Marion Marechal Le Pen Enters the Politics Again
O ne of the beginning times that Marion Maréchal-Le Pen took her seat in the Assemblée Nationale, the lower house of the French parliament, she was stopped past a male person politician. "He looked at me and said: 'And whose secretary are you?'" says Maréchal-Le Pen.
In June, Maréchal-Le Pen became the youngest MP in modern French history, at the age of 22, afterwards topping the poll in her constituency of Carpentras in the due south-eastern region of the Vaucluse, with 49.09% of the vote. And yet the well-nigh disconcerting thing about her victory was arguably not her youth but her politics: Maréchal-Le Pen is an MP for the Front National and the newest face of the French far right. Her grandfather, Jean-Marie Le Pen, founded the political political party which she at present represents, a party which is anti-Europe, anti-globalisation and which believes in stringent immigration controls and national protectionism.
"Integration is no longer possible," she says. "When yous're the single French person in the middle of ten Tunisians, the majority will impose their manner of life on the minority."
Blonde, slim and striking, Maréchal-Le Pen talks in a fluent and engaging way. When nosotros run across in her small-scale, airless office in the headquarters of the Assemblée Nationale in Paris, her hair is swept back in a ponytail, her clothes are fashionable but unimposing: a black top with null detailing at the shoulders, tailored beige trousers, boots with a sensible heel. In a building filled with middle-anile men in grey suits, Maréchal-Le Pen stands out.
The fact is that she looks like a 22-yr-quondam – admitting 1 in possession of an boggling degree of focus and ambition – and it is perhaps this that makes it difficult to believe she espouses some of the hardline views that form part of her personal and political heritage. She says she is used to people underestimating her.
"It happens," she shrugs. "People take said I'm a puppet, an instrument of my grandfather but I think they quickly realised that I'thou my own person, that I take autonomy in my actions. I retrieve they rapidly realised I could await afterward myself."
And yet however much she might effort and distance herself from information technology, the Front end National's grubby history casts a long shadow. Maréchal-Le Pen was born in 1989, 2 years later on her grandfather claimed in an interview that the Nazi gas chambers were "a point of detail of the second world war" and six months earlier Front end National supporters were defendant of desecrating a Jewish cemetery in Carpentras, the boondocks that would later become her constituency.
She grew up surrounded by far-right politics in a crimson-brick estate firm called the Pavillon de 50'Écuyer in the western Paris suburb of Saint-Cloud that is dwelling to several generations of Le Pens. Backside the rows of oak trees and conifers which shield it from public view, the house continues to play host to the entire dynasty: Jean-Marie, the 84-year-old elder statesman, presides over events and has his office on the commencement floor. Marine Le Pen, the youngest of his three daughters, who succeeded him every bit party leader last year, lives in a higher place a erstwhile stable in the extensive grounds. Marion lives with her mother, Yann, Jean-Marie'south middle daughter, on the second floor of the primary house. Maréchal-Le Pen'due south divorced parents are both heavily involved in the Front National: her mother organises the party's rallies and her father, Samuel Maréchal, used to lead its youth motion.
It is partly as a result of this curious setup that many have defendant Maréchal-Le Pen of existence little more than a photogenic figurehead for a party seeking to ditch its thuggish past in search of more mainstream credibility. There are those who question whether she genuinely believes the policies she's pitching to the wider public.
"She speaks rather well," says the French cultural commentator Agnès Poirier, "but a piddling like a law student who has memorised her dissertation."
And it is true that her presence on the political stage forms part of a broader attempt at rebranding the party. Maréchal-Le Pen's aunt, Marine, has been instrumental in dragging the prototype of the Front National into the modern era, moving away from racist rhetoric, reaffirming secularism and insisting that French republic should stand on its own ii feet and leave the euro. In Apr 2011, Marine banned regional councillor Alexandre Gabriac from the political party afterwards a photograph of him giving the Nazi salute was leaked to the printing, calling his behaviour "intolerable". In return, she has been rewarded with electoral success: the Front National is now the 3rd largest party in French republic. When Marine stood every bit a candidate in the presidential elections earlier this year, she electrified the race by polling 17.9% in the starting time round – more than 6m votes – eventually finishing 3rd behind François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy. But it has not all been plain sailing: although her niece was elected to parliament in June, Marine Le Pen lost her bid to win a seat by 118 votes.
The party's parliamentary hopes at present residual on Maréchal-Le Pen, who is seen as an astute, media-friendly young adult female capable of mobilising widespread back up and reinvigorating the immigration debate. Just there are those who question her own commitment, assertive that she is little more than her grandfather's mouthpiece.
According to Matthew Fraser, a professor at the American University of Paris: "The old man [Jean-Marie] is grudgingly fading abroad – and it is grudging, there is talk that he misses the spotlight. He's hardly in retirement. For now, the granddaughter is an bonny and young symbol – probably non a real power in the system."
I ask Maréchal-Le Pen if she discusses political strategy with her elders around the dining table in the family unit mansion. "No, non at all," she replies. "We are all able to take our individual lives. We're lucky to accept such a close family, with my grandad and cousins effectually us. Nosotros're very blessed. I think considering we've always been confronted past adversity from the outside and then we've become closer because of that, considering we've had to be a stiff unit to withstand those blows."
She says she first developed an interest in politics at the age of 16 and supported Sarkozy in the 2007 presidential elections. But she soon became disenchanted past him and, at the age of 19, started to help out with campaigning for the Front National and volunteered for the youth wing of the party. She combined standing as an MP with her postgraduate studies in public law and is notwithstanding a educatee at Panthéon-Assas University, a traditionally rightwing institution. Her grandpa, a former paratrooper who also went on to written report law, was himself once the youngest MP in French politics when he was elected in 1956 at the age of 28. Is he proud of her conveying on the family tradition?
"I retrieve so," she says. "I promise and so. He is proud of those who seek to take back their heritage and is passionate virtually France and he'south happy that young people are becoming engaged [Marion's electoral success was due in part to her popularity among voters aged 18-25]. I don't agree with everything he says, merely I agree with the essential spirit and of that he'southward proud. What he hates most of all is inertia, people who are spectators."
What, then, are her policies? She lists them, ane by ane, in rapid-fire – at ane point, she is speaking and so quickly that her adviser, Arnaud, has to remind her to ho-hum down as French is not my first language.
"But dammit, I am speaking slowly!" she protests and so carries on at the same breakneck pace. On the economic system, she wants French republic to abandon the euro and readopt the franc. She wants tighter regulation for financial institutions in the wake of the banking crisis and lower taxes for French businesses in order to regain consumer confidence. She is vehemently anti-EU – a position that has found favour with republican French voters who believe the integrity of their nation is endangered by federal government. And she claims that the Front National has taken a truly "feminist" stance on motherhood leave by devising a policy that would give stay-at-home parents a salary. Although, when I ask if she considers herself a feminist, she replies: "No, not particularly. I'g not obsessed with the rights of women, it can be a fleck excessive. I want to put men and women on an equal footing. I call up we are equal, just different." She is against positive discrimination or quota systems, believing that women should be treated on their own merits.
"Then, of form, we have our policies on immigration," she continues. "More and more communities are asking for the introduction of their specific religious law and that is a threat to secularisation. It's especially an upshot amongst Muslim communities. Not all Muslims," she clarifies, hastily. "Most Muslims in French republic are non fundamentalists. What is surprising is that the first generation of immigrants were very well assimilated. They didn't wear the veil in public. They kept their religion in the private sphere. Now whole immigrant communities are being created – considering of past government policies – that are separate."
In France, where the divorce of church from land underpinned the French revolution, secularisation is viewed as a basic tenet of the country's progressive thought. Since Apr 2011, women have been banned from wearing the burqa or the niqab in public. In this context, Maréchal-Le Pen's comments are not specially controversial. Only and so she goes fifty-fifty further, outlining a plan to strip second-generation immigrants of citizenship if they commit a crime or reject to acquire French.
"Today, if someone is built-in in France, they automatically accept French nationality even if they have made no effort to integrate," she says. "Nosotros believe that French people should be prioritised for social housing and employment opportunities, if they accept an equal competence."
Simply what about the "genuine" French? If they commit a criminal offence, will they also be stripped of their nationality?
"No. We're talking nigh people to whom we've done a favour," Maréchal-Le Pen leans forward, elbows on her knees, legs apart. She maintains center contact and talks with a kind of easy charm that could, in the right circumstances, be quite hypnotising. "We've given them a certain number of privileges and if they haven't shown themselves to be worthy of French citizenship, then it'due south normal to take it back."
This is all and then smoothly expressed, that it takes a moment for the impact of it to hit home: that the law, under the Front end National, would mean one thing for those descended from immigrants and another thing entirely for what Maréchal-Le Pen views every bit the "true" French race.
Isn't her stance racist? "That accusation is largely used by our opponents to discredit us. I don't see how it's racist to prioritise French nationals. We're not talking well-nigh blackness or white. It's normal that French people who pay taxes should exist prioritised, just as an Algerian who is naturalised will have priority [in social housing and employment]."
She points out that people from Martinique, for example, would not be discipline to the proposed nationality restrictions considering the Caribbean island is an officially designated region of French republic and goes on to name a number of Front end National members from indigenous minority backgrounds, including Charlotte Soula, the office director of Marine Le Pen who is of Algerian origin (and a catechumen from Islam to Catholicism).
"The racism argument is a very violent i just information technology works less and less," says Maréchal-Le Pen. "Now, on the ground, people don't think it whatsoever more of us. They sympathize it'due south a political tactic. Most people think nosotros're correct.
"Information technology's a fence that stirs up emotions, of course it is. Information technology's difficult to talk about it because of the human dimension that affects people. We are non monsters. I take empathy, I am humane, I sympathize human misery. My grandfather always said: 'Don't be angry at the immigrants, be angry at the political form that created this state of affairs.' I've nothing against people who come to France in search of a better life. If French republic had the means to welcome everyone, we would. We have that history [of tolerance]. Just we don't have the means. We are in debt. Our welfare system is melting under the pressure. Nosotros have a jumbo arrears. It's sad but nosotros have to have the political backbone to say 'end'. And it'south sorry because, when we say 'stop', we are proverb it to a human or a woman, but at that place we go."
Immigration, she concedes, "has as well been proficient" for France. The problem, as she sees it, is that by government policies have failed, causing resentment amidst those who believe their country is beingness overrun by "outsiders". She goes on to claim that a number of Muslim women, who feel pressurised into wearing the veil inside their communities, are also supportive of her position.
"There are women who say to me, 'I tin't wear a skirt,' or 'I'll be insulted if I don't article of clothing a veil or don't get to the mosque.' At that place's a pressure within the community imposed by others. Those people, more and more, are calling on united states of america to act because nosotros are the only ones who meet secularism as fundamentally important."
Is the Front National condign a political force to exist reckoned with in France? The ballot of Maréchal-Le Pen in June, alongside swain party candidate Gilbert Collard, gave the political party a foothold in parliament for the first time since the mid-1980s, simply the kickoff-by-the-post balloter organization is still weighted confronting smaller parties. As a issue, the popularity of the Front National – specially in impoverished, semi-urbanised rural areas where unemployment is loftier – might be far more ingrained than the electoral results propose.
As Hugh Schofield, a BBC news correspondent based in Paris, wrote in an article last April: "In this semi-urbanised countryside, people feel the hopelessness of a life in poverty uncompensated-for by the traditions and structures that would have made it bearable in the by.
"Shops are now in vast out-of-boondocks zones; no 1 goes to church; work is a 50km bulldoze away. And the price of the 2 staples – cigarettes and petrol – has just shot through the roof.
"For these people, a Front National vote offers both a protest (against the wealthy; against the EU; against the institution), but also a merits: for an identity and the correct to a traditional 'French' way of life."
In urban areas, too, in that location are fears nigh mass immigration – fears that were heightened by the 2005 riots by mostly French youths of north African origin from the suburbs of Paris and other major cities. The riots highlighted chronic tensions caused by immigration and unemployment and the mainstream parties began to adopt the rhetoric of the Forepart National. Sarkozy, who was interior government minister at the fourth dimension, referred to the rioters as racaille or scum – a term viewed by some as having implicitly racist connotations.
"Sarkozy won in 2007 by shifting to the right and stealing FN votes," explains Matthew Fraser. "In that sense, [Jean-Marie] Le Pen was ahead of his time – whether his views are despicable or not is a moral question, but what is certain is that they are electorally popular. And his adversaries understand this. Hence the paradox: they pretend the FN is ideologically unfrequentable, yet they steal the political party'southward discourse and platforms to get elected. It's rather like borrowing someone'southward house to throw a party, but not inviting the owner."
France has a long history with the far correct which has traditionally been allied with the Catholic church (even the former president François Mitterrand was, as a young man, involved in bourgeois nationalist movements) and Marine Le Pen'southward attempts to decontaminate the image of the FN have not been without success. "Today, the reality is that the extreme right is confronting us," she claimed in an interview for The Nation terminal yr. "The National Forepart has evolved."
Despite a recent groundswell of support in provincial French republic, still, the party is still viewed with outright distaste among the Parisian chattering classes.
"In French republic it is acceptable, even fashionable, to espouse far-left political convictions, merely absolutely unacceptable to belong to the far right," says Fraser. "The explanation is largely historical. France has been living with the shame of the Nazi collaboration nether the Vichy regime, later which the far right was marginalised from what are considered to be adequate political values in France."
And there are those who circumspection against believing that a leopard can change its spots. Alain Jakubowicz, the president of Licra, the international league against racism and antisemitism, puts information technology this way: "Today, the political party is represented past a immature woman with a modern and normal advent [but] the FN remains the same, with its xenophobic, racist and antisemitic Dna."
Back in her office, Maréchal-Le Pen insists that the Front National's transformation is non simply a superficial public relations do.
"Of course the party has evolved," she says. "The problems are no longer the aforementioned, so evolution has happened naturally… When the Front National was created in the 1970s it was against the background of communism and the cold war. Information technology was a real threat, now information technology's no longer the case… Now our main hobby-horse is anti-globalisation."
She insists that she has only ever encountered "a positive reaction" on the street. "Even people who don't share my politics, they say: 'I'k not Forepart National but I'm happy you're there because it creates fence.'"
Arnaud, her adviser, helpfully interrupts at this point to remind her that she recently went to a stylish Parisian eating house and was given a spontaneous round of applause past the diners. Maréchal-Le Pen looks embarrassed.
"The owner was very kind and he took me around and said: 'Tonight we're welcoming Mademoiselle Maréchal-Le Pen,' and everyone clapped," she says hurriedly. "It was really kind."
Does she ever receive detest mail?
"I've had one alphabetic character."
Arnaud interjects. "But if I become out all the ones that say how marvellous you are, how beautiful, at that place's no comparison," he gushes.
It seems incredible that she has only e'er had ane piece of negative mail. I tell her that in the UK, journalists become more that in any given week.
"The most aggressive people are other MPs," she says. "Some of them are very aggressive, even though we've all been democratically elected." Jean-François Copé, the leader of the centre-right UMP political party, has in the past refused to shake her hand. "He might pass up to milk shake my hand, merely his electors will gladly do so," is her response. Spoken like a true politician.
I can see why Maréchal-Le Pen is electable. In person, she has an engaging, attainable way. There is the occasional glimpse of humour – when we are talking well-nigh her political party'due south maternity get out policies, the subject of children comes upwardly. Does she want a family? She guffaws. "Yes, if I tin find a suitable sperm donor."
At the same fourth dimension, I observe her charisma unsettling considering it is beingness deployed in the defense force of some dubious beliefs. As the interview draws to a close, I tell her I have one final question and it'due south a personal 1. She nods, encouraging me to get on.
I am married to a man whose begetter came to the UK from Sudan, I say. If he lived in French republic under a Front end National government, my married man would therefore fall into that category of 2d-generation immigrants who would accept to testify deserving of a citizenship automatically conferred on others. Given this, I wonder what her position is on marriages between people from unlike backgrounds?
Maybe it's because I'm expecting a reaction that I call up I see a slight flinch in her face up. It is a tiny motility: the expression of someone who has effectively masked their surprise.
"I'm not against information technology," she replies. "For me, marriage is a very personal choice. The only thing I'd say is that I know, from people who've told me immediate, that sadly mixed marriages tin be a flake conflicted on everyday bug. For example, the naming of children – Muslims demand children to take Muslim names, often they want women to convert to Islam. The other surprising thing is that often, in a divorce, northward African fathers accept their children back to their country and the mother never sees them again. That causes problems. I don't guess, merely it can cause disharmonize."
And yet she has judged, making a series of sweeping assumptions on the basis of very footling actual knowledge about a detail set of personal circumstances. Perchance Maréchal-Le Pen is correct that immigration needs to exist discussed and that MPs are wary of doing so in example they are accused of racism. Some of her opinions have the sheen of plausibility. She is not unlikable. But the tone of her last answer suggests a more disturbing set of beliefs at play beneath the surface: a whiff of something rotten at the core of her politics and a sense that the world is made upward of people who can exist divided hands into "united states of america" or "them".
A family unit business: the Le Pen dynasty
Jean-Marie Le Pen
1928 Born 20 June in Brittany, the son of a fisherman.
1972 Le Pen co-founds the Front National and presides over it for nearly twoscore years.
1984 Becomes an MEP.
1987 Is found guilty of violating French police and fined 1.2m francs (£150,000) for remarks concerning the presence of gas chambers in Nazi concentration camps. During an interview in September, he said: "I am non saying that the gas chambers did not be. I haven't studied the questions specially. But I believe that it is a minor particular in the history of the second earth war."
1996 While in Munich, Le Pen reiterates the 1987 remark, describing the concentration camps as a "detail" in second world war history. He is later convicted and fined by a Munich court.
2000 Suspended from the European parliament following conviction for the physical set on of Socialist candidate Annette Peulvast-Bergeal during the 1997 full general election. This ultimately led to him losing his seat in the European parliament in 2003, although he was re-elected the following year.
2002 Achieves second place in the first round of voting in the French presidential election, winning sixteen.9% of the vote. He was after defeated by Jacques Chirac in the second round past a large margin.
2005 Fined €10,000 past a Paris courtroom for "inciting racial hatred" in anti-Islamic comments he fabricated in an interview with Le Monde.
2011 Resigns as political party leader of the Front National. Succeeded by his youngest daughter, Marine.
Samuel Maréchal
1967 Built-in 20 September, son of a Pentecostal pastor.
1985 First becomes active in the Front National and in 1990 becomes the director of the Front national de jeunesse (FNJ), the Forepart National's youth fly. Likewise party chairman in the Pays de la Loire.
1993 Marries Yann Le Pen, the 2nd daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen. The couple divorce in 2007 subsequently having three children together.
1995 Establishes the Association de recherche pour l'emploi des jeunes (ARPEJ), to promote priority for French people in the jobs market.
1995 Given an eight-month prison house sentence and a fine of 5,000 francs for "assault and battery and conspiracy", after violence broke out between Front National militants and students in Gascony in March. In court, he is defended past his sister-in-law, Marine Le Pen. Later pardoned.
1998 Founds Générations Le Pen, now led by Marine Le Pen. His brotherhood with Jean-Marie Le Pen earns him the nickname "the son".
1999 States that France is becoming "a multi-ethnic and multi-religious gild" and that "Islam is now France's 2nd organized religion". He added: "Then we need to organise a real political conquest."
2002 Organises Jean-Marie Le Pen'south presidential campaign. He is responsible for Le Pen'southward communication strategy and is renowned for the infamous soundbite: "I'm socially left, economically correct, and more anything, nationally French."
2008 Marries Cécile Houphouët-Boigny, the slap-up-niece of the first president of Cote d'ivoire, Félix Houphouët-Boigny.
2009 Maréchal & Associés financial consultancy firm is launched. It has offices in both Paris and Abidjan.
Marine Le Pen
1968 Born 5 August, the youngest daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen.
1986 Joins the Front National anile 18 and by 2000 is elected on to the political party'south executive commission.
1991 Graduates with a primary of laws and a master of advanced studies in criminal law from Pantheon-Assas University in Paris, France's leading law school. Registered at the Paris bar association, she works as a lawyer betwixt 1992 and 1998, earlier becoming a regional councillor in Nord-Pas-de-Calais and joining the Front National's legal department.
2003 Elected vice-president of the Front end National, an part she holds for the next 8 years.
2004 Becomes an MEP for the Ile-de-France region.
2010 Described by French journalist Guillaume Tabard as the "revelation of the year". He further described her as "first an electoral phenomenon" and "a media phenomenon afterward".
2011 Post-obit her father's resignation, she wins the Forepart National party leadership in Jan with 67.seven% of the vote. She is currently the party'south president and its honorary chairman. She says of the political party: "I pass up to accept as inevitable the fact that we are being consigned to the edge of political life."
2012 Runs as a candidate in the French presidential election, finishing third behind François Hollande and incumbent president Nicolas Sarkozy. She won more than than 6 million votes in the first round: 17.9% of all votes bandage. On the campaign trail, she tells supporters: "Whatsoever happens in the coming ii weeks, the battle of France is only first… we are at present the only truthful opposition to an ultra-liberal and libertarian left fly."
Marion Maréchal-Le Pen
1989: Built-in x December, the daughter of Samuel Maréchal, niece of Marine Le Pen and granddaughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen. Her babyhood was spent in the Le Pen family mansion in the wealthy Paris suburb of Saint-Deject.
2007: Joins the Front National at the age of 18.
2008: Enrols in a master's caste in public police force at Pantheon-Assas University in Paris.
2010: Runs unsuccessfully in the 2010 regional elections in Yvelines, Ile-de-France.
2012: Says: "Contrary to what anybody thinks, in my family we didn't talk about politics at home and we're free to brand our ain choices."
2012: Becomes France'south youngest MP in modern political history, winning a seat for the Front National in Vaucluse, Provence, at the age of only 22.
Bryony Clarke
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/28/marion-marechal-le-pen-france-interview
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