Femme Fatal
Even in defeat, Marine Le Pen is one step away from creating the Europe her father never could.
The La Pen’s have been Europe’s first family of populism for over half a century, and if you haven’t already — you’d better get used to them.
To get a full grip of their story, let’s start with the family’s patriarch, Jean-Marie Le Pen. The enigmatic, and now 88-year-old Le Pen, is the co-founder of the Front National, and what’s now become Europe’s largest far-right political party. A party that rose to fame during a closely contested 2002 presidential battle with then incumbent, and soon-to-be President, Jacques Chirac.
By making it to the second round of French voting, it’d been the closest the party had ever been to winning a Presidential election, and the closest a far-right party had been in Europe. It was a finish that was enough to fast track the Front National’s leader to international infamy.
And just like that, the Le Pen name was born.
In the process, Jean-Marie Le Pen became the defiant face of post-colonial Europe. A continent riddled by racism in the fallout of the post-war period, and a country that had not yet come to terms with their glaring colonial history.
Le Pen would become an internationally recognized champion of racism. Standing as a staunch proponent of anti-immigration, as well as a front-lined supporter of the preservation of French identity. Whatever the hell that was to mean.
And nearly two-decades later, It’s the sort of thing that’s become unfortunately commonplace in Europe’s current political climate, as well as a movement we can now closely identify as an early inspiration in what we’ve seen from leaders like Donald Trump.
In 2017, the Front National remains the largest party of its kind in Europe, for which the eldest Le Pen stands a contentious forefather.
As of late though, he’s shared a troubled relationship with the party. And as it stands currently, he’s been all but exiled by the party he founded over four decades ago, with party members citing a penchant for “inflammatory comments” as to the reason(s) why.
The most contentious recent example of which came when Le Pen recalled the use of gas chambers in the Second World War as a small “detail” of history, and called for France to join Russia, in hopes of “saving the white world.” The first of which would lead to charges formally filed against him for anti-Semetic hate speech.
“I have said, and I repeat, at the risk of appearing sacrilegious, that the gas chambers are a detail of the history of the Second World War. If you take a book of a thousand pages on the Second World War, in which 50 million people died, the concentration camps occupy two pages and the gas chambers ten or 15 lines, and that’s what’s called a detail,” said Le Pen.
Both comments from Le Pen closely follow a near half-century of ideological consistency, that’d at best be described as “uniformly problematic”. So why the fuss now? What’s changed?
For the FN, change came in the form of the daughter of the patriarch.
Her name, Marine Le Pen.
France’s recently forgone May 7th election stood as the most important in the history of The Fifth Republic. A turning point for European life at-large, and widely understood as France’s biggest vote since 2002, with a familiar name at the centre of the madness once again — Le Pen.
The French, as well as the Le Pen’s, were back on familiar ground. The country, driven by a fleeting sense of self, found themselves at a similar crossroads of identity, while issues of terrorism, immigration, and race quietly loomed over the calvary-like proceedings.
France may have narrowly averted disaster in 2002, and again in 2017. But as we look to the future, the eldest Le Pen is forced to watch from the sidelines as his daughter looks to make good on the Presidential promise he never could.
This time around, after a meteoric surge in momentum, Le Pen has lost to 32-year-old independent, Emmanuel Macron — an ex-investment banker, framed to represent a decaying French establishment. It’s the sort of race we’ve seen before, but this time, with a thankfully opposite result.
As for Marine Le Pen — she was quite literally born into the belly of the beast. A woman that since childhood has found herself on the fringe of French society. Looking in from the outside on an otherwise thriving reservoir of French culture that she’d never be invited to participate in.
She’d been made Public Enemy Number One, not because of her own doing, but the doing of her father— for which her last name became an ultimate identifier. It’s a unique experience that’s culminated in what we’ve seen from her so far, with an eventual win in 2022 an ultimate storybook ending to the troubled Le Pen tale.
Marine, like her father, is the classic political strongman, playing on people’s need for a leader to follow. It’s textbook, almost. But she’s not a man — she’s a woman.
For France though, we must first acknowledge an incredibly unique, and intimate relationship with race. Historically, the French were a picture of European strength, and a leader during Europe’s bloody colonial period. And they now, as a result, are home to a booming West African, Muslim North African, and Arab community, for which conversations about the hijab, niqab, and cultural difference still play an integral role in public discourse. As some have come to terms with their country’s radical history, while others continue to deny its impact and implication.
It’s a public discourse that’s manifested itself politically as well, as Islamophobia and anti-immigration have become a rallying cry of sorts in French politics. And much of France’s political landscape continues to inch closer to the ideological fringe of the FN as a result.
And Le Pen and Macron work to personify this valley of difference best.
The Front National’s dirty little secret though, is that Marine’s introduction to the mass is nothing more than a re-branding of the same radical ideas that’d been sworn off with the failures of her father. She represents a systematic remodelling of hate, and creative attempt at better appealing to a mass that’d otherwise remained largely unreceptive.
Marine, in comparison to her dad, is a much more morally forgivable character. She is without the scowl of her father, or his sharpness of tongue, and comes with an almost endearingly dry style in her delivery of ideas. She is everything her father couldn’t hope to be, and the fact she’s a woman has only proven complimentary, as she’s masterfully used her womanhood to help reform an otherwise rough public perception of the FN.
In many ways, Le Pen’s gender has been the FN’s greatest tool in a rebranding process they call “de-demonization”. A political rebranding process that started the second her father stepped down from power.
And with increased numbers in approval, voting, and engagement: it’s working. Marine has effectively managed to present herself as the “modern French woman”. An understandable anomaly in French politics, that’s seen female votership rise by nearly double in the process.
She’s used the idea of “Western” womanhood in complement to the traditionally touted anti-Islamic, anti-immigrant rhetoric of her party. Saying, “in France we respect women, we don’t beat them, we don’t ask them to hide themselves behind a veil as if they were impure.”
She’s also written at length about how immigration stands to compromise women’s rights particularly, with commentary on how Islam will threaten the Jewish and LGBTQ community as well. Really, targeting any community she can think to find a common enemy. For which the enemy is always, Islam.
And like Geert Wilders in Holland, she’s managed to identify on the near left-wing in other areas of her policy, carefully negotiating a middle ground of ideas that she’s seen increased success from.
But for all of her hard work, she still manages to sound a lot like her father.
Even in defeat, Marine Le Pen has, under new ownership, managed to keep the family business alive, as only she could. Reigniting a flame that’d been reduced to sparks, with a fervour even more intense than that of her father. And with her blonde hair, blue eyes, and mom-next-door sensibility, she is the realization of her father’s dream of a “White Europe” personified best.
But her meteoric rise in politics, and rebranding of fascism, take on a much more insidious undertone when comparing her policy to that of her father. And for all the distancing Marine has tried to do, she’s a near mirror of the man that started her on her path. They’re like the Trudeau’s, but younger, and a lot meaner.
Her plans for the future include outlawing foreign languages in schools, banning dual passports to most countries, and leaving the E.U (in what many have dubbed “Frexit”). A move that’d essentially signal the end of the Union as a whole.
She is, like her father, a proud nationalist through and through. She’s the “populist next door,” waging a war on identity where “French” and “white” have become synonymous; and Islam, Africa, and Migrants play her favourite targets.
An “identitarian”, the sort of which we’ve seen around the world in frightening numbers — from Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, to the “Alternative-Right” in the U.S. It’s a dangerous re-marketing of hate that’s seen flagrant racists learn to toe a line of politeness. No longer are the days of the Klan, or even Jean-Marie. Times have changed.
2017 has seen a deliberate, and dangerously systematic reimagining of white-supremacy, for which Marine Le Pen, Wilders, and Trump have become mascots.
Le Pen, like others like her, represents the intellectualization of White-Supremacy — no longer yelling about “niggers going back to Africa”, or Jews having not actually suffered the Holocaust. But instead, making pleas for nationalism, the “preservation of white identity”; or the existential threat posed by scrupulously-screened migrants fleeing war, while boisterously calling to “make *insert country here* great again!”
So, yes. This time, Le Pen and her ideas have lost — but for how long? Is it a victory deferred?
Even though she’s lost the election, she’s suffered a devastating win when looking at the big picture. Reintroducing a country, and the rest of the world, to a party that’d been subjected to an almost exhaustive obscurity. And at only 48-years-old, you can bet she’ll be back to make good on her new found political capital.
In only a few years she’s successfully, like her father, become the face of an only growing international movement — one for which there seems no ultimate end.
And that, with 2022 in mind, may be the scariest part.
