Le Pen and Marine Le Pen in Lyon in 2014, Photo: Beta/AP
Jean Marie Le Pen and Marine Le Pen in Lyon in 2014, Photo: Beta/AP
Disclaimer: The translations are mostly done through AI translator and might not be 100% accurate.

During the 1992 regional elections, I once asked Jean-Marie Le Pen about the National Front (FN) slogan. "When we arrive, they will leave", which roughly translates to: “When we come, they will leave.” I asked Le Pen who he meant when he said “they.” He didn’t want to answer directly, but he drew a complicit laugh from his supporters by saying: “Everyone here, except you, knows what that means.”

This far-right demagogue died at the age of 96, after a long and incendiary political career, but those nationalist, anti-immigration ideas are still alive and well in 21st-century France.

In fact, Le Pen managed to divide the nation for the last time even in his death, as he did in his lifetime. Politicians on the left of the political spectrum expressed outrage at what they called the unacceptable recognition given to him by new centrist Prime Minister François Bayrou, who said in a statement on the X network that, regardless of their differences, Le Pen represented a significant figure in French political life and that "everyone who fought against him knew what kind of fighter he was".

Jean Marie Le Pen
photo: REUTERS

Ironically, his death could pave the way for his daughter, Marine Le Pen, to become president of France, after she purportedly cleansed the party he created - and from which he was expelled in 2015 - of its racist legacy. Opinion polls suggest she would win convincingly against any opponent if a snap presidential election were held now. However, it must be noted that this is only a snapshot of a politically paralyzed country in a bad mood, not an infallible barometer.

The fact that François Bayrou and President Emmanuel Macron felt obliged to at least be polite to the elder Le Pen was more a recognition of his daughter's influence on contemporary politics than a tribute to his career. Their clumsy expressions of condolence - Macron said "history will pass judgment" on his legacy - were less the result of an unwritten rule not to speak ill of the dead and more a desire to show respect for Marine Le Pen, hoping she doesn't bring down more a minority government, after withdrawing support for Michel Barnier's short-lived cabinet last month.

After politically “killing” her increasingly unpredictable father, Marine Le Pen eventually reconciled with him in private, on the condition that he stay out of the public eye. However, he did not fully honor the deal - he continued to advertise via video blog and last year was filmed singing at home with a rock group allegedly linked to neo-Nazi circles.

Bajru and Macron's clumsy expressions of condolence are less the result of an unwritten rule not to speak ill of the dead, and more a desire to show respect for Marine Le Pen, hoping she doesn't topple another minority government

A former paratrooper who served in France's "dirty war" against Algerian nationalists in the 1972s, he founded the National Front in XNUMX, bringing together a diverse group of veterans of the Vichy regime who collaborated with Nazi Germany, tireless colonialists who violently opposed Algerian independence. and Catholic fundamentalists. They represented the dark side of history that most of society, imbued with Charles de Gaulle's myth of a France united in resistance, did not want to talk about.

Fierce rhetoric and carefully calculated provocations - such as belittling the Nazi gas chambers as a "detail" of history and reveling in anti-Semitic quips - took Jean-Marie Le Pen from the obscure right-wing fringe to the second round of presidential elections within three decades. He was helped along in the 1986s by then-Socialist President François Mitterrand, who encouraged public television to broadcast the radical right's speeches as part of a tactic to divide the conservative opposition. By introducing a proportional system in the XNUMX parliamentary elections, Mitterrand allowed the National Front to enter the National Assembly for the first time.

Le Pen's shock victory in the 2002 presidential election, when he knocked Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin into third place, sparked a wave of protests and a moment of national unity that led to a landslide victory for Gaullist President Jacques Chirac. After five presidential campaigns and even more court processes, the time of the hardened political fighter is finally over.

Like some kind of devilish Moses, Le Pen saw the promised land from afar but never set foot in it because he “sinned.” Repeatedly convicted of inciting racial hatred and discrimination, denying the Holocaust, and justifying war crimes, the godfather of the French far right preferred to stoke prejudice and become an outcast rather than tone down his rhetoric to win public office. “He knew how to covertly activate deep-rooted anti-Arab racism in France.”

Many mainstream conservative politicians have adopted his "uncontrolled immigration" rhetoric. Although he never won power, Jean-Marie Le Pen changed the political discourse in France, making the country that calls itself the cradle of human rights a less hospitable and less tolerant place.

Marine Le Pen chose a different path. She spent more than a decade in the process of "detoxifying" the party's image, which she called dédiabolisation, which literally means "de-demonization". She changed the name of the party, replacing the word Front with Rassemblement, a term long used by the Gaullists. When policies like leaving the euro or exiting the EU scared the middle class and resulted in a loss of votes, she abandoned them.

Unburdened by the history of her father's generation, the single mother rejected the party's opposition to abortion rights and same-sex marriage, vocally supported Israel and positioned herself as a defender of secularism in the fight against political Islam. The National Assembly (RN) won 11 million votes in last year's snap parliamentary elections, as Marine Le Pen often reminds the political class.

Marine Le Pen is sending more subtle hidden messages than her father, but a growing number of people in France are answering her call.

The text is taken from "The Guardian"

Translation: NB

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