Le Pen goes ethnic

For over four decades, Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of France's ultra-right Front National,  has blamed immigrants for France's woes. They take "French" jobs, spunge off French taxes and cause crime, according to his sulphurous creed. So what is the meaning of this new poster for his latest presidential campaign ?

The young woman is apparently from an immigrant family from one of the former French colonies. The media have interpreted her as une beurette  -- of north African Arab origin. According to Marine Le Pen, Jean-Marie's daughter and campaign director, her family is possibly from one of the French overseas territories in the Caribbean or Indian or Pacific oceans.

The poster is one of six that show a typical French person. The others are a high-school pupil, a farmer, a young worker, a thirty-something person and a pensioner. For all of them, France's governments whether leftwing or rightwing "have destroyed everything".

The idea of the beurette is to show the Front's new willingness to embrace French people of immigrant origin, says Le Pen junior. The old man, now 78 and fighting his fifth presidential campaign, is trying to reach an audience beyond the white, lower-class electorate that took him to second place in the 2002 elections. Although some of the FN leadership object, Le Pen sees younger, non-whites as a potential market for support provided of course that they are "assimilated". According to Marine Le Pen, her father "is the candidate to whom the French people rally, irrespective of their religious, ethnic or even political affinities."

[Marine and Jean-Marie Le Pen]

In the ethnic poster, the woman is supposed to be complaining about the state's failures over nationality, assimilation, secularism and the social ladder -- the path which the colour-blind republic is supposed to offer all its citizens.  Secularism (laicité), or keeping religion out of public life, is the creed to which France has been committed since 1905. The 2005 law against religous symbols in schools was passed to prevent girls (like the one on the poster if she is une beurette) from wearing Muslim head-cover there.

Marine Le Pen explained: "A certain number of French of immigrant origin are aware of the failure (of governments) and they want answers. Many of them are turning towards the candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen to get them."

To calm traditional supporters who might worry that Le Pen has gone soft, Jean-Francois Touzé, a senior FN official, said: "We are stressing assimilation, but the basic ideas of the National Front remain unchanged." These are re-imposition of border controls and national preference -- giving French nationals priority to jobs, housing and education:

Le Pen is trying to cast his net wider because his chances of upsetting the 2007 campaign seem to be waning. The emergence of strong candidates from the traditional left and right -- Ségolène Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy -- means that he is less likely to squeeze into the run-off as he did in 2002.

The polls are, however giving him between 12 and 18 percent of voting intentions. In 2002, he beat Lionel Jospin, the Socialist, with 17 percent.

Le Pen also enjoys another advantage. He does not need to campaign much. At the moment, he is spending two weeks on a beach in the Caribbean while his rivals are already tiring of the marathon that runs until next May. The media boycott France's political bogeyman most of the time but people vote for him anyway. As Le Pen says: "I am like Zorro. No-one sees me but everyone knows I'm there."

Sarkozy has been doing Le Pen's usual work this week. To keep a closer control on the arrival of new residents, he has just promised to create a Ministry of Immigration if he is elected President. 

Comments

[john gregory Flinn]

"The idea of the beurette is to show the Front's new willingness to embrace French people of immigrant origin, says Le Pen junior."

I do not believe Marine Le Pen means NEW willingness. She did't say NEW in the interview I saw on France 2.
Her Father reminds us (and the BBC) often - that is, whenever he's 'allowed' on the media - that the FN has many 'immigrés' members, and some including muslims who have been elected.

The media love to paint nationalist politics as bogeymen, pariahs, sulphurous and with other invective which is simply designed to malign and mislead. Again, it reminds me of John Pilger's Russian joke, and could be interpreted as the western version of 'pulling nails out' in order to make them (Le FN)conform. But Le Pen is correctly pointing out that 'Conformity is'nt working'!

Actually, his poster TV campaign reminds me of that Satchi & Satchi campaign in the UK some years ago - "Labour is'nt working'!
And that was very successful, giving Mrs Thatcher her opportunity.

[Robin Midwood]

The grave danger for the french with their multipal choice as it should be ;is that Le Pen can sound very persuasive if you do not dig too deep into the nitty gritty of his paties policy.There is a wide spread fear of Le Pen; but things have changed radically during the last three or four years in polotics.Bothleft and right have found a new way of seducing the electorat? All to play for !!!?.Watch this space?!.

[Frank Schnittger]

If the French media had any wit they would give Le Pen the maximum possible exposure because the more his ideas are debated, the more discredited they become. It is precisely the lack of media exposure which allows the "small man", who feels alienated from the establishment, to identify with Le Pen.

The media exposure would also help to highlight the divisions in his own camp - including the truly fascist elements still lurking there.

It is the very impermeability of the establishment to any new ideas which makes any outsider attractive to the "common people", and exacerbates the feeling that THEY (the establishment) do not represent US.

Sego and Sarko are faux outsiders compared to Le Pen. The only long term solution is to make the French state more truly inclusive - and that means tackling the state bureaucracy and vested interests which currently ensure that the state is run to their agenda and their benefit.

There already is a "rupture" between the French State and the people. The task is not to create a new one but to heal the rupture that already exists.

[The 3rd Column]

Right on Sarkozy!

[Valentin]

I was fooling around on the Yahoo Questions&Answers space (version française) and I've been surprised by the number of participants openly against the extreme left and stating that Le Pen is being continuously demonised and blocked by the media.

That certainly doesn't have the value of an opinion poll (which in turn can't be taken for reality either), but still, for someone following the mainstream media, this came short of a shock. Maybe he would even reach the 30%, were he allowed the visibility the couple of the year Ségo-Sarko enjoy.

Which brings me to the more general question, how do we fight against populist politicians, is it right to refuse them equal terms ? Hitler, Castro and many other dictators bathed in popular support. Can they be blocked without using low, or antidemocratic means?...

[Valentin]

I would tend to disagree with Frank.
As a general rule, the exposure may or may not break a supposedly fragile candidate. I heard the same lines about Mme. Royal, "just wait the real political debates, the longer she'll be exposed, the more obvious her lack of substance will be."
Well no, it sufficed some skill and a few good advisers, and the outcome was totally different. As they say, "les bras m'en ont tombés" reading the papers afterwards, glorifying her performance.

Fair enough, Le Pen doesn't possess the famously white tailleur; so there might be a chance !

[vallon]

what is this man doing in the Carribean? Why did the carribean islanders let him in?

[Robert Marchenoir]

We had it coming.

The North African girl on the poster is a logical step for Le Pen, and a direct consequence of the do-gooders' insistence on locking him out of the public debate on the grounds of racism.

Le Pen is mainstream now, folks, get used to it. This has been obvious for quite a while, if you took the trouble to read the justifications of self-proclaimed Le Pen voters on blogs.

It is a sobering thought to realize that these bloggers are often more articulate, open to dialogue, moderate and tolerant (yes!) than their far more numerous left-wing opponents, who often come across as illiterate, intolerant, foul-mouthed and violent. The thugs are not where expected.

The recent strike by journalists at Le Progrès, a local daily in Lyon, is testimony to this perverse censoring action by do-gooders.

They opposed the planned participation of Le Pen to a series a round tables between politicians and readers, on the grounds, I guess, that Le Pen is so politically toxic that you cannot expose innocent voters to his ideological fumes without the authoritative filtering of Professional Journalists who are In The Know. This, for a man who commands roughly 15% of the vote, according to polls.

This is exactly the reason that so many people put forth when explaining, under the anonymity of blogs, why they will vote for him.

Talk about being short-sighted and counter-productive.

[Jean Quenin]

I am quite surprised the media are quoted here as having interpreted the girl on the poster as "une beurette". The girl on the poster is definitely not of Arab descent but from the French West Indies, and "beurette" is a slang word which refers exclusively to girls of north African Arab origin who were born in France (as opposed to others from the same ethnic origin but born abroad).

[Wakko]

The 2005 law against religous symbols in schools was passed to prevent girls like the one on the poster from wearing Muslim head-cover there.

How do you know she is Muslim ???? It is quite interesting how in a sentence someone can be reduced/judged.

[dada]

Algéria - Zidane visiting algeria these days, we can well remember le pen in these land, torturant allègrement , beeing a good soldier.

Kigali - A female survivor of Rwanda's 1994 genocide on Wednesday told a panel probing alleged French complicity in the massacres that French troops had gang-raped her and others multiple times.

Testifying before a government-appointed inquiry commission, she recounted in graphic detail the alleged abuse by French soldiers deployed to Rwanda during the genocide on a humanitarian mission.

She said she was one of many who had been taken by French troops, including a colonel, from a refugee camp near a French military base in the province of Gikongoro in south-west Rwanda.

[rocket]

The young woman is obviously a model sent by a French modeling agency that has no scruples. So what else is new? If you pay the price you can get people to believe anything!

We want to see French people in veils on FN posters!

[dada]

Neighborhood leaders and residents of the suburbs have criticized politicians to varying degrees for using the suburbs as a convenient backdrop to promote their messages.

Some attendees at Wednesday's conference at the Interior Ministry, which was entitled "The Minister of the Interior Welcomes the Youth," dismissed it as a performance for the media.

"It's clear this is a media show," said Mohamed Hamidi, a high school teacher who is the editor of the Bondy Blog, a popular Web column about the suburbs. "For Sarkozy to try to seduce the voters of the suburban neighborhoods now — it's too late."

[Chie]

The French should open their borders to unrestricted immigration of beautiful girls like the one in the poster. Then there would be no racial or ethnic tensions!

[christopher muir]

Chie, you have good taste and optimistic views, but I don't believe in that poster. I'm sure that if Le Pen were resting in the Canary Islands he'd have this back-flip advertisement immediately withdrawn. The sight of those many, many desperate African boat refugees - all wishing to live on European soil - would cause the ancient extremist to revert to his former bellicose ways. The old dog may have learnt new tricks, but he really hasn't changed. The Right are rarely able to switch.

[maurice pernet]

One story comes to my mind on reading about the U turn of Monsieur Le Pen: Little red riding hood (Le capuchon rouge) Hé Hé Hé !

[John Hornsby]

It seems to me grossly unfair and even simplistic to state that "Sarkozy has been doing Le Pen's usual work". Ten years ago, the Socialist Michel Rocard said, "Nous ne pouvons pas accueillir toutes les misères du monde." This is plain common sense and the only way to try and help "l'mmigration choisie" (a Sarkozy phrase - is this too "Front National" talk?) to have a decent life in France is by establishing a certain number of principles and laws.