Tolerably intolerant: French far-right’s tightrope walk

15th conference in Lyon highlighted the far-right’s internal contradictions as it seeks to become an ordinary, respectable party while holding on to its less palatable past. 

Inevitably, the conference began with one Le Pen and ended with another.

Jean-Marie Le Pen, the National Front’s 86-year-old founder, was first to speak on Saturday. He told party members to hurry up and bring his daughter Marine to power, because “France cannot wait much longer”.

He also urged them not to forget where they come from, and to remember “the sacrifices that helped build the National Front and prepared it to save the nation".

The remarks were interpreted as a thinly veiled criticism of his daughter's attempts to “detoxify” the anti-immigration party, a strategy widely credited with steering the far-right to unprecedented electoral success.

The two-day conference capped a triumphant year for the National Front, which captured a dozen towns in municipal elections, romped to victory in European elections with a whopping 25% of the vote, and seized its first ever seats in the Senate.

Should France hold a presidential election next week, polls say Marine Le Pen would thrash her challengers in a first round of voting – but would likely come up short in a runoff vote.

Either way, analysts say there is a very real chance the FN, as it is known in France, may one day wield power in France.

In her closing speech on Sunday, Marine Le Pen said there was “no doubt” she would make it to the second round of the 2017 presidential election.

France’s mainstream parties and the EU for wrecking the country, saying President François Hollande and his predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, had “failed at everything”.

She also stated that her party was the “only guardian of the Republic”.

It was not the only bold claim in a weekend gathering that confirmed the far-right’s grand ambitions and underlined its ideological contortions.

Original sin

The National Front’s republican credentials – let alone its claim to guardianship of the Republic – are a frequent subject of debate in France.

There was no shortage of irony on Saturday when Austrian far-right leader Heinz-Christian Strache, one of several foreign guests, urged the audience to draw inspiration from the history of Lyon, “the capital of French resistance”.

Strache was referring to the city's proud record in the fight against fascism during World War II.

But the FN's ideological ancestors were not part of the resistance – they were in the opposite camp.

The party founded by Le Pen senior in 1972 is the latest incarnation of a political current that rejected the French Revolution, despised the Republic, embraced anti-Semitism, sided with the Nazi-allied Vichy regime, and fought a rearguard battle against decolonization.

This ancestry still weighs on the far-right like an original sin, effectively excluding it from the political establishment.

That exclusion has long been the National Front’s main strength – and never more so than in the current climate of defiance vis à vis France’s mainstream parties.

But Marine Le Pen knows the party’s ostracism is also what has kept it out of power for so long.

The violent protests that rocked Lyon’s city-centre on Saturday offered a reminder that while the FN has never enjoyed so much support, it remains France’s most reviled party.

With her eyes firmly set on the Elysée Palace, Marine Le Pen has been at pains to transform her father’s movement into a modern, respectable political force.

Since taking over in 2011, she has sought to tone down the party’s ideological charge, expand its membership and train its cadres.

She has also sought to distance herself from her father’s controversial outbursts.

This led to a rare family spat earlier this year, following a remark made by Le Pen senior that was widely interpreted as anti-Semitic.

His daughter described the sortie as “a political error that will cost the National Front”.

He countered that “the political error is committed by those who adopt a single way of thinking, (…) those who would like to resemble the other parties”.

Going mainstream?

Le Pen senior was not the only one in Lyon who thought the party had changed. Some in Lyon agreed with his assessment, though acknowledging that a degree of change was necessary.

“There’s no doubt we’re looking more and more like the other parties,” said a longtime activist who attended all 15 party conferences.

We even have our Jews and gays,” he whispered, referring to rumours of a “gay lobby” in the party. “But if we want to win, we have to live with it.”

The veteran campaigner, who gave only his first name, Lucien, said the effects of Le Pen’s “detoxification” were all too apparent.

Source http://france24.com/en/20141201-tolerably-intolerant-french-far-right-marine-lepen-national-front-immigration-lyon/