Sarkozy helps Le Pen’s racism

This video from the European Parliament is called Le Pen honour forestalled.

Sarkozy’s right-wing policies bolster French neo-fascist

3 January 2011

The statements by Marine Le Pen―daughter and heir apparent of Jean-Marie Le Pen as leader of the neo-fascist National Front (FN)―have aroused a renewal of media interest in the FN and the influence of the neo-fascists in French politics.

Marine Le Pen’s statements have attracted many comments from bourgeois parties. On December 10, during a meeting in Lyon, Marine Le Pen launched a racist attack against Muslims who, for lack of mosques in order to pray indoors, pray in the street. Marine Le Pen compared “Muslim prayers in the streets to the [second World War] German military occupation of France.”

What a chutzpah, considering that Jean-Marie Le Pen denies the Holocaust and sold records with Hitler speeches. In the 1977 Dutch election election campaign, the neo-nazis of the Nederlandse Volksunie also compared immigrant workers in the Netherlands to World War II occupiers.

She also made several criticisms of the euro currency―affected by several financial crises during 2010―declaring that it would be better for France to abandon the European single currency.

The main political parties replied to Le Pen’s criticisms by attempting to accommodate them or by making secondary criticisms, which did not refute the substance of what she said.

The national spokesman for the Socialist Party, Benoît Hamon, did not adopt a fundamentally different position from that of Le Pen on Muslims praying in the streets. As regards this, he estimated that: “these are situations which cannot be tolerated much longer, we have a tense situation with neighbours and we have to find solutions.”

On December 14, the Europe 1 Internet site wrote: “Questioned about the comments of Jean-François Copé, leader of the right-wing ruling party the UMP (Union for a Popular Movement), who had asserted: ‘Marine Le Pen, she’s like her father,’ she replied, ‘Jean-François Copé, as it happens, wants to re-launch the debate on national identity. He’s my best ally, taking into account the fact that the UMP has nothing to say on this subject. I think Jean-François Copé wants, in fact, the defeat of Sarkozy in 2012 [presidential election]’, she said.”

Marine Le Pen now tries to present herself as the defender of secularism and republican values. According to the magazine Marianne, Marine Le Pen stated: “I am the one who is the true defender of the French Republic!” Confronted with the reactions of Martine Aubrey (Socialist Party leader) and Jean François Copé, she added: “By expressing themselves in this way, the UMP/Socialist Party coalition has shown that the response to the attack on secularism will not come from their quarter.”

Marine Le Pen’s response, by presenting herself as the defender of secularism and the republic, breaks with the traditional rhetoric of 20th century fascists. The latter denounced the French Republic as “the whore”―notably before its capitulation to the Nazis in 1940―and were often motivated by Catholic fundamentalism.

Marine Le Pen, daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, was elected president of the National Front on January 16. Her election and investiture speech have been the object of media coverage unsurpassed for the French far right: here.