France’s main far-right party has tried to distance itself over the years from a series of inflammatory and derogatory statements made by its founding president, Jean-Marie Le Pen.
His daughter took over the reins of the party in 2011, expelling him from the party. It was renamed the National Front, and it was renamed the National Rally. The party has long been led by Marine Le Pen, who has called Hitler’s gas chambers “a detail” of history, and has explicitly condemned anti-Semitism.
But when Le Pen died on Tuesday at the age of 96, the party embraced him deeply, with its leaders praising him as a visionary, a “great patriot” and a “brave and courageous man”. Talented politician”.
“He will remain the man who holds in his hand the little flickering flame of the French nation in the storm,” the National Rally said in a statement, adding that his “will and unwavering perseverance” made the party ” Autonomous, strong and free” power.
There was nothing in the statement to indicate disagreement with Le Pen’s views or his vitriol. The best he can say is that he is “unruly, sometimes bad-tempered” and often likes to cause controversy.
Jean-Yves Camus, a far-right expert at the Jean-Jaures Foundation, said the strategy of Marine Le Pen, Mr Le Pen’s daughter and successor, “has always been to align herself with her father without fully assessing her father.” Different”. A disgusting legacy. He said it was too early to tell whether she might have done so.
“Respectable times take away warriors but bring back our fathers,” Ms Le Pen said in a brief tribute on Wednesday. . “Death brought him back.”
So far, the party does not appear to be on a path of deep introspection. Instead, Camus said, it appeared to be an attempt to “reinject” a new version of Le Pen into France’s collective memory, knowing he would not outburst any more racist or anti-Semitic sentiments.
But Renaud Labaye, secretary-general of the National Rally in the lower house of parliament, said the party had weighed in on Le Pen’s past.
“It is his expulsion – the fact that it was initiated by his daughter and that he was the founder of the party – that underlines his excesses and reprehensible positions that have been so resolutely criticized by the party. Condemned,” said Mr. Labaye said.
Le Pen has been a pariah in French politics for decades, considered so hateful that many of his opponents refuse to debate him. This has a lot to do with the party’s history: its 1972 founders included former Nazi soldiers, collaborators with the wartime Vichy regime and members of a group that had launched deadly attacks to thwart Algeria’s bid to break free from French colonial rule struggle.
Le Pen’s overtly racist, anti-Semitic and anti-gay rhetoric has cemented public opinion of the party.
Mr Le Pen, who served as a paratrooper in two colonial wars to suppress independence movements in Vietnam and Algeria, has said that races “do not have the same capabilities, nor the same level of historical evolution” and has been repeatedly convicted of anti-Semitic comments racist rhetoric and publicly downplayed the Holocaust. He once likened homosexuality to pedophilia.
After Le Pen unexpectedly reached the second round of the presidential election in 2002, left-wing parties called on their members to vote for his conservative rival Jacques Chirac. This was the most famous use of the tactic known as the “Republican Front” in French politics, which has been used many times since to prevent the far right from taking power.
In the 2002 election, Mr Le Pen won less than 18% of the vote. But when his daughter took over, she embarked on a so-called “de-demonization” strategy to cleanse the party’s image and broaden its appeal.
She distanced herself from her father’s anti-Semitic comments, calling the concentration camps “the most barbaric place.” In 2015, she expelled her father from the party, when he was its honorary chairman, saying his repeated denials of the Holocaust showed “his aim was to cause harm to the party”. Three years later, she renamed it.
Now that the national rally – after enduring waves of fear and anger over uncontrolled immigration, rising inflation and deadly terrorism – is no longer on the fringes of French politics, some of its policies have received wider attention accept.
Last summer, during snap elections, another Republican front between left-wing and centrist parties blocked a far-right victory. Still, the powerful lower house of parliament currently has a record 124 National Assembly members, making it the largest single opposition party.
While Ms Le Pen has softened some of the party’s initial hardline stance, its fundamental focus on identity and desire to amend the French constitution to restrict the rights of foreigners have left it viewed as a far-right party in France, experts say. For example, party members believe that French people should even have priority over legal immigrants in certain areas such as social benefits and subsidized housing. Camus said this violated the French constitution and the republican ideal established during the 1789 revolution that all men are equal.
Many experts have described Ms Le Pen’s “de-demonization” campaign as pure marketing, and in last summer’s election many national rally candidates came under heavy criticism for past racist or anti-Semitic comments.
Some analysts say the party has no choice but to acknowledge Le Pen’s integral role in building its enduring, stable and successful movement, which remains dominated by her family.
But some experts say the party’s glowing commemoration of Le Pen is also a way to reshape his image and the party’s own.
Nicolas Lebourg, a historian who specializes in the far right, said that “paying homage to Le Pen further ‘demonizes’ the party” by portraying him as an excessive but prescient politician who was criticized for his views on the far right. Unfairly condemned for warning of immigration dangers.
“People who voted for the first time last year have almost no memory of him,” Mr. LeBour said.
Tributes from the party and others were also evidence that Le Pen’s ideas – such as drastically blocking immigration – were increasingly becoming part of the mainstream.
Mainstream conservative Republican European Parliament leader François-Xavier Bellamy wrote: “Jean-Marie Le Pen’s importance in our political life is the result of years of denial and incompetence on immigration. “The party has historically despised Le Pen and was thrown into chaos last year when its then-leader advocated an alliance with the National Rally.
“Those who insulted him even after his death refused to first face their own failings,” Mr. Bellamy said.
In 2018, Le Pen assessed her influence in an interview with The New York Times: “My ideas have made progress, even in the plans of my opponents,” he said. “That’s why my fight is not without merit.”
Even after his death, however, he retained many political opponents, especially on the left. Hundreds of people gathered in several French cities to celebrate his death on Tuesday night.
“No, he is not the ‘Great Servant of France,'” wrote Manuel Bompard, national coordinator of the far-left French party Unyielding. “He is an enemy of the Republic.”
“His ideas and the danger they pose to our democracy remain. Let’s finally defeat his heir,” Green Party senator Mélanie Vogel said on the X show.
Mr. Le Pen’s long life and political career spanned France’s postwar history. Even the Elysee Palace, the residence and office of the French president, acknowledged this, noting in a statement that Le Pen ran for president five times and served as a French MP seven times.
The statement said, “He is a far-right historical figure who has played a role in our country’s public life for nearly 70 years. Now it is up to history to judge.”
Segolena Lestradic Contributed reporting.
