“Of course Marine Le Pen can win.” Édouard Philippe, former prime minister and confidant of President Emmanuel Macron, makes no bones about it in an interview with Le Parisien† Marine Le Pen, the frontwoman of the radical right-wing Rassemblement National, could be elected president of France this month. Other high-ranking people from Macron’s entourage also express themselves Worried about her rise in the polls. It is almost certain that after the first round of the election, on Sunday, Le Pen will face Macron in the second round on April 24. And Friday Le Pen was in the polls for the deuxième tour at 48 percent of the vote, which would put her just 2 percentage points away from the presidency.
It is the first time that a radical right-wing candidate actually has a chance of winning a place in the Élysée. According to analysts, Le Pen owes its position to its increasingly lenient image. However, it is doubtful whether the ideas of her Rassemblement National (RN; until 2018 Front National) have really become less extreme.
Purchasing Power Candidate
Le Pen owes part of her success to the fact that she has presented herself as ‘the candidate of purchasing power’ since the beginning of the election campaigns. That was a smart move: in the fall this was already the subject that most concerned the French and since the price hikes caused by the war in Ukraine, purchasing power has indisputably become the main electoral theme. Although other candidates are also talking about it – Macron lowered the fuel prices and announced a mileage and inflation allowance and the radical left Jean-Luc Mélenchon advocates freezing the prices of basic necessities – Le Pen has largely succeeded in appropriating the subject.
She did this by underlining the popular image of her party. In small villages, Le Pen promised fishermen, workers and other ‘normal’ French people who, because of their low salaries or poor public transport connections, are hit hard by the high (petrol) prices that they will “give them back their money”. ‘Marine’ – as she is called – wants this do by the removal of the tax on basic necessities and energy and an income tax exemption for young people.
By focusing on this theme, Le Pen’s radical views on issues like immigration are discussed less, making her appear more moderate. As chairman Christophe Castaner of Macron’s party LREM on radio station RMC said: “Marine Le Pen has donned a cloak of mundaneness to try to disguise what she really is.” This more moderate image also includes the rise of opinion maker Éric Zemmour, whose ideas are so extreme – he wants Muslims to change their Arabic names, for example – that Le Pen’s pale in comparison.
Also read: Marine Le Pen is really fed up with her father now
Father Le Pen had to go
Ever since Marine Le Pen took over the leadership of the then National Front from her father Jean-Marie in 2011, she has been ‘de-demonizing’ the party. She has distanced herself from the racist words of her father and fired party members with too extremist ideas. Even Father Le Pen was stripped of membership in 2015 for saying the Nazi gas chambers were “just a detail of history.”
Thanks to these dediabolisation the party, which under Jean-Marie Le Pen was especially popular among a certain group of white straight men, found a wider audience. Where former president Jacques Chirac met Jean-Marie Le Pen in 2002 82.2 percent of the votes defeated in the second round of the election, Macron knew in 2017 against Marine Le Pen ‘but’ 66.1 percent of the votes.
Since 2017, Le Pen has shaved some hard edges from her program. For example, she no longer advocates a departure from the European Union, she no longer dreams (openly) of reducing immigration to zero and she no longer opposes gender equality policy. The reintroduction of the death penalty and the prohibition of dual nationalities are no longer in her opinion either program†
While Le Pen is not against the right to abortion, she does want the reimbursement for the treatment delete
It seems that the rebrand works: early nineties saw almost three quarters of the French according to a study by Kantar Public, the National Front as a “danger to democracy”; five years ago this was 58 percent, and in 2022 ‘only’ 48 percent of the French consider the RN as threatening. The same survey shows that a dwindling part of the French view Le Pen as a representative of “a xenophobic and nationalist extreme right”. More and more people see her as a representative of “a patriotic right that attaches importance to traditional values.”
Also read this report: Living in the target of the extreme right
Hint of xenophobia
Has Marine Le Pen really turned into a moderate politician? Who her program and statements takes it, can only conclude ‘no’. Her ideas are still laced with extreme elements and there is a hint of xenophobia around them. Especially in the field of immigration, Le Pen has hardly tied the knot. For example, she wants to significantly reduce the number of family reunions and approved asylum applications and have the asylum process take place outside France – which is in violation of the Geneva Convention. Her proposal goes even further to be constitutionally established that foreigners have less rights than people with French passports to work, social housing and benefits – which they euphemistically national priority calls. This is in conflict with the European and nationally established right to equal treatment, says European law lecturer Tania Racho of the Université Paris-Panthéon-Assas. “It is forbidden to grant or not to grant these fundamental rights based solely on whether someone is a foreigner.” Le Pen also wants to ban the wearing of a headscarf on the street and the sharing of certain religious texts. Political scientist Cécile Alduy, who specializes in the far-right ideology, saw that Le Pen’s views have “barely changed”, she told AFP news agency, and that she only uses a different vocabulary. „It is now on behalf of the laïcité and the Republican values that she attacks Islam and wants to drastically reduce non-European immigration.”
Finally, Le Pen’s foreign policy would mean a radical change of course. Before the war in Ukraine, she openly dreamed of a new world order in which Russia is the main partner. And a few days ago she said that Putin will come again when peace returns can become “an ally”† She also wants to undo the French rapprochement with Germany and cooperate more with nationalist countries such as Hungary and Poland. She also wants French legislation above European legislation and withdraw from a number of articles of the European Convention on Human Rights on equality, in order to make it possible to deport foreigners to countries where their life is in danger.
Also read: French presidential election upside down due to war in Ukraine
Europe a la carte
Lawyer Racho says that Le Pen wants “a Europe à la carte”, where she chooses which European rules she does and does not comply with. “If she does not want to leave the European Union, this policy means that France will have to pay huge penalty payments, as Poland now has to pay.”
If Le Pen actually wins and implements her program – which is not said: she would have to gain a majority in the June parliamentary elections and make some far-reaching constitutional changes – it could therefore lead to a political earthquake in France and Europe. This is what its political opponents are constantly trying to underline in the last days before the elections. For example, Christophe Castaner said on radio station RMC that Le Pen is “a danger to our country, a danger to Europe”. And Édouard Philippe predicted in Le Parisien that “if she wins, things will – believe me – seriously change in this country. And not in a positive sense.”
A version of this article also appeared in NRC Handelsblad of 9 April 2022
A version of this article also appeared in NRC on the morning of April 9, 2022
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