Controversy
mpaign as a result of comments, made during a speech to party members in Lyon on 10 December 2010, in which she compared the use of public streets and squares in French cities (in particular rue Myrha in the 18th arrondissement of Paris) for Muslim prayers with the Nazi occupation of France. She said:
Her comments were widely criticised. Government spokesman François Baroin characterized her remarks as racist and xenophobic.[57] The Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions (CRIF),[58] the French Council of Muslim Faith (CFCM)[59] and the International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism (LICRA)[60] condemned her statement, and groups including MRAP (Movement Against Racism and for Friendship between Peoples)[61] and the French Human Rights League (LDH)[62] declared their intention to lodge a formal complaint. The imam of the Great Mosque of Paris and former president of the CFCM, Dalil Boubakeur, said that, while her parallel was questionable and to be condemned, she had asked a valid question.[63]
Le Pen's partner Louis Aliot,[36] a member of the FN's Executive Committee, criticized "the attempted manipulation of opinion by communitarian groups and those really responsible for the current situation in France".[64] On 13 December 2010, Le Pen reasserted her statement during a press conference at the FN headquarters in Nanterre.[65][66][67] After Jean-François Kahn's comments on BFM TV on 13 December 2010, she accused the Élysée Palace of organising "state manipulation" with the intention of demonizing her in public opinion.[68][69]
On 15 December 2015, a Lyon court acquitted her of "inciting hatred", ruling that her statement "did not target all of the Muslim community" and was protected "as a part of freedom of expression".[70]
"De-demonisation" of the FN
Le Pen has pursued a policy of "de-demonisation" of her party, in order to reform its image away from the extremism associated with her father, the former leader of the party and to increase the appeal of the party to voters. This has included policy reform and personnel replacement, including the expulsion of her own father from the party in 2015. Measures aimed at de-demonisation have included dropping all references to World War II or to the French colonial wars are absent from her speeches, which is often looked on as a generation gap.[71] and distancing herself from her father's views.[72]
Bernard-Henri Lévy, a strong opponent of the FN, described Le Pen's leadership of it as "far-right with a human face".[73] The measures have also attracted criticism from former allies as making the party too mainstream, abandoning long-held policies and ignoring grassroots support.[74]
In a 2010 RTL interview, Le Pen stated that her strategy was not about changing the FN's program but about showing it as it really is, instead of the image given to it by the media in the previous decades. The media and her political adversaries are accused of spreading an "unfair, wrong and caricatural" image of the National Front. She refuses the qualification of far-right or extreme-right, considering it a pejorative term: "How am I party of the extreme right? ... I don't think that our propositions are extreme propositions, whatever the subject".[75]
In 2014, the American magazine Foreign Policy mentioned her, along with four other French people, in its list of the 100 global thinkers of the year, underlining the way she "renovated the image" of her party, which had become a model for other right-wing parties in Europe after her success in the European elections.[76] At a European level, she stopped the alliance built by her father with some right-wing extremist parties and refused to be part of a group with the radical Jobbik or the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn. Her transnational allies share the fact that they have officially condemned antisemitism, accepted a more liberal approach toward social matters, and are sometimes pro-Israel such as the Dutch PVV. French historian Nicolas Lebourg concluded that she is looked upon as a compass for them to follow while maintaining local particularities.[77][78]
While other European populists embraced Donald Trump's candidacy in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, she said only, "For France, anything is better than Hillary Clinton". However, on 8 November 2016 she posted a tweet congratulating Trump on his election.[79]
Her social program and her support of SYRIZA in the 2015 Greek general elections have led Nicolas Sarkozy to declare her a far-left politician sharing some of Jean-Luc Mélenchon's propositions. President François Hollande said she was talking "like a leaflet of the Communist Party". Éric Zemmour, journalist for the conservative newspaper Le Figaro, wrote during the 2012 presidential election that the FN had become a left-wing party under the influence of adviser Florian Philippot. She has also relaxed some political positions of the party, advocating for civil unions for same-sex couples instead of her party's previous opposition to legal recognition of same-sex partnerships, accepting current abortion laws, and withdrawing the restitution of the death penalty from her platform.[16][80][81]
Despite Le Pen's attempts to make the National Front more palatable to the international community, the party and Le Pen herself continue to attract criticism: German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said she "will contribute to make other political forces stronger than the National Front";[82] Israel still holds a negative opinion of her party;[83][84] and former Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage - himself a frequent critic of Islam and immigration[85][86] - has said, "I've never said a bad word about Marine Le Pen; I've never said a good word about her party".[87]
