In a recent poll, Marine Le Pen was said to be winning the first-round of the French presidential election with 28% of the votes. Even if this same poll also said that she will not won the election whether she faces the centrist Emmanuel Macron or the Republican François Fillon during the second-round of the election, I am scared.
I am scared because I never thought I would see her populist and nationalist political party, Le Front National, attract so many voters.
Le Pen writes in her program that she wants to “defend women’s rights” by “fighting against the Islamism that makes women’s fundamental rights recede.” Le Pen also talks about “making impossible the naturalization of illegal immigrants” and about “simplifying and making automatic their expulsion.” Let’s also keep in mind that in 2015, she compared Muslim street prayers to Nazi occupation.
Geert Wilders did not win his bet in Netherlands but Le Pen might access to power in France.
Le Pen plays with people’s fears, as any far-right leader knows how to do. She wants to give a new image to her party, an image of modernity in order to attract more voters. She changed her logo from a flame to a rose. The Front National’s flame wasa varient of the MSI tricolor flame and was supposed to represent the Unknown Soldier. In her new logo, however, Le Pen did not include the name of her party or any French flag; and said that the rose was supposed to represent women, since she’s one of the only candidates to be a woman. A feminist candidate, really? She declared in 2012 that “parity was against republican meritocracy” and supported her claim by saying that it would only “have perverse effects” and make women appear as a “quota.” Moreover, the FN members of the European parliament voted against a law that would have, among other things, helped women to have an easier access to contraception methods and abortion.
On the walls of her new headquarters can be seen James Bond posters with one of the party’s official face instead of Daniel Craig’s. A way for the FN, maybe, to give itself a new image. Le Pen started doing live streams on her Facebook page, opened a blog called « Carnets d’espérances » (notebooks of hope) featuring pictures of herself with her daughter, her cats, etc. She is changing her image. And it’s working: Le Front National has never been so popular.
A few years ago, Le Front National was still seen as the xenophobic party it is. However, recently, people seem to have forgotten everything about that. Maybe it’s because they’re scared. Maybe it’s because the entire French presidential election seems to be a bad joke. Maybe it’s because they think that Marine Le Pen is not like her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of the party who, for instance, believes that Nazi gas chambers are a “detail” of World War II. But Le Front National is still the same party as it was before.
In 2012, Marine Le Pen herself declared: “Would you accept that 12 illegal immigrants come settle in your apartment? You would not accept. […] They [would] change the wallpaper, […] they [would] steal your wallet and they [would] brutalize your wife.” In 2015, a Front National candidate to a local election described Islam as “the bubonic plague of the 21st century.” A week ago, a Front National’s party official was suspended for saying that there had been no “mass murder” during the Holocaust.
Nothing changed. Do not fall into her trap. Do not let her win.
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