Salut!

Jean-Marie Le Pen and the dark legacy of 50 years of far right agitation

Rassemblement National (National Rally) was the Front National of Jean-Marie Le Pen's creation until four years ago. As France's main far-right movement marks, as quietly as it can, today's 50th anniversary of its birth, there are shudders of disgust or at least distance among France's new intake of 89 MPs, forming the biggest single opposition party.

'I would not have joined the FN in 1972,' Alexandre Loubet, an MP from Moselle tells Le Figaro. 'I come from Debout La République [another populist, rightwing party, but without FN's toxic image] and consider myself a social Gaullist,' says Anne-Sophie Frigout, from Marne. Philippe Lottiaux, down here in the Var, assures me the RN of Le Pen's estranged daughter, Marine, is neither extreme nor right.

I respectfully disagree.

As Emmanuel Macron pointed out in this year's presidential election campaign, her crackpot idea of banning Muslim headwear would have criminalised, among so many others, Latifa Ibn Ziaten, a relentless campaigner against extremism whose son, a Muslim soldier, was one of the seven victims of Mohamed Merah, a terrorist killer, 10 years ago. That alone tells us a lot.

This is my Comment piece for The National on the anniversary the far right, for that is what is still is, would sooner forget ...

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Image of Jean-Marie Le Pen by staffpresi_esj

Marine Le Pen and her party's 50 years: a hesitant golden milestone

 

I felt it was appropriate to write about the 50th anniversary on Wednesday (Oct 5) of the creation of the party Jean-Marie Le Pen helped to found as the Front National (FN) and which his daughter, Marine, has striven to reform, making it something less or seeming less extreme, ditching a name resonant of jackboots in favour of the more inclusive Rassemblement National (National Rally or RN) and ditching her unreconstructed old far right dad.

We are hardly friends, FN-becoming-RN and me, and I believe RN is still an extreme rightwing party. But when it comes to news, I have always tried to be objective. A comment piece is to come but a quick look at The National's website - the link is here - will tell you whether I succeeded on this occasion. To no great surprise, Marine Le Pen and her father simply ignored my written questions as did RN's media chief, Isabelle Marchandier, though she did at least acknowledge and pass on an interview request to Jordan Bardella, who seems likely to replace Ms Le Pen as party president and already has the role on an interim basis (he also ignored the request).

Unlike another unresponsive MP (Laure Lavalette, mentioned below) and to his credit, Philippe Lottiaux replied generously to my approach. My French vote in June's legislative elections is not here but in London and most certainly did not go to the RN candidate. But M Lottiaux won the seat for a constituency that includes where I live when in France. Read the article itself, where his comments are summarised, at The National site. Here I reproduce the interview, conducted n French by e-mail ....