Jean-Marie Le Pen

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“France Is Different From The U.S.A.’s El Dorado”

April 27, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

If it quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck, and Jean-Marie Le Pen and his youngest daughter, Marine, are a couple of ducks.

The former and current leaders of the National Front Party are at odds these days, as Marine attempts to provide the far-right French political group with a more polished and professional face than her loose-cannon dad ever did. But the FN brand of nationalism, even when espoused more politely, is still loathsome and unsettling. From Lucy Westcott’s Newsweek interview:

Newsweek:

Can you see any comparisons between the French and U.S. immigration systems?

Marine Le Pen:

France is different from the U.S.A.’s El Dorado, American Dream image. Millions of people hope to find a better future here. There’s a big difference between France and the U.S. In the U.S., immigrants must work to live. In France, they’re taken care of by public finances. In France, there are millions of unemployed people already. We cannot house them, give them health care, education…finance people who keep coming and coming. The weight is very, very heavy now.

Newsweek:

Do you think France could benefit from an immigration system more like that of the U.S.?

Marine Le Pen:

In general, France always imports from the U.S., but this doesn’t really work. If we could, we’d import a measure that’s consistent: If you come, you’ll have to live by your own means. We do not have the means, the money, to give you free health care, free schools. [This would] dissuade immigrants from coming.

Newsweek:

You’re in the U.S. as European leaders are getting ready to meet to find a solution to the enormous crisis of migrants drowning in the Mediterranean en route to a better life in Europe. What can be done to find a solution and what role can France play?

Marine Le Pen:

Politics shouldn’t invite those deadly trips, all of them are very dangerous. We need to stop the boats and put the immigrants in safety, but also bring them back to their points of origin. In Europe it’s a huge call, an open call, for people to risk their lives in the Mediterranean. [The National Front released a statement after a boat capsized last weekend, killing up to 800 people, calling it a “particularly terrible and shocking tragedy.”]

But we should ask the right questions: Who is responsible for that? Who is responsible for this huge crisis in Libya, for example, for those massive waves of illegal immigration? American leaders and French leaders.

Sarkozy is the guilty one in this situation because he contributed to the Islamist fundamentalist in power over there, with all the consequences that you now know about. [Last Monday, Le Pen blamed former French president Nicolas Sarkozy for the migrant crisis due to his 2011 invasion of Libya.]•

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“I Want To Destroy The EU, Not Europe!”

June 3, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

Sometimes an extremist fringe in a country can actually be a good sign. Because it’s being routed by progress and good sense, such a faction makes noise that can be misheard as a rallying cry when it’s really a death rattle. But if such a group moves from the margins to the center, that’s cause for concern. Marine Le Pen, daughter of racist cuckoo clock Jean-Marie Le Pen and leader of France’s Far Right Front National Party, which enjoyed surprising success in the country’s recent elections, just sat for an interview with Mathieu von Rohr of Spiegel. The opening:

“Spiegel:

Ms. Le Pen, having won 25 percent of the French vote, your Front National party stands as one of the primary beneficiaries of the May 25 European Parliament election. How could such a thing come to pass?

Marine Le Pen:

The French want to regain control of their own country. They want to determine the course of their own economy and their immigration policies. They want their own laws to take precedence over those of the European Union. The French have understood that the EU does not live up to the utopia they were sold. It has distanced itself significantly from a democratic mode of operation.

Spiegel:

Yet, prior to the election, it was said that the establishment of lead candidates for the two biggest groups — Jean-Claude Juncker for the center-right and Martin Schulz for the center-left — would strengthen democracy in the EU.

Marine Le Pen:

That is totally bogus. Everybody knew that the parliament wouldn’t be making the final decision on the next president of the European Commission.

Spiegel:

Do you want to destroy Europe?

Marine Le Pen:

I want to destroy the EU, not Europe! I believe in a Europe of nation-states. I believe in Airbus and Ariane, in a Europe based on cooperation. But I don’t want this European Soviet Union.

Spiegel:

The EU is a vast project for peace. It has helped ensure 70 years without war on the Continent.

Marine Le Pen:

No. Europe is war. Economic war. It is the increase of hostilities between the countries. Germans are denigrated as being cruel, the Greeks as fraudsters, the French as lazy. Ms. Merkel can’t travel to any European country without being protected by hundreds of police. That is not brotherhood.”

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