France's Front National plunged into family feud over Holocaust remarks (original) (raw)

It has been described as a far-right, political death-match somewhere between King Lear and Dallas.

France’s far-right Front National has been plunged into an all-out war between its president, Marine Le Pen, and her ageing father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, after he made inflammatory comments belittling the Holocaust and defended Marshal Pétain, the leader of France’s Nazi collaborationist Vichy regime.

In a damning and unprecedented attack on her father that marks her first move to cut him out of the party he co-founded, Marine Le Pen warned that the 86-year-old would be prevented from standing in regional elections this year and was politically discredited.

“Jean-Marie Le Penseems to be in a total spiral of strategy somewhere between scorched earth and political suicide,” she said.

“His status as honorary president does not give him the right to hijack the Front National with vulgar provocations seemingly designed to damage me, but which unfortunately hit the whole movement.”

Marine Le Pen’s dramatic public savaging of Papa Le Pen and her move to apparently oust her father marks a turning-point in the history of the far-right party and the complex family relations at its heart.

The gruff ex-paratrooper Jean-Marie Le Pen, who co-founded the Front National in 1972, led it to become the most successful far-right, xenophobic party in western Europe.

But when his youngest daughter took over in 2011, she led a public relations drive to “detoxify” the party and move away from its jack-booted imagery and antisemitic overtones.

She has since sought to transform the anti-immigration, anti-Europe far-right party from a protest vote to a major political movement with elected representatives across France, winning mayors, MPs and, for the first time, a presence in the senate.

She is now seeking to make the party more palatable to mainstream voters in the 2017 presidential race, which polls suggest could see her knock out a mainstream candidate and reach the second-round runoff.

Until now, Le Pen father and daughter have worked together despite occasional spats. Jean-Marie Le Pen remains an emblematic figure – popular among the party base, particularly the older voters.

But in recent days, after he let loose with fresh comments on the Holocaust, his daughter accused him of sabotaging her and a bitter feud has been played out in public.

First, Jean-Marie Le Pen used a television interview to defend his view, which he first stated in 1987, that gas chambers used to kill Jews in the Holocaust were “merely a detail in the history” of the second world war – a remark for which he had already been convicted of inciting racial hatred and fined.

He has several convictions for hate speech, including a conviction for contesting crimes against humanity after saying the Nazi occupation of France was not “particularly inhumane”.

But last week he told a TV interviewer he had no regrets over calling the Holocaust a mere detail of history, saying he stood by that view “because it’s the truth”. The French state prosecutor’s office immediately opened a fresh judicial investigation for hate-speech.

Marine Le Pen said she deeply disagreed with him and he was being deliberately provocative.

Then in an interview this week with Rivarol, a notorious far-right weekly, Jean-Marie Le Pen attacked his daughter’s criticism of his Holocaust comments, saying: “You’re only betrayed by your own.”

He defended Philippe Pétain, the leader of France’s Nazi collaborationist Vichy regime in the 1940s, who was convicted of treason after the war. He told the magazine: “I have never considered Marshal Pétain a traitor. He was treated too severely after the liberation.”

He also lamented: “We’re being governed by immigrants and children of immigrants at all levels.” Citing France’s Spanish-born Socialist prime minister, Manuel Valls, he asked: “What is his attachment to France?”

He said France should join with Russia to save the “white world” and said he understood why some fought democracy.

Marine Le Pen’s vehement reaction against him marks the first real split between father and daughter. She has called a special meeting of the party’s top brass next week to discuss “how to best protect the political interests of the Front National”.

Her close ally and party vice-president, Florian Philippot, tweeted that the “political break with Jean-Marie Le Pen is now total and definitive”.

Marine Le Pen had already distanced herself from her father last June after his quip about a French Jewish singer that included an implied reference to concentration camp ovens.

Minor spats had begun as soon as she took over the party in 2011. That year, when she excluded a party member who had been photographed doing a Hitler salute in front of a Nazi flag, her father reprimanded her for acting too quickly.

But she has also often minimised his inflammatory remarks, including last year when he suggested the Ebola virus could solve the issue of immigration and population explosion within three months.

The Le Pen family saga has often been portrayed as a political soap opera. Marine Le Pen is the youngest of three blonde daughters who for decades were wheeled out by their father to symbolise the true French nation, and who were teased at school that “papa” was a fascist.

Marion Maréchal-Le Pen MP, granddaughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen.

Jean-Marie Le Pen’s gruesome public divorce battle in the 1980s saw Pierrette, the mother of his daughters, pose in Playboy for revenge. Last autumn, gossip magazines reported that Marine Le Pen, 46, had moved away from her father’s sprawling estate – where she still lived in an out-house – because she was heartbroken that his doberman had killed her pet cat.

The family feud extends another generation to Marion Maréchal-Le Pen MP, Jean-Marie’s granddaughter, a rising party star and reportedly her grandfather’s favourite. Last week, she deemed his gas chamber comments a “useless provocation”.

Political opponents said the row showed that although Marine Le Pen had nuanced her political language and euphemisms, the fundamental party ideas remained the same.

The Socialist party leader, Jean-Christophe Cambadélis, told RTL radio: “Jean-Marie Le Pen says out loud what numerous FN senior party figures, activists and even voters think ... Behind all this, there’s also a political debate. Should they keep their far-right specificity or hide it to win elections? Marine Le Pen has chosen to hide it, Jean-Marie Le Pen has chosen to affirm it. I’ll leave that debate up to them.”

In a statement issued on Wednesday, Le Pen senior said the crisis in the party could have serious consequences. He said he would make his views clear at a special party meeting next week “as a responsible, free politician, who has always walked with his head high and his hands clean”.

The Front National: a Le Pen family affair

From the Front National’s slow beginnings in 1972, the outspoken Jean-Marie Le Pen, a former paratrooper who once wore an eye-patch and was famed for his inflammatory speeches, gradually managed to bring the far-right party to the forefront of politics.

He first ran for the presidency in 1974, with his own brand of anti-immigration far-right populism. In the 1980s, under a proportional representation system, the Front National won 35 seats in parliament. In the 1990s it went on to win several mayoral races, before a party split in 1999 left it weakened.

But in 2002, Jean-Marie Le Pen stunned France and stupefied its political class by knocking out the Socialist Lionel Jospin and making it through to the second-round runoff of the presidential election. This prompted days of anti-racism rallies that eventually saw his unloved centre-right rival, Jacques Chirac, voted back into office.

Jean-Marie Le Pen remains an MEP, regional councillor and honorary party president. But in 2011, his youngest daughter, Marine Le Pen, took over the party leadership.

She sought to “detoxify” it, soften its image and attract new voters uncomfortable with the FN’s history of antisemitism and racism. In 2012, she won the party’s best score in a presidential election – 17.9% – and has led the party to a series of electoral successes, winning first place in last year’s European elections.

An opinion poll published on Saturday suggested that nearly a quarter of French people would vote for the FN in the 2017 presidential election.

Last year a report that Marine Le Pen was planning to consult the Front National faithful over changing the party’s name left her father fuming.

“It’s stupid, it’s scandalous and it’s indecent. Changing the FN’s name is unthinkable,” he said.