Family Feud

The Front National (FN) is the racist and xenophobic party that was France’s big winner in the recent European elections.  But they’ve been in the news recently for a different reason and it’s been very entertaining.

Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder and now honorary president of the FN, has a well-established reputation as a racist.  One of his specialties is anti-Semitism.  I think it might have been his major in college.

When talking about Jews he dislikes - which is redundant - he has a habit of slipping in the word four (oven).  He is clever enough to never say it directly – instead he uses words like fournée and Durafour – but everyone knows what he means.  And it is the reason he has been convicted at least six times for hate crimes.

Every week Le Pen does a video blog where he rails against all the evils of the world.  This blog is posted on the FN website and this week he was up to his usual tricks, using a variation of four to describe what he would like to have happen to a Jewish entertainer.  It caused a big stink but the stink came from a new direction this time – his family.

First, the scorecard:  Jean-Marie started the party years ago and stepped down as president in 2011.  He handed the reins to his daughter, Marine, who has tried to clean up the party’s image by kicking out the skinheads and the most obvious Nazi sympathizers.  Marine’s compagnon Louis Aliot (kind of her common-law husband) is the vice president of the FN.  This party really is a family business.

After the video blog was posted, Louis called Jean-Marie’s remarks “stupid”.  Then Marine said that Jean-Marie had made a “political error” in his choice of words and banned the video blog from the FN website.

Wait a minute!  Nobody slings mud at Jean-Marie Le Pen – that’s his job!

Jean-Marie responded by calling his son-in-law an “imbecile”.  Then he said he was cutting off all communication with his daughter.  I’m not sure she was really broken up about that.

Part of the back story here is that dad is jealous of his daughter for leading the party to far greater electoral success than he ever could.  And dad and son-in-law have always hated each other.

Now Jean-Marie has written an open letter to his daughter, whining about how unfair it all is and that it is really the media’s fault.  But because he is such a big-hearted guy, he will put this all behind him if she will just put his blog back on the website.

Jean-Marie goes on to say that they need to work together because only the FN can save France from the big problems it faces.  And what are those?  First, “general decadence”(?)  Then “massive immigration” (ie, Muslims).  Then “insecurity” (ie, law and order).  Then he finally gets to the actual big problem of unemployment.  But why deal with real problems when you can rabble rouse?

It has all been pretty hilarious and fun to watch this family food fight.  And the media has been loving it. 

The only problem is that it makes Marine look reasonable by comparison to her nutcase father.  Hm, maybe that was their secret plan all along?

KVS