Marine Le Pen, the head of France’s far-right National Front, has openly split with her 86-year-old father and the founder of her party, calling his recent comments, including those on German gas chambers, “political suicide” and an attempt to harm the party.
In recent years, Le Pen, trying to clean up the image of her party as racist and anti-Semitic, has kept her distance from her firebrand father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, and his more extreme statements, even as he continued as honorary chairman of the party.
However, Jean-Marie Le Pen could not stay out of the headlines in the last week, once again claiming that the Nazi gas chambers were a “detail” in history, praising France’s collaborationist wartime leader, Marshall Philippe Petain, and questioning whether France’s Spanish-born prime minister was really loyal to France.
His outbursts appeared to be more than Marine Le Pen and her entourage could put up with.
In a statement on Wednesday, she said that she would block her father from running in the coming regional elections and that she was calling a meeting of the party’s executive bureau “to find the best way of protecting the interests of the movement.”
“The National Front does not want to be hostage to his crude provocation,” she said.
Marine Le Pen’s deputy and spokesman, Florian Philippot, wrote on Twitter: “The split with Jean-Marie Le Pen is now irrevocable and definitive.”
However, her father later responded via a statement, warning her against “a crisis that could have serious consequences.”
The family feud extends another generation to Marion Marechal Le Pen — Jean-Marie’s granddaughter — a rising star in the party, who attacked his gas chamber comments as a “useless provocation.”
What to do with the elder Le Pen has been a problem under discussion within the National Front for years, experts say. He founded the party 43 years ago and spent most of his energy running for president.
His daughter also has presidential ambitions, but she is trying to build a more mainstream party from the bottom up.
Distancing herself from her father, some experts say, will likely only do her good. It may also help her put some of the party’s more recent mistakes behind her.
Additional reporting by AFP
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in