“The insufficient metamorphosis of Le Pen”, titre The Basque Journal by making a retrospective analysis of the process of “demonization” of the candidate of the National Rally. Her third assault on the Élysée will still not have been the right one: despite her efforts, Marine Le Pen will not be the first woman president of the French Republic.
However, now she is in the running for a deputy seat, “with a party which, if the dynamics of Sunday [24 avril] is maintained, will appear strengthened”. With 41.5% of the vote, the best result ever obtained by the far right, the strategy of moderating its image, put in place a few years ago by the youngest of the Le Pen family, will not have been useless. .
In 2015, to go “presentable”, Marine Le Pen, then leader of the National Front, began by excluding her father from the party he had founded in 1972 for his remarks describing the gas chambers as “retail” Of the history. Jean-Marie Le Pen, this “Devil of the Republic”, to anti-Semitic and extremist ideas, had nevertheless passed on his party to him, as others inherit the family business. In fact, remember The Basque Journal, if Marine Le Pen presented herself during this campaign as a “people’s candidate”, she has always been a petty bourgeois.
The normalization of its image then went through a change of name of the party, becoming National Rally. Marine Le Pen has also “softened its electoral program” and claimed a Gaullist heritage disdained by his father.
“For this election campaign, his team had chosen as a slogan: ‘The France we love. Navy President.’ Without the paternal name, another significant detail came to reinforce the whitewashing objective of the extremist formation.”
The appearance of Éric Zemmour in the presidential campaign has greatly facilitated the task of his competitor Marine Le Pen by making it seem much less extreme. His program did not, however, change its political course and, for The Basque Journal, whatever she does, she stays “a clone of his father”. A clone managed to significantly reduce its gap with Emmanuel Macron.