Leader of the Front National (FN) Marine Le Pen on July 10, 2024 in Nanterre, France. AFP PHOTO/KENZO TRIBOUILLARD
France’s most radical right-wing party, the Front National (FN), is encroaching on the mainstream: according to an Ifop poll published Wednesday, one third of French voters identify with the ideologies voiced by FN leader Marine Le Pen. French daily Le Figaro echoed the findings, noting that one French person in four has a positive opinion of the FN, which makes it the only French party whose image has dramatically improved since last year. In contrast, President Hollande’s Socialist party saw its popularity decline from 55% to 34% in 2013.
The numbers validate a political recalibration on which Le Pen has staked her party’s success. In 2011, after replacing her father Jean-Marie Le Pen as party president, Mrs. Le Pen launched an image makeover, dubbed the “Marinisation,” to move the FN from the political fringes to the Elysée Presidential Palace. This has translated to initiatives to broaden the party’s appeal to young voters — i.e., by grooming Le Pen’s niece, 22-year-old Marion Maréchal-Le Pen — and expand its rural support base to France’s largest cities. The third and most important prong of the FN’s “Marinisation,” however, is a move away from the party’s anti-Semitic roots. A difficult endeavor given that the senior Le Pen’s nasty past is still haunting the party: on June 19, France’s highest appeals court upheld Le Pen’s 2012 conviction for Holocaust denial.
In this vein, Marine Le Pen has attempted to trim the FN of any embarrassing Neo-Nazi elements (barring her father, that is). Like FN member and municipal election candidate François Chatelain, whose Facebook page displays a burning Israeli flag. On September 4, Le Pen personally called for his expulsion, noting — with no visible sense of irony — that “The images and comments posted by Francois Chatelain on his Facebook page are in total contradiction with the political line of the FN.”
New party line notwithstanding, xenophobia is still a part of the FN platform — albeit now directed against France’s large Muslim population. And this time around, Le Pen is not going to squander a political opportunity (in contrast to the FN’s curious silence during the public backlash against Hollande’s unpopular same-sex marriage bill). She is marking her return to the political stage after a summer hiatus with a Sunday rally in Marseilles, where a deadly gang war has inflamed anti-Muslim sentiment. Look for insecurity — and the Socialist government’s failures in that respect — to top her agenda.
