Note: This week I am getting all my news from RT, a Russian news outlet. A big story this week on RT is the French election for president. This post is based on RT only. Next week I will do a post on Le Pen in my usual way for the sake of comparison.
Marine Le Pen is the leader of the National Front (FN), a party in France on the far right founded by her father. French voters will chose between her and Emmanuel Macron for president on May 7th 2017. She is considered a long shot – not unlike Donald Trump and Brexit last year.
Our story: Francois Hollande has been president of France for the past five years. Under him France has had high unemployment (10%), repeated terrorist attacks (Charlie Hebdo, Nice, Paris) and military operations abroad that have failed to make the world safer (Libya, Mali, Iraq, Syria). His approval rating: 4%, a record low. He chose not to run for re-election.
In the first round of voting in 2017, Hollande’s centre-left Socialists got only 6%. The centre-right Republicans came in third due to scandal – leaving far-right Le Pen and 39-year-old Macron, an independent, to go head to head in the run-off election in May.
Frexit: Le Pen wants to pull France out of the European Union (EU) to regain control of its borders, its trade, its money and its laws. She would put it to a nationwide vote, like Britain did last year (Brexit). She says the EU’s common form of money, the euro, will tear the EU apart. Better to get out now while the getting is good.
She wants stronger borders to limit the “twin globalizations” of wage-suppressing economic migration and Islamic terrorism.
Russia: She visited President Putin just last month. She wants:
- no “hostility” towards Russia,
- a united effort with Russia against terrorism,
- says sanctions against Russia are “unfair”.
Follow the money: French banks have refused to loan her money, so she is getting money from banks in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Russia.
Macron, she says, is not a patriotic Frenchman but a Europeanist. He is a frontman for the big banks which are robbing France. Le Pen, meanwhile, stands up for the common man in France – while living in a penthouse.
Media: The big news outlets in France all favour Macron, but he is a fresh face without fresh ideas – he was Hollande’s minister for finance and the economy.
Le Pen is anti-immigrant, some would say even racist.
In 2010 Le Pen compared Muslims in France to the Nazi German occupation:
“more and more veils and burkas, after that came praying on the streets, I’m sorry but some people are very fond of talking about the Second World War and about the occupation, so let’s talk about the occupation, because that is what is happening here, there are no tanks or soldiers, but it is still an occupation and it weighs on people.”
In 2017 she denied France took part in the Holocaust:
“I think France isn’t responsible for the Vel d’Hiv. I think that, in general, if there are people responsible, it is those who were in power at the time. It is not France.”
Vel d’Hiv is where French police sent Jews for the Nazi Germans to send onto Auschwitz. Le Pen’s father was a Holocaust denier.
– Abagond, 2017.
Source: RT, all the way, even the images. The best bit by far is an interview (YouTube, 11 minutes) with Jean Messiha, of the Le Pen campaign, and Yasser Louati, a human rights activist. Unlike most people RT interviews at length, Louati is a Le Pen critic and Messiha has inside knowledge.
See also:
- Marine Le Pen
- RT
- Programming note #32 – my RT news diet
- French elections in 2007:
- Brexit
- Donald Trump
- Charlie Hebdo
- burka
- Holocaust
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“Le Pen, meanwhile, stands up for the common man in France – while living in a penthouse.”
If she wins, I wonder if they will feel the same in 2024, after the National Front smashes the French state (with its excellent healthcare system, etc.) to smithereens so that international financial interests can feed on the remains like hyenas at a lion kill?
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just like 1954
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Macron she says is not a patriotic Frenchman but a Europeanist. He is a frontman for the big banks which are robbing France. Le Pen, meanwhile, stands up for the common man in France – while living in a penthouse. – Abagond
I would’ve given, Le Pen’s statement much more credibility if she resided in one of the many ghettos of France, such as the images of La Courneuve below. I see contradiction here, therefore, to me, she is a liar because this is where the common man lives!
La Courneuve
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