via CNN.
Marine Le Pen (1968- ) is the leader of the National Front (FN), a far-right party in France. Tomorrow, May 7th 2017, she goes head to head with Emmanuel Macron in the run-off election for France’s next president.
If you think of Le Pen as Donald Trump and Macron as Hillary Clinton, you would not be far off. In fact, Macron has even been hit with a huge dump of hacked emails!
Like Donald Trump, Le Pen is openly racist, against immigration, Muslims and free trade. She is clearly a France Firster. She presents herself as the champion of the White working class (despite growing up in a mansion) and does it the same way: by appealing to their racism and making pie-in-the-sky promises to the rust belt.
Anti-globalism: Le Pen divides France into patriots and globalists. She is a patriot, Macron is a globalist, a frontman for the big banks. In fact, he himself was a Rothschild banker from 2008 to 2012, making a million dollars a year. Does that count as an anti-Semitic dog whistle? Shh! But she, the patriot, is beholden to banks in Russia and Dubai!
Frexit: If she becomes president she will hold a vote on whether France should leave the European Union (EU), much like Britain’s Brexit vote last year. The EU without France would likely fall apart. She says the euro, EU’s common form of money, is tearing it apart all on its own: France will leave one way or the other.
Her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, founded the National Front in 1972. She took over in 2011. He was a Holocaust denier and an infamous racist. He himself made it to the run-off election in 2002, but got only 18% of the vote. She is polling at 37% (before the email dump hit Macron).
Dédiabolisation: Her greater success is partly due to her dédiabolisation (de-demonization) of the party. She even kicked out her father as too extreme! But the main reason the party has become more acceptable is because France as a whole has become more Islamophobic. After all, it was Francois Hollande, the current president, a Socialist, who closed down four mosques and declared a state of emergency that features a heavy-handed police crackdown on French Muslims.
Her greatest hits:
In 2010 she 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 whitewashed France’s 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 German to send onto Auschwitz.
An anti-Le-Pen Greenpeace sign on the Eiffel Tower: “Liberté égalité fraternité #Resist”
– Abagond, 2017.
Update (May 7th): Macron won. Le Pen is projected by the BBC to get 34.5% of the vote.
Sources: mainly Yasser Louati, New Yorker (May 8th 2017), RT, Democracy Now, The Intercept, The Economist (December 12th 2015).
See also:
- Marine Le Pen according to RT – this same post written with only RT as a soutrce
- France
- Charlie Hebdo
- Islamophobia
- burka
- Holocaust
- French election in 2007:
- Sarkozy – the winner
- Segolene Royal
- US election in 2016
- Brexit
- racist dog whistle
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Abagond 
Interesting article, she is pretty likely to lose against Macron since there is no electoral system and a normal majority wins.
But one sentence seemed uninformed.
“despite growing up in a palace”
That is a rather broad statement, implying an rich, out of touch childhood.
Her original apartment was destroyed in a bombing when someone tried to assassinate her father as she was sleeping (she was 8 years old at the time),
Her father then randomly inherited some Grand Villa from a millionaire where they later on lived, the story sounds very strange…
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I am not so much on the Islam violin tune as some people here are. It’s the clash of two agressive cultures. Africa failed to retain its own values and folded to both. It is now either majority Muslim towards the North or majority Christian towards the South. India escaped mostly Hindu but not without enduring 800 years of Muslim rule [and the massacre of millions] and having Pakistan and Bangladesh eventually amputated. Hinduism and Buddhism were virtually eradicated from Afghanistan and Indonesia; the latter is now the most populous Islamic country. Europeans stopped Islam at the gates of Vienna at around 9/11 in 1683. History might have been different if they’d lost.
Unlike America or Australia, Europe has belonged to who we know as Europeans for a very long time. IMO, people have a right to their cultural traditions and should not be imposed on in their own home. Most islamic countries do not allow this. There’s a sign on the road in Saudi Arabia that tells you to take the next exit and not even enter Mecca if you’re not Muslim. Churches aren’t allowed. Pakistan has a blasphemy law under which Christians are sometimes persecuted. The call for tolerance is very one sided: Islam must be spread. That is colonization. Though there probably is some poetic justice given the history of what Europe did to the rest of the world.
Excerpt from Ayi Kweh Arma’s novel about the colonization of Africa:
As a black person who realizes Arabia as one source of the exploitation of Africa I don’t consider fighting for Islam to be my duty. Africans should not have allowed visitors to overrun them in their own home so I can’t say Europeans should. But of course Europeans were eventually guilty of the same things so should I really care? lol
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I think she will win.
RT says she lives in a penthouse but Western MSM describes it as a palace. RT focused on the prior presidents weakness and Macron’s being a “Europeanist” and a banker with connections. CNN described him as a “globalist”.
The Western MSM brought up her father’s history.
I didn’t see too much difference in the reporting between the two media’s other then the “independent” talking heads of RT supporting her and the MSM in the U.S. supporting Macron.
The one country that benifits from the European Union is Germany. It is German banks that are forcing austerity onto its neighbors. I find it ironic that the country that lost WWII has become the most dominant economic force in Europe, and managed that without its own army.
It’s unlikely Macron would oppose austerity measures since he is banker.
I wonder if these same talking heads supported Brexit ? The possible bias or propaganda angle behind RT would be a divided Europe and an end to the European Union. A divided Europe would favor Russia. It seems Britain has survived Brexit and I belive the same underlying nationalism exists in France.
I am troubled by the racism and Islamophobia but on the other hand a weakened Europe means Western Imperialism put in check.
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I don’t think austerity is the idea of the (private) banks. They tend do be in favour of Keynesian policy like quantitive easing or higher governemnt spending.
In the German public debate it’s mostly the academic economists, the Federal Bank and Wolfang Schäuble who is in favour of austerity (for others).
Pretty much the reason why i’m in favour of a further unification of Europe, though I would phrase it defferently: Only a unified Europe can stand up to the super powers of the World (especially Russia) and regulate international corporations.
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@MJB
would not be a case of propaganda. it would be a case of bias, if true. abagond has yet to prove rt propaganda.
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@”RT says she lives in a penthouse but Western MSM describes it as a palace. ”
I’ve only heard that she “grew up in a palace,” which refers to the mansion that was bequeathed to her father by a “right-wing” supporter, after their apartment was bombed while she was inside.
NPR summed up the situation: http://www.npr.org/2017/04/21/525110143/marine-le-pens-brutal-upbringing-shaped-her-worldview
Jean Marie still lives there. I wouldn’t call it a “palace”:
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These are both prophetic statements:
“If she becomes president she will hold a vote on whether France should leave the European Union (EU), much like Britain’s Brexit vote last year. The EU without France would likely fall apart.” – Abagond
“The possible bias or propaganda angle behind RT would be a divided Europe and an end to the European Union.” – MJB
First Kingdom – Babylon
Second Kingdom – Persia/Medes
Third Kingdom – Greek – Kingdom
Fourth Kingdom – Roman Kingdom
Fifth Kingdom (future) – Kingdom of Israel
Daniel 2:40-45 Interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream by Daniel
And the fourth kingdom (Roman kingdom) shall be strong as iron: forasmuch as iron breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things: and as iron that breaketh all these, shall it break in pieces and bruise.
41 And whereas thou sawest the feet and toes, part of potters’ clay, and part of iron, the kingdom shall be divided (Brexit, Frexit and whatever else country that follows); but there shall be in it of the strength of the iron, forasmuch as thou sawest the iron mixed with miry clay.
(Currently, and from a military, financial or international influence angle, some countries of the EU are strong like Britain and some are very weak, like Greece for instance.)
42 And as the toes of the feet were part of iron, and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken.
(Arab Muslims and Europeans Christians’ tension will continue to rise and will not abate.)
43 And whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay.
(Tension between Arab Muslims and European Christians will never get along or cleave together, hence, Marine Le Pen’s statements. Mixing their seed is a reference to the Arab refugees coming from Africa, Syria and other Middle Eastern countries into Europe. You can mix iron with concrete, but not clay because iron and clay are incompatible. The entire bloc of European nations will eventually crumble, for sure).
44 And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever. (This is prophecy that the entire European Union will eventually fall/break apart and the incremental rise of Black Israel’s rise as a world power)
45 Forasmuch as thou sawest that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it brake in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold; the great God hath made known to the king what shall come to pass hereafter: and the dream is certain, and the interpretation thereof sure.
Isaiah 25:8 and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of HIS people shall he take away from off all the earth: for the LORD hath spoken it.
(Aren’t so-called African Americans or Black people in general scorned by the vast majority of white people or hated the world over? Aren’t Black people generally in a state of mourning? The crushing or crumbling of the EU is in fact a part of the process of wiping the tears of Black people by the hands of a Higher Authority).
Footnote: Insertions, interpretations and phrases in parenthesis are all mine. Furthermore, I am unapologetic about making this somewhat about a race issue because after all, it was Black people or better yet, the Black tribes of the Southern Kingdom of Israel that went to slavery by ship, at the hands of the Arabs, European nations and some willing African countries as well. Therefore, it is what it is!
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The NPR article calls it “a mansion” and says Marine Le Pen did not move out until only three years ago, when she would have been in her mid-40s and her children teenagers.
Perhaps it is not a palace, but it certainly is more comfortable than where many POC live in Paris:
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/04/paris-suburb-apathy-fear-le-pen-170421200738259.html
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The polls just closed in France. Macron is the projected winner. The BBC projects that Le Pen will get 34.5% of the vote.
http://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-europe-39823865
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sevran
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@ Barchan
My mistake. I changed “palace” to “mansion”. I double checked my source, the New Yorker, which describes it as a “Second Empire mansion”. My apologies.
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She lost! Marcon is now the president of France…
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@Barchan
Please forgive abagond’s failed attempt at spreading propaganda. It would have worked if not for commenters like us.
@”She lost! ”
Of course she lost. She and/or her father have been running for decades, and never got close to winning.
Once again the soothsayer above was completely wrong.
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Resw,
“Of course she lost. She and/or her father have been running for decades, and never got close to winning”.
“Once again the soothsayer above was completely wrong.”
I like how Resw makes a definative statement about the likelyhood of her getting elected after she lost lol
What would we do without Resw pointing out Abagond the propagandist and soothsayer.
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@MJB, perhaps I’m overlook something but I searched up thread and I don’t see any comments pertaining to Resw claiming that Le Pen would win. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.
However, I do see your comment in which YOU stated: “I think she will win.”
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@michaeljonbarker
Actually “soothsayer” was in reference to you for your incorrect prediction.
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People should always remember the difference between a white supremacist and a white extremist.
Le Pen is a white extremism.
Macron is a white supremacist.
That is, if we view systematic white supremacy as a fire, Macron will make sure the fire doesn’t die out whereas Le Pen would try and create an inferno.
While Macron’s 30-point landslide is the third-biggest margin of victory in any post-war French presidential election,
It doesn’t mark a total defeat for the extreme right.
Le Pen’s estimated vote share of around 35 percent is still by far the best performance for a far-right candidate in French history, nearly doubling the record that her father set when he shockingly made the runoff for the first time in 2002.
She’s fairly young, late 40s. She’s got other major races in her, yet. She made a decent showing in this election, and she’ll make others.
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I’m a “soothsayer” that’s funny. I gave an opinion based on the pollsters getting it wrong with Trump and Brexit. Just because she lost by 60% doesn’t mean France isn’t a racist place. Perhaps she was a tainted canidate and people voted against the canidate rather then the message.
In the end France had a choice between a facist and a neoliberal international banker. Not much of a choice.
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