Madame Rage: Marine Le Pen's Populism for the Masses

• Print
• E-Mail
• Feedback

Le Pen, a bulky 83-year-old, leans back in his chair. He projects the image of a man who has no regrets. "You know," he says, by way of greeting, "I am a legend in French politics. The picture my opponents have drawn of me is extreme, emblematic and virtually impossible to correct." He practically shouts with laughter, as he sits in a room filled with likenesses of himself, in photographs, oil paintings and pencil drawings.

Le Pen tells stories about how unfairly he believes he has been treated, and about the war and the threat of immigrants' birth rates to society. These are the dominant themes in his life. Unprompted, he begins to justify the statements he has made in the past, but in doing so he only makes things worse. He says that he has a tendency to relativize things. He says that when he is criticized for having said that the gas chambers were only one detail in the history of World War II, he responds: "I understand. So World War II was a detail in the history of the gas chambers." He finds this sort of thing highly amusing.

He refuses to admit that it pains him not to be in charge anymore. "I was the first stage of the rocket, and she is the second," he says. Does it seem strange to him that the media that once hated him so much are now so enamored of his daughter? "They want to make up for the injustice they inflicted on me," he responds. Is he proud of her? "Yes, kind of. Kind of, indeed."

Contradicting His Daughter

Both father and daughter emphasize their close relationship, and yet there are differences. When she had a local politician thrown out of the party after a photo surfaced that showed him giving the Hitler salute, her father criticized her. He says that he has a more humanistic perspective, but that Marine happens to be the boss. She claims that it isn't a problem when her father openly contradicts her. But of course it's a problem.

The question is: Is there a real difference between the father and the daughter? Her only response is that she is younger and a woman, and that of course there are differences. She is careful not to distance herself from the history of her movement. Le Pen is performing a difficult balancing act.

She is in the process of installing her own team, an armada of clever young men with short haircuts and dark suits. When asked what is new about their party, they don't respond with political analyses, but simply with a name: Marine. One of them says that the difference between father and daughter is that she is more determined to acquire power than he was.

It is her personality and her quick-wittedness that have made Le Pen the star of talk shows and brought thousands of new members into the party. She has a feel for the issues that can work to her advantage, and she forces her opponents to address them. The Socialists, for example, are now talking about protectionism too. And now that she has launched a campaign against dual citizenship, Sarkozy's Interior Ministry is trying to overtake her on the right on the issue of immigration.

Low-Key Private Lives

One of her advisers is her partner Louis Aliot, an athletic 41-year-old man with a southern accent. He is in charge of her election program, and together with Le Pen he has recruited a group of advisers that includes fellow party members, a right-wing Green Party member, a former Socialist and a left-leaning economic expert. It is a personal staff that is designed to seem more likeable than Le Pen's party.

Little is known about Le Pen and Aliot. They keep their private lives out of the media, and their children are off-limits. Who the woman behind the public persona really is, remains a mystery. Marie-Christine Arnautu, an FN politician and old friend of the family, says that Le Pen works harder than anyone else and is very demanding on her staff. Le Pen lost 14 kilograms (31 pounds) before going into politics. Arnautu says that this is a reflection of her discipline and has nothing to do with the notion that women have to look good to succeed in politics.

Le Pen, who has been divorced twice, has three children and raises them on her own. She has suffered like any mother who only sees her children on weekends, says Arnautu, but this also helps many French women identify with her. Le Pen herself says: "I believe that it's easier for a man to lose his grip on reality. As a woman, and a mother, you have a close relationship with reality." The FN's voters were predominantly male in the past, but now the relationship is more balanced.

But can she win elections? In this spring's cantonal elections, the FN captured an average of 19 percent of the vote in those election districts in which it was fielding a candidate, placing it ahead of the party currently in power, the UMP. Le Pen can become a greater threat to the established parties than her father ever was. If the FN were to win seats in the National Assembly again, for the first time in nine years, Le Pen could help shape French politics for years to come, both in the parliament and on television. But for now she is fighting for Sarkozy's job, and she is behaving as if she could actually win.

Embracing the System

In Metz, she tells her supporters why she believes she stands a chance: "The French were not willing to elect someone from the National Front in 2002. In 2007, they elected someone who sounded as if he was from the National Front, but he wasn't. They will be willing in 2012."

Sarkozy himself once campaigned as an outsider, as someone who sought to stir up the system. But he had hardly arrived at the Elysée Palace before he embraced the system.

That would not happen to Marine Le Pen.

• Back
• 1
• | 2
• | 3

• Part 1: Marine Le Pen's Populism for the Masses
• Part 2: The Divide Between the Governing and the Governed
• Part 3: 'As a Woman, You Have a Close Relationship with Reality'