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The results of the French election have been announced.
As most media speculated before the second round of voting, Macron once again defeated Marine Le Pen to re-elect France's president.
However, compared to the winner Macron, the loser Le Pen has attracted more attention.
◎ In April 2022, Le Pen entered the second round of the French presidential election.
Image credit: Reuters
In fact, Compared to Macron, whose image and speech are relatively modest, Le Pen has always been much more controversial.
She has long been hostile to Muslim immigrants, calling for France to leave the European Union, withdraw from NATO, and hope to implement protectionism.
Of course, that alone is not surprising enough.
Many far-right politicians in Europe have made similar views and are known for their controversial remarks.
Unlike other far-right politicians, Le Pen, who has been dubbed by some media outlets as "Europe's most dangerous woman," also represents a legacy of political ideas.
In the history of countries around the world, there are countless stories of politicians' sons inheriting their father's career.
But there are far fewer stories about daughters inheriting their father's career.
But at the moment, whenever Marina Le Pen is mentioned, it is inevitable to mention her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen ("Le Pen The Elder").
◎ Jean-Marie Le Pen at home.
Image credit: Reuters
The elder Le Pen was the leader of Marina Le Pen, who made her step into politics from her youth and eventually became what she is today.
/ 01 /
Daughter Le Pen
Years later, Marina Le Pen stands on the scene of her election speech, probably remembering the horror night that her father's political career brought to her.
The first thing that changed Le Pen's fate happened in 1976, when she was 8 years old.
One night in November of that year, she slept at home with her two older sisters.
Their home is in the 15th arrondissement of Paris, the Vaugirard.
Located in the southwest of Paris, on the left bank of the Seine, this district is home to the tallest building in the city of Paris, the Montparnasse Office Building, which is densely populated and well-ordered.
No one would have imagined that this place would be attacked.
But that's how the attack happened, and a bomb exploded in the stairwell of the apartment building where they lived. Le Pen wrote in his autobiography, Against the Current:
"This 20-kilogram bomb blew up the entire building, turning it into a doll's house (the outer wall was blown open)."
◎ Cover of the first edition of À Contre Flots.
Image source: Douban
She also described more details that she later remembered, such as:
A pet rabbit named "Rainbow" is "scorched" on the couch;
The neighbor's baby was thrown into the sky by an explosion, but was lucky enough to be saved by falling on a tree;
Photographs from Le Pen's family photo album were scattered down the street, with three girls naked in the home.
Le Pen later learned that the target of the explosion was his father, Le Pen Sr.
Le Pen Sr. founded the far-right National Front four years ago and made many controversial remarks.
He openly exonerated Nazi Germany, which occupied France during World War II.
Referring to the harsh demands of the Germans on French citizens during the occupation, he said the "imposed discipline was painful," but said the same discipline "applied to Germany's own troops, and was equally strict."
He said Charles de Gaulle was a "terrible source of suffering" for the French, a "false great man," and that Henri Pétain, who led the Vichy government during World War II, had not "forgotten to uphold honor" during his peace with the Nazis.
In addition, he has repeatedly said that the gas killings in concentration camps are not so serious and are only a "detail" in the history of World War II.
Such a statement made him highly criticized in public opinion, disliked by many people, and even called "Devil of the Republic".
◎ The elder Le Pen and his two daughters.
Image credit: The Economist
For Le Pen, the bombing marked an awakening of her political consciousness, she said:
"On that night of horror, I rediscovered my father... In a political sense."
After the bombing, as she grew older, she began to struggle with all the people who stood in the way of her and her father.
The list of these people is very large, including many educational institutions, religious organizations, mainstream media and social elites.
At school, she and her sister were bullied by their classmates, and this bullying was tacitly approved by the teacher.
They face a permanent hostility, even undisguised, she said. She had to go to class with a belly full of resentment.
Numerous media outlets have repeatedly attacked her father, even desecrating Jewish cemeteries, all of which have been blamed entirely on Le Pen's followers.
She said the men had an opinion about the Le Pen family, "just because of our last name".
At the same time, her mother ran away from home when she was 16 years old, and then divorced the elder Le Pen, which had a huge impact on her and made her more dependent on her father. She wrote in her autobiography:
"It brings the most terrible, the cruelest, the most heartbreaking pain. My mother didn't love me."
◎ In April 1988, Le Pen the elder took a group photo with his three daughters.
Image source: AP
However, for Le Pen himself, the experiences of her adolescence have actually shaped her. Not only has she been shaped by her political stance, but also by her character and character.
These hurts from her father's political career made her develop a resilience from an early age.
In fact, we can see similar experiences in the teenage years of many right-wing or extreme-leaning politicians.
The most famous of all, Hitler's strong hatred of the non-Germanic peoples in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in his youth, the failure to study in Austria, and the experience of nearly dying in World War I, had a great influence on his position and toughness.
Similarly, in Trump's case, lawyer Roy Cohn's teaching that he "never concedes defeat" is an important factor in his current perpetual complaints to the media about "unfairness" and "this is slander.". (For more on Cohen's influence on Trump, see our previous article "The Spiritual Mentor Behind Trump")
But Compared to them, Le Pen is a little bit different.
Everything she suffered had to do with Le Pen the Elder. All the hostility she faced was brought by her father. But as Le Pen himself said, she was a filial daughter.
So, as Moira Weigel, a researcher at Harvard University, put it, Le Pen then reduced politics to a kind of family loyalty.
In short, Le Pen's original intention in politics was for his father and his family, compared to the majority of those who stepped into politics or for the purpose of changing the country and society, or for the purpose of acquiring power and wealth.
This is obviously very different.
◎ In 2002, after the elder Le Pen advanced to the second round of the French election, Le Pen congratulated him.
Image source: SYGMA
At the age of 18, Le Pen officially joined the National Front. Later, as a legal professional (she graduated from the University of Paris II with a degree in law), she entered the judiciary of the National Front and engaged in related legal activities.
In 2000, at the age of 32, she became president of Generations Le Pen.
It was a loose association closely associated with the National Front and a very suitable organization for Le Pen, whose aim was to "de-demonize the National Front".
In other words, Le Pen wants to continue what he has been doing since he was a child, defending his father's National Front in order to reduce the ill feelings of the people.
However, this is not a task that can be easily accomplished.
Built by the elder Le Pen for more than two decades, the National Front was not much different from the "madman" or even the "Nazi" in the minds of many French.
/ 02 /
Expel the father
This image of the National Front can be found in the growth and experience of the old Le Pen.
Le Pen Sr. was more unfortunate in his adolescence than his daughter.'
His father was a fisherman in Brittany, and in 1942, when he was 14 years old, he witnessed his father being killed by a mine while fishing at sea.
In his memoir, Son of the Nation, le Pen Sr. said he ran to the sea during the war, despite his mother's warnings, and was shocked to see his father's body washed up on the beaches of Brittany. He said:
"My mother cried all day and I could hear her sobs at night."
◎ Le Pen the Elder with his memoirs.
Image credit: Reuters
Later, perhaps for revenge, he tried to join a resistance force in Brittany.
However, the first "War Medal" he received was not a reward for his killing, but returned home and was "big mouthed" by his angry mother.
This experience had a huge impact on the elder Le Pen. War and the state became the theme of his life.
After the war, he went to Paris to study, began to participate in the activities of right-wing organizations, and his ideas gradually became conservative and extreme.
He joined the army as a paratrooper in the French Foreign Legion, which he claimed was motivated by "patriotism" and continued to fight the Vietnamese after the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1953.
Then, in 1956, as France's youngest parliamentary delegate, he insulted former Prime Minister Pierre Mendès-France.
In 1962, on the question of the Battle of Algiers, he told The Battle:
"I have nothing to hide. We used torture in Algeria because we had to."
But by "we" he meant the French army.
He defended the torture of his comrades around him and denied accusations of electric shocks, rape and waterboarding against rebel families when identified by the victims.
Finally, at the urging of François Brigneau, a far-right intellectual who had worked with the Nazis during World War II, he founded the National Front in 1972.
Le Pen himself described the formation of the National Front as "one of France's greatest adventures since World War II".
◎ In 1984, Le Pen Sr. at the National Front conference in Lyon, France.
Image credit: AFP
But as the historian Eric Roussel put it:
"Le Pen has achieved his lifelong goal of becoming a demagogue of a nation. His goal was never to gain power."
Russel's assessment is very reasonable.
He is more of a far-right demagogue than an effective and sane critic and builder.
He was staunchly opposed to Jews, hated all outsiders, discriminated against homosexuals, belittled AIDS patients, and downplayed or even denied the Holocaust.
He attributed all economic and political problems to those factors and incited hatred.
He has always been a tough and aggressive image to the outside world, but he has never proposed a constructive plan, and what he does is more like a continuous vent of dissatisfaction.
In fact, Le Pen probably discovered this after years of continuous defense of the National Front.
Thus, in early 2010, Le Pen began running for the leadership of the National Front. She wants to make the party "a large popular party not only for right-wing voters, but also for all French people".
Later, she was successfully elected.
During the campaign and after his election, one can feel that Le Pen gradually distanced himself from his father, especially in the case of le Pen's most controversial remarks.
As mentioned above, Le Pen the elder considered the mass killing of Jews in gas chambers to be "a detail of the history of World War II", while Le Pen made it clear that genocide was "the highest state of barbarism".
This was widely reported in the media as le Pen trying to improve the image of the National Front.
However, at the beginning of Le Pen's election, the elder Le Pen continued to serve as honorary president of the National Front.
But the contradictions between the two began to intensify, and Le Pen gradually raised more objections and even condemned the views of the elder Le Pen in public.
◎ In 2012, Le Pen's father and daughter laid flowers at a demonstration.
Image source: NPR
The turning point in the two parting ways came in 2015.
This year, when the elder Le Pen once again made radical remarks, Le Pen seemed to have lost patience with his father. She did as le Pen did with the enemy, and acted without hesitation, directly expelling her father from the National Front.
I don't know how le Pen felt when he was expelled from the party he had founded by his daughter. He wrote in his autobiography:
"Birds drive chicks out of their nests and let them fly with their wings. But in the Le Pen family, the opposite is true. The chicks drove the eagle out of its nest."
We can guess that there is probably a kind of anger in this. But it is not complete anger, perhaps anger with relief.
After all, in this way, Le Pen has largely proved himself to be the true successor of his father.
In this regard, her conflict with her father was completely made public, but the two did not completely break up.
She stressed that her public condemnation of her father should not be equated with her abandoning his core principles.
In short, her goal in publicly criticizing her father, taking over the party he founded, and expelling him from the party was not to abandon the core principles of the party put forward by the elder Le Pen, but to accomplish what she had been doing all along, to "demonize" the National Front.
As a daughter, she had to make the decision to expel her father for the sake of the big picture, which is enough to prove that she has the iron will to be the political heir of the elder Le Pen.
◎ In 2014, Le Pen was re-elected president of the National Front, and the elder Le Pen congratulated her.
Image credit: AFP
However, will alone is not enough. Moreover, Le Pen, who was influenced by his father since childhood, did not make less controversial remarks.
In a December 2010 speech to members of the National Front in Lyon, Le Pen compared muslims praying in the streets and squares of French cities to the Nazi occupation of France. She said:
"For those who want to talk a lot about World War II, if we talk about occupation, then we can talk about it (Muslims praying in the streets), because that is also the occupation of territory ... is the occupation of parts of the territory, the occupation of areas where religious laws apply ... Of course, there are no tanks, no soldiers, but it is an occupation and it puts a lot of pressure on the local population."
As soon as this statement came out, it was immediately criticized by a storm.
Agencies such as the Committee of Representatives of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF), the Commission for the French Muslim Faith (CFCM), and the Movement against Racism and the Promotion of Friendship among Peoples (MRAP) have all denounced her and even formally complained about her.
It was not until December 2015 that a Lyon court acquitted her of "inciting hatred", ruling that her speech was "not directed against all Muslim communities" and that it was protected "as part of freedom of expression".
Compared with her position and controversial remarks, she inherits a more distinctive feature from the elder Le Pen, which is her external posture.
As Philippe Olivier, Le Pen's special adviser, put it, for quite some time, she acted like a "war machine," "a bull on the line," an "ideologist," acting according to "political logic."
Moreover, she has always refused to talk about her private life. Because she didn't want to influence the people around her like her father's political career had affected herself and her family.
All in all, she, like her father, is somewhat "not very human-like."
But the fiasco in the 2017 election made Le Pen look for a change.
◎ March 2017, during Le Pen's presidential campaign.
Image source: Wikipedia
/ 03 /
Stand on your father's shoulders
In sima Guang's Zizhi Tongjian, there is such a famous passage:
"(Liu) Beiyue: "Now I am a man of water and fire, Cao Caoye." with urgency, I am lenient; with violence, I am merciful; with praise, I am loyal. Every time you go against the, things can become ears. Now with small profits and dishonesty in righteousness to the world, why not?" 」
Liu Bei said that he and Cao Cao took a different path, but it was easier to succeed.
Le Pen may not have heard of this sentence, but she should understand similar truths.
For Le Pen, after 2017, the old Le Pen has gradually become a role like "Cao Cao".
He is like a mirror that provides a reference for Le Pen.
She began to make drastic changes to her own image according to this reference, and began to soften her attitude on some negotiable issues in an attempt to gain more sympathy and trust from voters.
This change has an effect.
In early April 2022, in an interview with The New York Times after a speech in The New York Times, in which he spoke in a small town on the border with Germany, Voters who came to listen to the speech said Le Pen had become "less extreme" and more "mature" and "confident", and even had a "presidential temperament".
◎ In the first week of April, Le Pen delivered a campaign speech at Stillin Wendel.
Image credit: The New York Times
Jean-Yves Camus, director of the French Observatory for Radical Politics, said Le Pen had learned how to talk directly to her basic plan, the French working class. He said:
"The question is whether her words sound fake or true. To me, her words sounded very true. ...... She is trying to broaden her electoral base while maintaining her core platform."
This shift is also reflected in Le Pen abandoning a long-standing position on the far right: opposing dual citizenship in favor of raising the level of difficulty in obtaining French citizenship.
After the Russo-Ukrainian War, Le Pen also changed his usual pro-Russian posture.
Le Pen has mostly supported Russian foreign policy before, including the Russian attack on Crimea in 2014 , which she believes is not illegal because of the referendum in Crimea.
When Russia began stationing troops on the Russian-Ukrainian border in early 2022, Le Pen said she did not believe Russia would really attack Ukraine and that France should consider Putin a friend.
In 2017, Le Pen met with Putin at the Kremlin.
Image source: AP
Now, Le Pen has finally expressed his opposition to Russia and sympathy for the War-affected Ukrainian refugees.
However, this opposition is not very firm. She also believes that the sanctions against Russia are too severe, and that some measures will eventually harm French companies and individuals.
In addition, Le Pen finally began to talk about himself, talking more about the permanent trauma of the explosion in his childhood to himself, talking about the legal work that had been frustrated by the fact that the parents of his former friends were afraid of the elder Le Pen and did not let them play with Le Pen, talking about the legal work that had been frustrated because of her surname Le Pen.
In a televised interview in the fall of 2021, Le Pen also spoke about her mother and her long-term estrangement, about her daughter, about her avid love of cats, and about the people who accompany her now — a childhood friend and her cat.
These images, which differ from her previous strong aggression, have earned Le Pen some recognition.
People finally saw that she was no longer exactly a cold "war machine", nor was she like her father, who was always like an aggressive lion, and she also had a very human side.
All of this has led some to begin to feel that Le Pen, although a far-right candidate, seems to be decent and acceptable.
◎ Supporter of Le Pen's speech.
Image credit: The New York Times
However, this is actually more like the exquisite packaging on the outside of the mooncake box, which is a strategy to adapt to democratic elections and win over middle voters.
In terms of core positions and opinions, Le Pen has never wavered.
In an April 13 article in The Local France, this was unabashedly pointed out.
For example, in immigration policy, if Le Pen is elected, all of France's immigration laws may need to be amended or even rewritten.
Le Pen's election documents stated that the new bill "will amend some provisions of the continental constitution in order to incorporate the issue of immigration into our supreme text, while also preventing the judiciary beyond the state from forcing France to follow a policy contrary to the will of the French people".
Specifically, the new bill may remove important parts of the preamble to the 1946 Constitution. And the opening of this preamble contains the following sentence:
"The French people reaffirm the sacred and inalienable rights of every human being, without distinction as to race, religion or creed."
Le Pen also intends to enshrine the concept of "national priority" in the Constitution.
Obviously, this will legally determine that there are differences and discrimination between French nationals and foreigners in various aspects such as social welfare, housing and medical care.
◎ Le Pen's supporters pose with Le Pen's campaign bus.
Image credit: The New York Times
On the treatment of Muslims, Le Pen said in a televised debate in February:
"I'm not going to attack Islam, it's a religion like other religions. I want to maintain my freedom of organization and worship."
Two months later, however, ahead of the first round of voting in the general election, Le Pen said that Muslim women who wear headscarves in public would be fined and equated with the nature of driving unsafe. She also said:
"I have introduced a bill aimed at combating Islamist ideology. These ideologies are incompatible with our values, our history, and our culture, and they stem from a totalitarian view of social life."
So, which statement is Le Pen's true attitude?
Combined with her long-standing statement and the National Front's position, the answer is obvious. (For the question of Muslims in France, see our previous article "A Thorn in the Chest of France")
◎ In early April, Le Pen was on pertuva's campaign with a woman wearing a headscarf.
Image credit: AFP
On women's rights, Le Pen's position on women's rights has long been vague, especially on abortion, and her stance has often swayed.
In early April, she said that if elected, the government would not have a minister responsible for women's rights, but only a position of secretary of state to deal with the matter.
This makes one wonder Le Pen's true attitude towards women.
In other areas, such as anti-EU and strengthening state authority, Le Pen's position has not changed much. (For related content, see our previous article "France: The Decline of Mainstream Parties, the Rise of the Far Right")
Of course, it is not that no one can see the essence of Le Pen's careful packaging that has never changed.
During The Stillin-Wendell speech, Macron's supporter Vincent Vullo also came to listen.
The 62-year-old wanted to know what kind of person the real Le Pen really was.
After the meeting, he told The New York Times reporters that nothing had changed much, and that much of her words were still "pure, hardcore racism":
"She's a liar — she wants us to believe that she's become stable, more moderate than ever, less racist." But that's just how she got into the second round."
Yes, Le Pen didn't really change the political legacy she inherited from her father.
Two Le Pen supporters, after listening to Le Pen's speech, said that "we are more satisfied with her current programme".
Image credit: The New York Times
At the end of Swim Against the Current, Le Pen describes France itself as a relationship similar to family and inheritance.
She believes that the bond between the French is beyond reason, like a relationship between relatives. The implication of this recognition is that kinship is limited to the French and has nothing to do with outsiders.
Throughout Le Pen's life, it is not surprising that she has developed this view.
This judgment, perhaps influenced by le Pen the Elder, became the source of her subsequent political stance.
The inheritance between Le Pen's parents once again proves that although their political ideas will change in detail, and will be deviated or softened in specific lines according to the election situation, the consistent emphasis on the concepts of authority, nation, family inheritance, and community will not change fundamentally.
The inheritance of political ideas between them has continued.
However, as Weigel puts it, the problem is not in the inheritance, but in the idea itself:
"A national view based on blood inheritance and blind emotions has a dangerous precedent in Europe, but Le Pen is not interested in learning from the past." ■
Resources
Immigration, abortion and crime: Is France's Marine Le Pen truly far-right?. The Local France, 2022-04-13.
Adam Nossiter. Approaching 90, and Still the ‘Devil of the Republic’. The New York Times, 2018-03-16.
Eleanor Beardsley. Marine Le Pen's 'Brutal' Upbringing Shaped Her Worldview. NPR, 2017-04-21.
Lara Marlowe. Jean-Marie Le Pen: Self-portrait of a vulgar but at times erudite politician. The Irish Times, 2018-03-03.
Moira Weigel. Marine Le Pen's Memoir: a Dutiful Daughter's Sanitizing of Far-Right Politics. The New Yorker, 2017-05-06.
Norimitsu Onishi, Constant Méheut. A Reinvented Marine Le Pen Threatens to Upend French Elections. The New York Times, 2022-04-07.
Rim-Sarah Alouane. Marine Le Pen Is as Dangerous as Ever. The New York Times, 2022-04-20.
Sophie Pedder. Marine le Pen, L'Etrangère. The Economist, 2022-04-08.