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Marine Le Pen, Leader of France’s National Front Party, Splits With Her Father, Its Founder Marine Le Pen, Leader of France’s National Front Party, Splits With Her Father, Its Founder
(about 7 hours later)
PARIS — Marine Le Pen, the head of France’s far-right National Front, has openly split with her 86-year-old father and the founder of her party, calling his recent comments, including those on German gas chambers, “political suicide” and an attempt to harm the party. PARIS — Marine Le Pen, the head of France’s far-right National Front has openly split with her 86-year-old father and the founder of her party, calling his recent comments, including those on German gas chambers, “political suicide” and an attempt to harm her.
In recent years, Ms. Le Pen, trying to clean up the image of her party as racist and anti-Semitic, has kept her distance from her firebrand father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, and his more extreme statements, even as he continued as honorary chairman of the party.In recent years, Ms. Le Pen, trying to clean up the image of her party as racist and anti-Semitic, has kept her distance from her firebrand father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, and his more extreme statements, even as he continued as honorary chairman of the party.
But Mr. Le Pen could not stay out of the headlines here in the last week, once again claiming that the Nazi gas chambers were a “detail” in history, praising the country’s collaborationist wartime leader, Marshall Philippe Pétain, and questioning whether France’s Spanish-born prime minister was really loyal to France. But Mr. Le Pen could not stay out of the headlines over the last week, after he once again claimed that the Nazi gas chambers were a “detail” of history, praising the country’s collaborationist wartime leader Marshall Philippe Pétain and questioning whether France’s Spanish-born prime minister was really loyal to France.
His outbursts appeared to be more than Ms. Le Pen and her entourage could put up with. In a statement on Wednesday, Ms. Le Pen said that she would block her father from running in the coming regional elections and that she was calling a meeting of the party’s executive bureau “to find the best way of protecting the interests of the movement.” His outbursts appeared to be more than Ms. Le Pen and her entourage could put up with. In a statement Wednesday, Ms. Le Pen said she had already told her father that she planned to block him from running in the upcoming regional elections.
“The National Front does not want to be hostage to his crude provocation,” Ms. Le Pen said. “Jean-Marie Le Pen seems to have descended into a strategy somewhere between scorched earth and political suicide,” she said. “His status as honorary president does not give him the right to hijack the National Front with vulgar provocations seemingly designed to damage me but which unfortunately hit the whole movement.”
Ms. Le Pen’s deputy and spokesman, Florian Philippot, soon wrote on Twitter, “The split with Jean-Marie Le Pen is now irrevocable and definitive.” She added that, with great sadness, she was calling a meeting of the party’s executive bureau with her father present “to find the best way of protecting the interests of the movement,” a statement that some experts took to mean that Mr. Le Pen may be expelled from the party altogether.
What to do with the elder Mr. Le Pen has been a problem under discussion within the National Front for years, experts say. Mr. Le Pen founded the party 43 years ago and spent most of his energy running for president. Ms. Le Pen’s deputy and the party’s chief spokesperson, Florian Philippot, soon said in a Twitter message: “The split with Jean-Marie Le Pen is now irrevocable and definitive.”
His daughter also has presidential ambitions. But she is trying to build a more mainstream party from the bottom up. Before now, disagreements between Jean-Marie and Marine Le Pen, who has both depended on and extended her father’s legacy, were largely kept in check in the interest of party unity. But as Ms. Le Pen looks to broaden her party’s appeal, the rupture on Wednesday made it clear that she would now prize her own political future even over, possibly, preserving relations with her father.
Distancing herself from her father, some experts say, will likely only do her good. It may also help her put some of the party’s more recent mistakes behind her. The bitter nature of their power struggle — greeted gleefully by their opponents — seemed to portend a long-awaited reckoning for the National Front. Alongside other far-right parties in Europe, it is currently angling feverishly to seize a special moment of opportunity made possible by popular anger over rising immigration, failing economies and stifling European Union bureaucracy.
In the departmental elections last month — a layer of government between county and regional — the National Front fielded about 7,000 candidates, but dozens were caught making racist statements on their Facebook pages or during public appearances, experts said. But what to do with the elder Mr. Le Pen has been a problem within the National Front for years, experts say. Mr. Le Pen founded the party 43 years ago and spent most of his energy running for president. His continued presence and his history of controversial remarks have made it far more difficult for his daughter to rebrand the party and may have cost her the collaboration she sought with other more moderate far right parties in the European Union.
Thomas Guénolé, a political analyst, said that the media attention to these wayward candidates in the last few days before the elections had cost the National Front voters. He said the party had been polling at 30 percent to 33 percent, but ended up with just 25 percent in the first round. When she hoped to work as a single caucus with the Dutch and British far-right parties, the leader of the British group, the U.K. Independence Party, Nigel Farage, shunned her, accusing her party of prejudice and anti-Semitism.
Mr. Le Pen, however, made clear that he would not be pushed aside without a fight. In his own statement, Mr. Le Pen said, he intended to respond when called before the special meeting of the executive board to express his views as a politician who is “responsible and ‘free’ and who always walks with his head up.”
In the meantime, he said, “each should take advantage of the delay to measure their responsibility to France, to the French and to the movement that embodies their hopes.”
The Le Pen family is famous for its living arrangements in the wealthy suburb of Saint-Cloud, west of Paris. Until, recently Marine Le Pen was still living on the family property, which includes gardens and several houses. She was hardly alone. Her sister lives there and her mother, who is divorced from Mr. Le Pen. Mr. Le Pen, who used to live there, now only keeps an office there.
But Ms. Le Pen moved out last September, apparently because her apartment in the former stables was too dark and small. Finally, wrote the gossip magazine, Closer, “no more animated discussions with Daddy in the garden.”
Ms. Le Pen harbors her own presidential ambitions. But she has struggled to move out of her father’s shadow and distinguish her own reputation even as she tries build a more mainstream party starting from the bottom up and fielding candidates in local elections.
Distancing herself from her father some experts say is unlikely to do her any harm. In fact, it may help her put some of the party’s more recent mistakes behind her.
In the departmental elections last month — a layer of government between county and regional — the National Front made the mistake of growing too fast, they say, fielding some 7,000 candidates, many of whom had not been vetted.
In the waning days of the campaign, dozens were caught making racists statements on their Facebook pages or during public appearances, including one man who called on Muslims to do the world a favor and kill themselves.
Thomas Guénolé, a political analyst, said that the media attention to these wayward candidates in the last few days before the elections had cost the National Front voters. He said the party had been polling at 30 to 33 percent. But ended up with just 25 percent in the first round.
“I think the numbers show that there is a ceiling on the votes the party can win with that kind of talk,” he said.“I think the numbers show that there is a ceiling on the votes the party can win with that kind of talk,” he said.
Ejecting Mr. Le Pen from the party would be a way of reaffirming that Marine Le Pen’s National Front was not the same as her father’s. “As a Shakespearean fan, I find it particularly interesting to observe what is happening to this dynasty.”
Under Ms. Le Pen, who took over the party in 2011, the National Front has moved away from constant anti-immigrant talk to developing policies on a range of subjects from banking to education. It supports renegotiating France’s treaty with the European Union to restore French borders and the franc. It advocates more teaching of French in schools and greater protectionism for the economy.
Ms. Le Pen’s version of the National Front has been enjoying success, tapping into French unhappiness with its two traditional parties after years of a moribund economy.
Various polls have found that she would lead in a presidential election, though she would be unlikely to win in the second round. The party came in first with 25 percent of the vote in last year’s European elections and it won hundreds of seats and a dozen mayoralities in the last year’s local elections.
It is not the first time Mr. Le Pen and his daughter have been at odds. In June last year, for instance, Mr. Le Pen condemned artists who took positions against his party, saying he would make an “oven load” of one Jewish singer next time. His daughter condemned the remark, using it as a teaching moment to say that her party disapproved of any of anti-Semitism.
But last week Mr. Le Pen — 28 years after he first remarked that Nazi gas chambers were a “detail” in history — was on television recalling those words and saying he stood by them because “they were the truth.”
Again, his daughter quickly expressed her dismay.
Four days later, Mr. Le Pen gave a wide ranging interview in the far-right weekly magazine, Rivarol, this time saying that the treatment of the collaborationist wartime leader Marshall Pétain had been too harsh and noting that Prime Minister Valls had only been French for the last 30 years. “What is his real loyalty to France? Has this immigrant been converted?”
The remarks have dominated the news cycles here since.