Marine Le Pen and her Political Party
By Ruwan Jinadasa
Along with the many current events happening currently, Ubique wants to also inform about other current issues and things that you may not know of or if you want to read something not about the current pandemic occurring right now.
French Presidential Race
Marine Le Pen and her Political Party
The last french presidential election happened in 2017 with the next one due in 2022 and Marie Le Pen has recently announced that she will be running again in 2022, against the current president, Emmanuel Macron. So who is Marie Le Pen and why is the French Election so important?
Often labelled as the French ‘Trump’, Marine Le Pen is a far-right leader while Macron is a central leader. She is the leader of the National Front party, a party with a long history of xenophobia, anti-semitism and homophobia.
Marie Le Pen is the daughter of the founder of the National Front Party, Jean-Marie Le Pen. He founded it in the early 1970’s and the party was considered to be a pretty racist party. In the public eye, the party was seen as anti-Semitic and partly due to her father often minimising the holocaust, claiming that gas chambers were a “minor detail of the history of the Second World War”. Le Pen has tried to distance herself from her father and recreate the how the party is viewed however when speaking to the press, Marine Le Pen denied that France was responsible for the Veld’hiv roundup, which was when french authorities took jews into an indoor cycling track for delivery to Nazi concentration camps. These comments reopened the views of the National Front Party being viewed as anti-semetic.
Though, now Le-Pen is trying to rebrand the party as ‘protectors’ of French Identity and French values.
“Especially to the people of different origins and different religions who have been welcomed into our country, I remind the obvious: There are not and there will never be any other laws and values in France other than French laws and French values.”
o what is her party suggesting if elected office? Well with the EU already dealing with Brexit, Le Pen has vowed to pull France, one of Europe’s most important countries, out of the EU. This would lead to the European Union loosing it’s two richest and most populous members, most likely causing it not survive, especially with struggles with Poland. Plus, she wants France out of NATO which is a military alliance between 30 North American and European Countries. Moreover, Le Pen wants to decrease immigration to just 10,000 entries per year. She does not want globalisation and has vowed for the “de-Islamation” of French Society.
Le Pen is a symbol of a changing France and a changing Europe. She brings a view that is much more racialized and anti-islamic. This is followed with the change of government views in Poland and all of this questions the future of a changing Europe, something that many people could be left out of.
Marine Le Pen focuses on building a France for the french. This is why when we look at her ‘values’ and polices, we would see them as racist and xenophobic but she see’s them as returning to a traditional France, an example of a similarity between her and Trump.
Bibliography:
https://edition.cnn.com/2017/04/20/europe/guide-to-french-election-trnd/index.html
https://www.france24.com/en/tag/marine-le-pen/
https://www.france24.com/en/20200117-france-french-le-pen-president-campaign-marine-far-right-2022-national-rally-macron
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdcrP-5bDIk
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