(I think French should be the international language rather than English, first because it's easier to think in highly abstract terms in French and second even insults sound nicer in French).
French politics are a mystery to Americans, especially those of us who can't speak French; for instance, I'm still trying to figure out the difference between a French Leftist and a French Socialist. But from the Beeb analysis, at least my instincts were correct to wonder about the label of far-right routinely applied to Marine Le Pen.
"Marine Le Pen increasingly claims to speak 'in the name of the people'"
By Marysia Nowak & Becky Branford
10 February 2017
BBC News
She described Britain's vote for Brexit as the most important event since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and Donald Trump's US presidential victory as "an additional stone in the building of a new world".
Marine Le Pen, the leader of France's National Front (FN), is fighting to achieve a similar earthquake in France in the presidential elections in 2017.
But with her increasing appeal to the centre and the left of French politics, how much can she really be characterised as far-right?
Voters' perceptions and a toxic past
Marine Le Pen is the youngest daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, former leader of the FN and a convicted racist, who last year repeated an old anti-Semitic slur that the Nazi gas chambers were "a detail of history".
Having grown up in a political home, accompanying him to meetings from the age of 13, Marine Le Pen was always going to struggle to shake off the far-right label.
But she did denounce her father's comments in 2015, and effectively expelled him from the party. While her father was leader, the FN was the party that wanted to deport three million foreigners, the party of Holocaust denial and xenophobia. But under Marine Le Pen the FN began to distance itself from such controversial issues.
Such efforts at detoxification have proved successful, with polls suggesting support for the FN climbing from 18% in 2010 to about 24% today.
Nonetheless, when voters are questioned they still place the FN and Ms Le Pen "way more to the right than other parties", says Nonna Mayer, expert in racism and the FN at Sciences Po university.
Where does she go from here in her pursuit of a detoxified party? The FN has traditionally been a male, blue-collar-dominated party, and the leader needs to target women, says Dr Mayer. So Ms Le Pen has softened her approach to women's rights, and even sees herself as a quasi-feminist.
In fact, Dr Mayer argues, in many respects Ms Le Pen is more socially liberal than much of the mainstream right - something that has caused divisions within her own party.
A hard line on immigration
The 2017 National Front manifesto renews its commitment to a massive reduction in legal immigration. Ms Le Pen argues French citizenship should be "either inherited or merited". As for illegal immigrants, they "have no reason to stay in France, these people broke the law the minute they set foot on French soil".
But if that is a far-right stance, it is not very different from that of centre-right candidate Francois Fillon - who when first elected as the Republican candidate enjoyed a small advantage over Ms Le Pen in polls but has since been damaged by claims of improper use of state funds.
"We've got to reduce immigration to its strict minimum," he says.
In a world where the centre is shifting to the right, and the right is shifting to the centre, the lines are getting blurred.
The two are now competing for some of the same voters. While Mr Fillon is regarded as appealing more to the "respectable" middle classes, Marine Le Pen is claiming to speak for "all people", and increasingly appealing to a wider electorate, even Muslim voters in the French suburbs. [1]
However, in December she upped the ante by announcing that she would end free education for the children of undocumented immigrants, though this did not appear as a pledge in the party's manifesto.
"If you come to our country, don't expect to be taken care of, to be looked after, that your children will be educated without charge," she said in a speech in Paris. And, more threateningly, "playtime is over".
Marine Le Pen is the youngest daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, former leader of the FN and a convicted racist, who last year repeated an old anti-Semitic slur that the Nazi gas chambers were "a detail of history".
Having grown up in a political home, accompanying him to meetings from the age of 13, Marine Le Pen was always going to struggle to shake off the far-right label.
But she did denounce her father's comments in 2015, and effectively expelled him from the party. While her father was leader, the FN was the party that wanted to deport three million foreigners, the party of Holocaust denial and xenophobia. But under Marine Le Pen the FN began to distance itself from such controversial issues.
Such efforts at detoxification have proved successful, with polls suggesting support for the FN climbing from 18% in 2010 to about 24% today.
Nonetheless, when voters are questioned they still place the FN and Ms Le Pen "way more to the right than other parties", says Nonna Mayer, expert in racism and the FN at Sciences Po university.
Where does she go from here in her pursuit of a detoxified party? The FN has traditionally been a male, blue-collar-dominated party, and the leader needs to target women, says Dr Mayer. So Ms Le Pen has softened her approach to women's rights, and even sees herself as a quasi-feminist.
In fact, Dr Mayer argues, in many respects Ms Le Pen is more socially liberal than much of the mainstream right - something that has caused divisions within her own party.
A hard line on immigration
The 2017 National Front manifesto renews its commitment to a massive reduction in legal immigration. Ms Le Pen argues French citizenship should be "either inherited or merited". As for illegal immigrants, they "have no reason to stay in France, these people broke the law the minute they set foot on French soil".
But if that is a far-right stance, it is not very different from that of centre-right candidate Francois Fillon - who when first elected as the Republican candidate enjoyed a small advantage over Ms Le Pen in polls but has since been damaged by claims of improper use of state funds.
"We've got to reduce immigration to its strict minimum," he says.
In a world where the centre is shifting to the right, and the right is shifting to the centre, the lines are getting blurred.
The two are now competing for some of the same voters. While Mr Fillon is regarded as appealing more to the "respectable" middle classes, Marine Le Pen is claiming to speak for "all people", and increasingly appealing to a wider electorate, even Muslim voters in the French suburbs. [1]
However, in December she upped the ante by announcing that she would end free education for the children of undocumented immigrants, though this did not appear as a pledge in the party's manifesto.
"If you come to our country, don't expect to be taken care of, to be looked after, that your children will be educated without charge," she said in a speech in Paris. And, more threateningly, "playtime is over".
Narrowing divide on Islam and Islamist extremism
Long before the Paris attacks on 13 November 2015, Marine Le Pen made a link between immigration and militant Islamism. In the immediate aftermath, she proposed to "expel foreigners who preach hatred on our soil" and to strip dual-nationality Muslims with extremist views of their French citizenship, a view traditionally associated with the far right.
In an unprecedented move, those ideas were endorsed both by Socialist Prime Minister Manuel Valls and by President Francois Hollande, before eventually being dropped.
Many of her views have been echoed by Francois Fillon too.
Mr Fillon, a devout Catholic, described radical Islam as a "totalitarianism like the Nazis". Catholics, Protestants and Jews "don't denounce the values of the Republic," he said, indicating that was not the case with Islam.
"The clear blue water between the FN and the other parties has been disappearing and disappearing," says James Shields, professor of French politics at Aston University.
Law and order
The National Front is to the right of the Republicans on law and order issues, says Nonna Mayer.
Its 2017 election manifesto includes upping police numbers and powers and creating 40,000 new prison places.
There is no mention in this manifesto of the FN's previous pledge to restore the death penalty, an issue that divides the party's core supporters from the mainstream. Polls suggest 60% of FN voters are in favour, compared with 28% of mainstream-right and 11% of left-wing voters.
Putting 'native French' first
Treatment of immigrants in France is probably the standout, far-right policy of Marine Le Pen's FN. And it is central to the party's platform.
Jobs, welfare, housing, schools, or any area of public provision should go to French nationals before they get to "foreigners".
The centre of gravity of French politics may have shifted to the right. But no other party has adopted favouritism across the social services - and it could breach the law.
"She is upholding a policy that not only is thought by constitutional experts to be unconstitutional, but has been judged by the law to be unlawful," says Prof Shields.
In 1998, a National Front mayor, Catherine Megret, tried to implement a new policy that would give a family allowance to French or EU families, but not to other foreign families.
"Did it stand up in court? No," says Prof Shields. But, he says, so-called nativism remains central in Ms Le Pen's platform.
Le Pen the populist
Marine Le Pen appeals to French voters fed up with mainstream politics, but there is nothing far right about that.
If she wins the presidency in May, she has promised an EU referendum in France within six months of taking office. And the UK's vote to leave the EU in June 2016 has provided the template.
Portraying herself as beyond the establishment, she has championed public services - for non-foreigners - and presented herself as a protector of workers and farmers in the face of "wild and anarchic globalisation".
"She's managing to get these approval ratings by doing a Trump," says Prof Shields.
But here the lines are blurred too: left-wing parties are playing the anti-establishment, anti-globalisation card as well.
Her friends in Europe
But what sets her European views apart from the rest of the French right is the company she keeps. The FN has strong ties with the Dutch Freedom Party (PVV), Austria's Freedom Party (FPOe), Belgium's Flemish Interest (VB), Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the Italian Northern League (LN).
They are all part of the FN-led Europe of Nations and Freedom grouping in the European Parliament and are either right-wing populist or, in the case of the FPOe, far right.
Geert Wilders, of leader of the Dutch PVV, wants to ban the Koran. The Italian Northern League's leader Matteo Salvini is known for his praise of fascist leader Benito Mussolini.
These views are toxic to the political right in Europe, and many centre-right parties have said they will not form coalitions with them.
[END REPORT]
Related Articles at BBC
- What now for France's left and far right?
- Le Pen stalks French centre-right contest
- Guide to nationalist parties in Europe
1) From Blazing Catfur, 23 January 2017:
‘Politicians won’t change anything anyway,’ is a popular sentiment among the Muslim population in Paris’ suburbs.
“…Three young men lean against a railing at the road corner, just a few yards from an Islamic bookshop. All are Muslim, they say. One, who wears a bright, reflective jacket, is a driver and mechanic.
“I’m not against Le Pen,” he tells me. “If she wins, it will be a good thing. The left and right are all bastards. They promise things and they don’t deliver. Let’s vote for Le Pen and see what happens. It won’t change anything for us.”
He was unconcerned by the Le Pen family’s polemical comments about people like him. Le Pen may not be “pro-Muslim” but “she won’t be able to do anything,” he says. “There are too many of us.”
“We have a saying in France,” he adds. “When it’s Ramadan the French economy slows, and when Ramadan ends it starts up again. And you can see it: during that month the streets are empty.”BC commented, "Cripes France is further down the Rabbit Hole than [I] imagined."
Well if you want to talk about going down the Rabbit Hole, what about the French Canadians in Quebec? (BC is a Canadian blog). I went to school in Montreal for a year when I was a child, and that was before French Canadians were rioting in that beautiful city and demanding separatism for Quebec, an entire Canadian province.
A substantial number of immigrants to America and first- generation Americans voted for Trump because they're patriots and because they worked too hard to get here and make a success to see their country overrun by illegals -- and who can collect welfare benefits.
I'd assume it's the same sentiments for many Muslims who are French patriots and whose families have been in France for generations.
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