Marine Le Pen Works To Redefine French Nationalism

Today’s NYTimes profiles Marine Le Pen, France’s (Kinder, Gentler) Extremist, daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the National Front party in 1972, and now the woman in charge.

The polls that show her matching or outpacing Sarkozy have shuffled the French political game board. Of late, Sarkozy has fired his diversity minister, declared that multiculturalism has been “a failure” and staged a “debate on Islam” that French Muslims saw as a swat at them — all moves that are widely viewed as a direct response to Marine Le Pen’s rise. She derided Sarkozy’s support for the recently enacted ban on full face veils as a pandering political maneuver that addressed only “the tip of the iceberg” of what she views as the Islamization of French culture.

Le Pen is a French nationalist, anti-EU politician, who wants France to drop the euro and return to the franc. Marine Le Pen is a hybrid nationalist, not to be confused with Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann or even Margaret Thatcher.

Le Pen has no desire to turn French health care over to big business, for example.

Beware of any Tea Party members in America translating her views on ‘protecting’ French culture to assume she wants to dismantle France’s ‘nanny state’. This is not true. Her father has made gastly comments about Jews and the Holocaust and the woman now in charge agrees that she has damage control on her agenda.

NYT writes that French intellectuals are in awe of this woman, and I can see why. Rather than reject the cloak of secularism, Le Pen embraces it, saying the problem isn’t Muslims but that they want France to accept their values.

“For a long time, the National Front upheld the idea that the state always does things more expensively and less well than the private sector,” she told me (writer Russell Shorto). “But I’m convinced that’s not true. The reason is the inevitable quest for profitability, which is inherent in the private sector. There are certain domains which are so vital to the well-being of citizens that they must at all costs be kept out of the private sector and the law of supply and demand.” The government, therefore, should be entrusted with health care, education, transportation, banking and energy.

Commentators don’t believe she will win the presidency next year because both Sarkozy’s party and the socialists say they will band together to block her. However, people take her very seriously, says the NYT, as a representative of an anti-immigrant stance, economic populism and national patriotism. These political views are increasing all over Europe as refugees flood out of the Arab world, traveling north.