Marine Le Pen: Far-right heir reaping rewards of party purges

PARIS, France – Growing up, Marine Le Pen was a daddy’s girl who wept for joy when her father – the bogeyman of French politics – beat his Socialist rival for a spot in the final of the 2002 presidential election.

But while Jean-Marie Le Pen never seemed to truly covet the top job, his charismatic daughter and political heir is convinced that, come May 7, France will have its very first “presidente”.

Since taking over the leadership of the far-right National Front (FN) in 2011 from her father, the telegenic 48-year-old former lawyer has worked hard to purge the party of the anti-Semitism and overt racism that were his hallmarks.

Repositioned as a party of “patriots” from both left and the right, the FN topped the vote in European and municipal elections in 2014, buoyed by the kind of anti-establishment fury that drove Britain’s vote to leave the EU and Donald Trump’s election in the United States. (READ: France’s Le Pen hails ‘new world’ after Trump win)

Calling 2016 “the year the English-speaking world woke up,” Le Pen says she is convinced continental Europe will follow suit this year.

“Against the moneyed right and the moneyed left I am the candidate of the French people,” Le Pen declared in a TV debate on Monday, March 20.

If she does win the keys to the Elyseé Palace – bucking the trend after setbacks for the far right in recent Dutch and Austrian elections – it will be partly because of her repudiation of the man she once idolized.

Le Pen suspended her father in 2015 from the party he co-founded for repeating his perennial claim that the Nazi gas chambers were but a “detail” of history.

A wounded Jean-Marie refused to go quietly, dragging the FN before the courts. But for Marine, the job of distancing her brand from that of her toxic dad was done.

Mother posed for Playboy

The split marked a turning point in the career of a politician who developed a tough shell after a tumultuous childhood.

When she was 8, a bomb ripped through the Paris apartment building where the family lived, slightly injuring 6 people but sparing the Le Pens.

Eight years later Marine’s mother Pierrette walked out on her husband and 3 daughters, sensationally resurfacing shortly afterwards in Playboy magazine for which she posed nude.

“It was a huge shock,” Le Pen, who did not see her mother for 15 years after the split, told an M6 television interview last year.

Now herself a mother of 3, she keeps her private life out of the spotlight, appearing rarely as a couple with her partner, FN vice-president Louis Aliot.

Le Pen, echoes her father with her gravelly voice and flair for sharp putdowns, started out as a lawyer defending illegal immigrants facing deportation as a state-appointed attorney.

Despite that experience she still blames migration – and the euro – for France’s economic woes.

“We are not going to welcome any more people. Stop. We are full up,” she insists. (READ: Le Pen vows ‘France first’ at campaign launch) 

The FN has come a long way since it was launched in 1972 as a refuge for paramilitaries who opposed Algeria’s independence from France, apologists for the wartime Vichy regime’s collaboration with Nazi Germany and ultra-conservative Catholics.

Under Le Pen junior, the party has booted out members who have been unmasked as racists, and it has shown a more progressive face by promoting openly gay politicians to its upper echelons.

Critics say the changes are chiefly cosmetic and that Le Pen’s claim that Islamic fundamentalists are trying to take over in France is coded racism.

But with a section of the rightwing Republicans party now taking a similar line on Islam, Le Pen can claim that her ideas have gone mainstream.

French first

Like Trump she is proposing to pull up the drawbridge and restore French glory with a policy of “economic patriotism” that many economists see as a recipe for ruin. (READ: Yes, Marine Le Pen could win in France)

Le Pen wants namely to ditch the euro, hold a referendum on French membership of the EU and give priority to French nationals in the market for jobs and public housing. (READ: Le Pen follows Trump’s lead on social media bombardment) 

In the last presidential election in 2012 she finished third on just under 18%, behind current Socialist leader Francois Hollande and his rightwing predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy.

Five years later, with the left in disarray and the conservative candidate Francois Fillon dogged by scandal, polls show her running neck-and-neck with centrist frontrunner Emmanuel Macron in the first round.

But they show her falling at the final hurdle, with voters rallying in the May 7 run-off behind Macron or Fillon – as they plumped for conservative Jacques Chirac when he faced Le Pen senior in 2002.

Le Pen is hoping that the polls are off the mark – as they were with Brexit and Trump. – Claire Byrne, Agence France-Presse | Rappler.com

Top photo: Marine Le Pen poses for a photo in Nanterre, France, January 30, 2014. Joel Saget/AFP