Marine Le Pen: A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

A wee scenario for you.

Oh no! The world needs a new leader!  Dunno what happened to the last one. Got bored. We have to vote for a new one! Now! DO IT!

Here are the illustrious candidates.

A: Associates with crooked politicians, and consults with astrologists.
He's had two mistresses. He also chain smokes and drinks 8 to 10
martinis a day.

B: He was kicked out of office twice, sleeps until noon, used
opium in college and drinks a quart of whiskey every evening.

C: He is a decorated war hero. He's a vegetarian, doesn't smoke, drinks an
occasional beer and never cheated on his wife.

.................................................................

Well, if you chose C, who admittedly sounds like a lovely, if slightly dull bloke, congratulations! You just installed Hitler as head of the WORLD. A is Roosevelt and B is Churchill, two men credited with successfully defending the free world from the fascist onslaught of Nazism. Appearances can be deceiving; I’m not suggesting that superstitious drunken adulterous dropouts are necessarily a good thing, but I am arguing that in the light of the disturbing results of the first round of French presidential elections, the French must delve a little deeper before making a catastrophic mistake.

Sarkophobia is in full swing in Paris. In the last year, his presidency has been a series of political mini-deaths; in the midst of a swathe of publicity for austerity measures, it emerged that he was spending £10,000 a day on food in the presidential palace, and kept an impressive (overcompensating for something, Nick?) 120 cars. His son, a DJ, was kitted out with bodyguards worth £150,000 a year. The average Jean-Pierre is, understandably , un peu pissed off.Sarkozy won only 27% of the vote, which is quite a feat; no other incumbent has failed to win this round of elections since 1965. Merde.

The real kick dans la derriere, however, is the fact that Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Front, won 18% of the vote. This is the largest win for a right-wing party since the collapse of European fascism. On some level, she is a runaway success story. In 2002, her father, from whom she (cough) inherited the party, won 17% of French votes. A mass protest ensued against his plainly racist, xenophobic, homophobic views. She has turned much of that around; rather than launch a protest, most people have shrugged Frenchly (‘Baaaaah, vraiment?’) at the inevitable, and opened another bottle of Cognac. This is a woman who compared Muslims praying in the streets of Paris to Nazi occupation. How times have changed.

It is yet another example of a creeping and sinister nationalism pervading various Western states. White supremacist movements in the US have swelled in number in recent years; a documentary by Al Jazeera showed an elderly member of a neo-Nazi group shouting ‘No more n*****s, P***s, Jews!’ (If you don’t know what the starred words mean, bless your innocent cotton socks) before the rest of his group suggested a gentler tactic – ‘Jobs for whites! America for the whites! F**k off where you came from!’ (yes, job well done, there, much less offensive). It exemplified the way that racist groups have identified popular concerns – unemployment, immigration, global terrorism – and in this breeding ground of xenophobia have articulated racial agendas through the appropriation of political language to garner support. The same documentary spoke to the founder of one such group; he spoke eloquently of socio-economic concerns over the marginalisation of poor American whites. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see how this party line might appeal to a pretty wide demographic. He then also went off on a rant about how Obama can’t be American because he’s black – appealing to probably a far smaller number of people, but still very much part of this particular ontology.

The political grievances that such people give voice to publicly are part of their appeal. People are struggling. And given today’s political climate, what with current fears of radical Islamists being as they are, ‘foreigners’ make useful political scapegoats, if you are that way inclined. Sound familiar? Oh, yes – Hitler again. While she may have presented herself as the friendly face of French nationalism, the agenda has not changed. Young (ish), blonde, attractive, well-dressed, she makes a welcome change from the figures we usually associate with fascism (scary, shouting, black-shirted killers). And this is reflected in her electorate; a staggering 26% of young people, aged 18-24 are expected to vote for her. The young ‘don’t seem to smell sulphur and swastikas’ when they see her, says the Guardian; ‘they just see a fellow outsider.’ An outsider who is promising them reform, jobs, justice and national pride, and offering them people to blame for what has gone before. Ummm, yes, that sounds like Hitler again.

Such beliefs aren’t limited to the US; just last week, two pensioners in Lewisham protesting against a fascist rally were set upon by neo-Nazi thugs, and hospitalised. The broad appeal and danger of the far-right cannot be underestimated. In Norway, self-confessed racist Anders Breivik killed 77 people in what he calls a ‘legitimate’ fight against multiculturalism. Debate rages over whether he is clinically insane or not. My feeling is that he is not. A crime of terror is a crime of terror. We don’t seem to question the sanity of suicide bombers; he is demonstrably a violent and hideous individual, but his actions are rooted in issues of what he feels to be socio-economic ‘justice’, and nationalism.


The adage goes that if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, chances are that, y’know, it’s a duck. But it’s no longer that simple. Le Pen, and fellow right-wing adherents and advocates, are increasingly shrouding their offensive bigotry in language that can be attached to powerful and important political concerns. Yes, unemployment must be addressed; yes, Islamic militancy is something we must keep a beady eye on; but attributing these problems to anyone ‘not like us’ is a dangerous precedent to set. Stirring up racial hatred to win votes is never right. Neither is apportioning blame where none exists. Europe took a real bashing the last time that happened. Let’s hope this is just another chapter in evolution of democratic multiculturalism and not its demise.