August 5, 1968 –
Marine Le Pen is the current leader of the right-wing French nationalist party the ‘National Front’ (FN) after succeeding her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of the party in January 2011. Jean-Marie Le Pen created the party in 1972 during a rough economic period for France as it was during this time the nation began to feel the effects of Americanization and globalization. This resulted in many French individuals becoming angry and feeling a loss of their identity, like Mishra describes in Age of Anger , due to American proponents inhibiting, eliminating, and morphing their lives. Consequently, a group of nationals lead by Jean-Marie Le Pen, cultivated a new political party that was set on far right policies. Through exploiting the populations emotions, the FN created ideologies that promoted deportation of immigrants, degradation of minorities and promotion of nationalism. By promoting these policies it created the notion that tribalism was the solution to their economic dismay. The party began to gain traction through the following years, but it wasn’t until Marine Le Pen took the helm, and reformed and modernized their policies that the party started making a real waves in the French and global political spectrum.
After becoming the leader, Marine invoked a ‘reform’ of their policies in order to appeal to the modern day masses, rather than specifically the aging community. Through ‘detoxification’ Marine composed her party’s values of both the far left and far right, packaging it into a toxic, yet compelling policy. She adopted ideas such as anti-immigration, protectionism, and nationalism, while simultaneously modernizing other ideologies by becoming more inclusive to female, homosexual, and pro abortion communities. Due to this overhaul, it created a party
with modern policies that appeal to the entire population, while subliminally retaining the former xenophobic, authoritarian ideologies.
Marine’s primary policy is turning France into an nationalistic power house by returning its identity to the people through various different mechanisms and proponents. The first proponent being anti-immigration, Marine wishes to minimise the flow of people through her borders. In regards to who would be allowed in she declared that citizenship should be “inherited or merited” (Branford & Nowak, BBC ). She wants France to once again become a nation of purebred citizens without foreigners inhabiting its borders. Similar to many other far right parties, she believes foreigners are destroying the nation’s job availability and culture so to combat this problem they must have the immigrants removed. Additionally, Marine wishes to completely shut down the borders muslim and islamic nations as they are the ones fueling the ongoing terrorism epidemic. Marine utilizes fear to prey on her citizens and brainwash them into electing her, by consistently referring to the recurring attacks throughout her nation and the world. Marine uses political scare tactics in order to secure votes, by utilizing the notion of an ‘us vs them’ argument through tribalistic rhetoric. Common between far right politicians, Marine initiates the argument that the nation must come together and unite as one in order to fight the outsiders wanting to destroy them.
Additionally, Marine wishes to implement a policy in which she calls ‘national priority’. This ideology in the concept that French nationals should have priority over ‘foreigners’ in regards to privileges, rights and commodities. Through removal of entitlements like free public education from foreigners, Marine wishes to eradicate the outsiders through combatting financial and social policies against them.
Thus, Marine Le Pen is bent on morphing her nation into a nationalistic and authoritarian power house by eliminating and eradicating all foreigners. Although Marine reformed her father’s medieval policies, it is still vividly evident that they still resonate in her political ideologies. Her reformation has often be referred to ‘de-demonization’ as she has retained her father’s policies but softened them through rebranding their policies on other prevalent matters to disguise them amongst updated modern ones. This process of modernization has made her appear far more appealing and has resulted in a incredible rise in popularity. However, although on the surface she appears as a modern populist, she really is an authoritarian fascist, motivated by anger and frustration at the loss of her nation’s identity. In an interview, Marine described that as a child her house was bombed by those opposed to her father’s policies and as a result she stated “politics for me started in violence, against me.” (Alduy, The Atlantic). Thus exemplifying the notion that violent motives in politics only create a cycle of more violence in the future which hurts all. Marine Le Pen is evidently motivated to change her nation by reversing it to its former glory through racist, xenophobic methods. She is leading a scary populist movement that if come into power will implement authoritarian and fascist ideologies in an already treacherous time. If she comes into power, unspeakable things will result as of her racist and xenophobic motives. One only has to look into history to understand that this could be a repeat of catastrophic disaster.
Graphic above illustrates the Islamophobic parties within Europe, which subsequently are also Marine Le Pen’s allies in the political spectrum.
Joe Mullins
Relevant Readings:
- – National Identities in France by Brian Sudlow
- – T he National Front and French Politics: The Resistible Rise of Jean-Marie Le Pen
Bibliography
Alduy, Cecile. “The Devils Daughter.” The Atlantic. Last modified October 2013. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/10/the-devils-daughter/309467/ .
Branford, Becky, and Marysia Nowak. “France elections: What makes Marine Le Pen far right?” BBC News. Last modified February 10, 2017. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-38321401 .
Lichfield, John. “Why we should be scared of Marine Le Pen’s Front National.” Independent. Last modified December 8, 2015. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/why-we-should-be-scared-of-marine-le-pens-f ront-national-a6765751.html .
Marcus, Jonathan. The National Front and French Politics: The Resistible Rise of Jean-Marie Le Pen . New York: New York University Press, 1995.
Mayer, Nonna. “From Jean-Marie to Marine Le Pen: Electoral Change on the Far Right.” Parliamentary Affairs 66, no. 1 (January 1, 2013): 160-78. https://doi-org.libaccess.lib.mcmaster.ca/10.1093/pa/gss071.
Shields, James. “Radical or Not so Radical? Tactical Variation in Core Policy Formation by the Front National.” French Politics, Culture & Society 29, no. 3 (2011): 78-100. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42843724 .
In Text Graphic
“ANATOMY OF ISLAMOPHOBIA.” World Policy Journal 28, no. 4 (2011): 14-15. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41479299 .
Cosmos|Hearth 