2.The FN is deeply racist. It
has tried to use its electoral success and media profile to bring
anti-semitism and Holocaust revisionism into the mainstream, and to make
racism respectable. In 1987 Le Pen described the gas chambers as a
‘point of detail’ of the Second World War. In 1996 he argued that racial
inequality was a fact. In 2010 his daughter, Marine Le
Pen, compared Muslims praying in the street to the wartime occupation
of France. She wants the wearing of the hijab (and the kippa) banned in
public. Following a series of murders by Mohamed Merah in southern
France last year, she argued that all North African immigrants were
potential killers: ‘How many Mohamed Merahs in the boats and planes that
arrive full of immigrants every day in France? How many Mohamed Merahs
among the children of these non-assimilated immigrants?’
3.The FN is not more moderate under Marine Le Pen.
‘I passed her the baton,’ said Jean-Marie Le Pen after she took over
from him in 2011. ‘If she runs faster than me, then so much the better.’
He remains the party’s honorary president and made a speech to members
last year in which he quoted the anti-semitic writer Robert Brasillach,
executed
for collaboration with the Nazis. The FN continues to cultivate links
with fascist groups and parties. Although older generations of Nazi
collaborators are dying out, many FN leaders and election candidates are
veterans of ‘revolutionary nationalist’ groups and retain links to
white supremacist and organisations promoting Holocaust denial. In 2012,
on Holocaust Memorial Day, Marine Le Pen was a guest of the Austrian
Freedom Party at a ball in Vienna organized by the neo-Nazi Olympia
society. Olympia bans Jews or women from its membership, once proposed
that the Nobel Peace Prize be awarded to Nazi Rudolf Hess, and organizes
celebrations of Holocaust denial featuring prominent revisionists like
David Irving.
4.The FN is a threat to democracy. FN-run towns have been characterized by authoritarianism and intolerance,
banning halal meat in school canteens, censoring library provision and
clamping down on the ‘promotion of homosexuality’. Like her father,
Marine Le Pen seeks to organize a capacity for extra-parliamentary
activity through rallies, street demonstrations and links to openly ‘revolutionary nationalist’ groups. The FN has a
track record of violence against its opponents.
5.Legitimising the FN breeds racist discrimination. Acceptance
of the FN as a legitimate party has helped make racism respectable in
France. The hijab is banned in schools. The wearing of the niqab and the
burka is banned in public. One survey identified a 33.6% rise in racist acts towards Muslims in 2011 compared to the previous year. More
French Muslims claim to have had negative encounters due to their
religious or ethnic background (37%) than those in Britain (28%) or
Germany (19%).
