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Marine Le Pen is hoping the wave of populism sweeping the Western world carries her to the Élysée Palace.

“The wind of history has turned,” Le Pen, who heads the far-right National Front (FN), <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHPOW91K-fM">told</a> a crowd of supporters at the kickoff of her presidential bid earlier this month in Lyon, the industrial city in southeastern France. “It will carry us to the summit.”

Opinion polls have shown Le Pen winning the first round of France’s presidential election in April, only to lose to whomever she faces in the second round of voting in May. That candidate will likely be <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/news/archive/2016/11/francois-fillon-france/508607/">François Fillon</a>, the center-right candidate, or <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=1&amp;cad=rja&amp;uact=8&amp;ved=0ahUKEwir1_nk_aPSAhUFj1QKHcLnCocQFggaMAA&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theatlantic.com%2Fnews%2Farchive%2F2017%2F02%2Fmacron-economics%2F515919%2F&amp;usg=AFQjCNH2xaKOZJsUIoPfpTzqFN_AfzC6og&amp;sig2=fUSJncYjv0HPXoPFDu6Ewg&amp;bvm=bv.147448319,d.eWE">Emmanuel Macron</a>, the independent; polls show the two men seesawing between second and third place in the first round. If no candidate achieves a majority in the first round, the top-two vote getters advance to a second round run-off. Although it’s still early, and polling can be wrong, the likelihood of Le Pen beating either Fillon or Macron in the second round is slim. Still, with the Western establishment reeling from Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election, the U.K.’s decision to leave the European Union, and growing anger at political elites throughout Europe, Le Pen and other far-right, populist leaders in Europe fancy their chances.

Le Pen envisions a France with closed borders, its own currency, and tough immigration controls; a country that is independent of international bodies like NATO, and one that ultimately puts itself first. This inward thinking, Le Pen reminded supporters, would not be unique to France.

“Other people have shown the way,” she said, alluding to the Brexit vote last summer and Trump’s election last November.

Although such sentiments might be experiencing a resurgence, many of Le Pen’s policies are not new. Indeed, her <a href="https://www.marine2017.fr/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/projet-presidentiel-marine-le-pen.pdf">144-point manifesto</a> outlining her vision for France reflects many of the policies the FN has put forward since it was founded more than four decades ago by her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen. From the onset, the party has opposed the European Union, economic protectionism, and same-sex marriage. It has also been characterized by anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, and anti-Semitic sentiment (Jean-Marie Le Pen has repeatedly dismissed the Holocaust as a minor “<a href="http://www.bfmtv.com/politique/jean-marie-le-pen-persiste-sur-les-chambres-a-gaz-873716.html">detail</a>” of history and defended collaborators of the Vichy government, which deported tens of thousands of French Jews to death camps during World War II).

Those views haven’t earned the FN much electoral success. The party <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/12/marine-le-pen-front-national-france/420348/">didn’t win</a> a single local election in 2015, and claims only two seats in French parliament. The FN’s previous best performance in the presidential election was in 2002 when Jean-Marie Le Pen advanced to the second round for the first time in the FN’s history; voters handed then-incumbent President Jacques Chirac 82 percent of the vote—an unprecedented victory that was widely regarded more as a rebuke of the FN than approval of Chirac. By the time Marine Le Pen took over as the leader of the FN in 2011, the party began a period of transformative rebranding—one which retained its far-right values with less emphasis on the homophobic, anti-Semitic elements. This ultimately resulted in the expulsion of the elder Le Pen from the party in 2015 in a family battle played out in the media.

<figure><img alt="" height="403" src="https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2017/02/RTR1NKLE/1c1c25aa7.jpg" width="630" />
<figcaption class="caption">National Front founder Jean-Marie Le Pen delivers a speech next to his daughter, Marine Le Pen, in Britany, France on March 17, 2007. (Daniel Joubert / Reuters)</figcaption>
</figure>

“Voluntarily or not, he gave ammunition to our adversaries,” Le Pen <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/01/the-ruthlessly-effective-rebranding-of-europes-new-far-right">said</a> of her father in November, adding: “Today our adversaries no longer have that ammunition.”

Still, the younger Le Pen’s rebranding efforts alone may not be enough. Dr. David Lees, a researcher on French politics at Warwick University, told me last November that though Le Pen’s outsider status has certainly helped her anti-establishment image, it could also pose a challenge.

“The FN has only got two members of the National Assembly in France … so if she does win, she wouldn’t be able to form a government,” Lees said. “She would find it very hard to govern without having any sense of support in Parliament. She just wouldn’t get anything through because the options of ruling by decree in France are very small for a president.”

Indeed, finding common ground with other members of the government would prove difficult for Le Pen—especially in comparison to competitors like Macron, whose centrist, business-orientated agenda could be more appealing to swing votes on the left and right than the FN’s populist agenda. Still, Le Pen’s rebranding has proven effective in communities previously marginalized by the FN. The party has actively pursued more progressive causes such as promoting women’s rights and gay rights, as well as protecting France’s Jewish community from anti-Semitism—often by presenting Muslim immigration as a threat to all three.

“We do not want to live under the rule or threat of Islamic fundamentalism,” she told supporters in Lyon, and accused Muslim immigrants of “looking to impose on us gender discrimination in public places, full body veils or not, prayer rooms in the workplace, prayers in the streets, huge mosques.”

The FN has found common cause with far-right parties throughout Europe who share its anti-Islam and anti-globalist agenda, as well as other governments. Le Pen has praised both Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-election-le-pen-idUSKBN13B230">noting</a> that if she were elected, the three leaders “would be good for world peace.” Le Pen has been a vocal proponent of rapprochement with Russia. In addition to rejecting the notion of Russia’s actions in Ukraine’s Crimea as an invasion, she also condemned U.S. and EU sanctions on Moscow as “<a href="http://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2017/02/01/france-intv-amanpour-marine-le-pen-b.cnn">completely stupid</a>.” The FN received an 11-million euro (about $11.6 million) loan from the Moscow-based First Czech Russian Bank in 2014, and Le Pen has <a href="http://www.politico.eu/article/le-pen-russia-crimea-putin-money-bank-national-front-seeks-russian-cash-for-election-fight/">reportedly</a> asked Russia for another loan to finance her current presidential bid, citing French banks’ refusal to lend.

Fredrik Wesslau, the director of the Wider Europe Programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told me in January that Moscow’s ideological affinity with the FN is what attracts it to most of Europe’s far-right populist parties.

“They see a country that’s willing to stick up for socially conservative rights, that’s embraced authoritarian populism, that’s also xenophobic, in particular anti-Islam, which is something that many of these parties can relate to,” Wesslau said. “There’s a lot of overlap.”

And while the FN leader isn’t the only French presidential candidate to support better relations with Russia (Fillon, the center-right candidate, has also supported reconciliation), reports of Russian media coverage favoring Le Pen against other contenders has sparked <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/19/opinion/russian-meddling-and-europes-elections.html">concerns</a> Moscow might try to interfere in France’s elections similar to the way it did in the U.S. elections.

But for all the challenges Le Pen faces as an untested leader of historically fringe party, one that is often overlooked is her role as France’s sole female candidate. Women have historically been underrepresented in French politics, with female lawmakers making up <a href="http://www.ipu.org/wmn-f/classif.htm">25 percent</a> of the National Assembly and <a href="http://www.ipu.org/wmn-f/classif.htm">27 percent</a> of the Senate. Édith Cresson became the first and only woman to serve as prime minister in 1991 under President François Mitterrand, but suffered low approval ratings and lost the post after less than a year—a loss some attribute to <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=4wQe6IcBaMQC&amp;pg=PA189#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false">misogynist attitudes</a> among the Socialist party elites. Socialist party member Ségolène Royal made French history in 2007 when she became the first woman to be nominated as a presidential candidate by a major party. She lost to Nicolas Sarkozy in the second round.

If Le Pen advances to the second round as polls suggest she could, she’ll only be the second female candidate to have done so since Royal. It’s a glass ceiling Lees said she may have a difficult time shattering.

“We’ve never had a female president, we’ve never had a female leader really in France,” Lees said. “So there really isn’t precedent there.”

With the first round of voting less than two months away, Le Pen has the task of maintaining the lead polls have given her since the start of the election. But it will also involve not being derailed by recent <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/liveblogs/2017/01/europe-elections/513677/14799/">allegations</a> she misused 300,000 euros of EU funds to pay her parliamentary assistants. It’s a charge Le Pen denies, and one that has resulted in the arrest of her chief of staff, Catherine Griset, who has been <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/liveblogs/2017/01/europe-elections/513677/14799/">charged with breach of trust</a>. Le Pen’s lawyers say the investigation is an attempt to harm the presidential hopeful “at the very moment when her candidacy is making a major breakthrough.”

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entry_id: tag:thewire.com,2017:50-517155
content: "\n\n \n<figure class=\"lead-image\">\n\n \n \n \n \n
 \ \n <img\n src=\"http://cdn.thewire.com/media/img/mt/2017/02/RTSYFOR/lead_large.jpg\"\n
 \ alt=\"Image \"\n title=\"Marine Le Pen: Madame Présidente?
 \"\n >\n \n \n \n\n\n \n \n\n</figure>\n\nMarine
 Le Pen is hoping the wave of populism sweeping the Western world carries her to
 the Élysée Palace.\n\n“The wind of history has turned,” Le Pen,
 who heads the far-right National Front (FN), <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHPOW91K-fM\">told</a>
 a crowd of supporters at the kickoff of her presidential bid earlier this month
 in Lyon, the industrial city in southeastern France. “It will carry us to the summit.”\n\nOpinion polls have shown Le Pen winning the first round of France’s
 presidential election in April, only to lose to whomever she faces in the second
 round of voting in May. That candidate will likely be <a href=\"https://www.theatlantic.com/news/archive/2016/11/francois-fillon-france/508607/\">François
 Fillon</a>, the center-right candidate, or <a href=\"https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=1&amp;cad=rja&amp;uact=8&amp;ved=0ahUKEwir1_nk_aPSAhUFj1QKHcLnCocQFggaMAA&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theatlantic.com%2Fnews%2Farchive%2F2017%2F02%2Fmacron-economics%2F515919%2F&amp;usg=AFQjCNH2xaKOZJsUIoPfpTzqFN_AfzC6og&amp;sig2=fUSJncYjv0HPXoPFDu6Ewg&amp;bvm=bv.147448319,d.eWE\">Emmanuel
 Macron</a>, the independent; polls show the two men seesawing between second and
 third place in the first round. If no candidate achieves a majority in the first
 round, the top-two vote getters advance to a second round run-off. Although it’s
 still early, and polling can be wrong, the likelihood of Le Pen beating either Fillon
 or Macron in the second round is slim. Still, with the Western establishment reeling
 from Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election, the U.K.’s decision
 to leave the European Union, and growing anger at political elites throughout Europe,
 Le Pen and other far-right, populist leaders in Europe fancy their chances.\n\nLe Pen envisions a France with closed borders, its own currency, and
 tough immigration controls; a country that is independent of international bodies
 like NATO, and one that ultimately puts itself first. This inward thinking, Le Pen
 reminded supporters, would not be unique to France.\n\n“Other
 people have shown the way,” she said, alluding to the Brexit vote last summer and
 Trump’s election last November.\n\nAlthough such sentiments might
 be experiencing a resurgence, many of Le Pen’s policies are not new. Indeed, her
 <a href=\"https://www.marine2017.fr/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/projet-presidentiel-marine-le-pen.pdf\">144-point
 manifesto</a> outlining her vision for France reflects many of the policies the
 FN has put forward since it was founded more than four decades ago by her father,
 Jean-Marie Le Pen. From the onset, the party has opposed the European Union, economic
 protectionism, and same-sex marriage. It has also been characterized by anti-immigrant,
 anti-Muslim, and anti-Semitic sentiment (Jean-Marie Le Pen has repeatedly dismissed
 the Holocaust as a minor “<a href=\"http://www.bfmtv.com/politique/jean-marie-le-pen-persiste-sur-les-chambres-a-gaz-873716.html\">detail</a>”
 of history and defended collaborators of the Vichy government, which deported tens
 of thousands of French Jews to death camps during World War II).\n\nThose
 views haven’t earned the FN much electoral success. The party <a href=\"https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/12/marine-le-pen-front-national-france/420348/\">didn’t
 win</a> a single local election in 2015, and claims only two seats
 in French parliament. The FN’s previous best performance in the presidential election
 was in 2002 when Jean-Marie Le Pen advanced to the second round for the first time
 in the FN’s history; voters handed then-incumbent President Jacques Chirac 82 percent
 of the vote—an unprecedented victory that was widely regarded more as
 a rebuke of the FN than approval of Chirac. By the time Marine Le Pen took over
 as the leader of the FN in 2011, the party began a period of transformative rebranding—one
 which retained its far-right values with less emphasis on the homophobic, anti-Semitic
 elements. This ultimately resulted in the expulsion of the elder Le Pen from the
 party in 2015 in a family battle played out in the media.\n\n<figure><img alt=\"\"
 height=\"403\" src=\"https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2017/02/RTR1NKLE/1c1c25aa7.jpg\"
 width=\"630\" />\n<figcaption class=\"caption\">National Front founder Jean-Marie
 Le Pen delivers a speech next to his daughter, Marine Le Pen, in Britany, France
 on March 17, 2007. (Daniel Joubert / Reuters)</figcaption>\n</figure>\n\n“Voluntarily
 or not, he gave ammunition to our adversaries,” Le Pen <a href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/01/the-ruthlessly-effective-rebranding-of-europes-new-far-right\">said</a>
 of her father in November, adding: “Today our adversaries no longer have that ammunition.”\n\nStill, the younger Le Pen’s rebranding efforts alone may not be enough.
 Dr. David Lees, a researcher on French politics at Warwick University, told me last
 November that though Le Pen’s outsider status has certainly helped
 her anti-establishment image, it could also pose a challenge.\n\n“The
 FN has only got two members of the National Assembly in France … so if she does
 win, she wouldn’t be able to form a government,” Lees said. “She would find it very
 hard to govern without having any sense of support in Parliament. She just wouldn’t
 get anything through because the options of ruling by decree in France are very
 small for a president.”\n\nIndeed, finding common ground with
 other members of the government would prove difficult for Le Pen—especially in comparison
 to competitors like Macron, whose centrist, business-orientated agenda could be
 more appealing to swing votes on the left and right than the FN’s populist agenda.
 Still, Le Pen’s rebranding has proven effective in communities previously marginalized
 by the FN. The party has actively pursued more progressive causes such as promoting
 women’s rights and gay rights, as well as protecting France’s Jewish community from
 anti-Semitism—often by presenting Muslim immigration as a threat to all three.\n\n“We do not want to live under the rule or threat of Islamic fundamentalism,”
 she told supporters in Lyon, and accused Muslim immigrants of “looking to impose
 on us gender discrimination in public places, full body veils or not, prayer rooms
 in the workplace, prayers in the streets, huge mosques.”\n\nThe
 FN has found common cause with far-right parties throughout Europe who share its
 anti-Islam and anti-globalist agenda, as well as other governments. Le Pen has praised
 both Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, <a href=\"http://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-election-le-pen-idUSKBN13B230\">noting</a>
 that if she were elected, the three leaders “would be good for world peace.” Le
 Pen has been a vocal proponent of rapprochement with Russia. In addition to rejecting
 the notion of Russia’s actions in Ukraine’s Crimea as an invasion, she also condemned
 U.S. and EU sanctions on Moscow as “<a href=\"http://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2017/02/01/france-intv-amanpour-marine-le-pen-b.cnn\">completely
 stupid</a>.” The FN received an 11-million euro (about $11.6 million) loan from
 the Moscow-based First Czech Russian Bank in 2014, and Le Pen has <a href=\"http://www.politico.eu/article/le-pen-russia-crimea-putin-money-bank-national-front-seeks-russian-cash-for-election-fight/\">reportedly</a>
 asked Russia for another loan to finance her current presidential bid, citing French
 banks’ refusal to lend.\n\nFredrik Wesslau, the director of the
 Wider Europe Programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told me in
 January that Moscow’s ideological affinity with the FN is what
 attracts it to most of Europe’s far-right populist parties.\n\n“They
 see a country that’s willing to stick up for socially conservative rights, that’s
 embraced authoritarian populism, that’s also xenophobic, in particular anti-Islam,
 which is something that many of these parties can relate to,” Wesslau said. “There’s
 a lot of overlap.”\n\nAnd while the FN leader isn’t the only
 French presidential candidate to support better relations with Russia (Fillon, the
 center-right candidate, has also supported reconciliation), reports of Russian media
 coverage favoring Le Pen against other contenders has sparked <a href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/19/opinion/russian-meddling-and-europes-elections.html\">concerns</a>
 Moscow might try to interfere in France’s elections similar to the way it did in
 the U.S. elections.\n\nBut for all the challenges Le Pen faces
 as an untested leader of historically fringe party, one that is often overlooked
 is her role as France’s sole female candidate. Women have historically been underrepresented
 in French politics, with female lawmakers making up <a href=\"http://www.ipu.org/wmn-f/classif.htm\">25
 percent</a> of the National Assembly and <a href=\"http://www.ipu.org/wmn-f/classif.htm\">27
 percent</a> of the Senate. Édith Cresson became the first and only woman to serve
 as prime minister in 1991 under President François Mitterrand, but suffered low
 approval ratings and lost the post after less than a year—a loss some attribute
 to <a href=\"https://books.google.com/books?id=4wQe6IcBaMQC&amp;pg=PA189#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false\">misogynist
 attitudes</a> among the Socialist party elites. Socialist party member Ségolène
 Royal made French history in 2007 when she became the first woman to be nominated
 as a presidential candidate by a major party. She lost to Nicolas Sarkozy in the
 second round.\n\nIf Le Pen advances to the second round as polls
 suggest she could, she’ll only be the second female candidate to have done so since
 Royal. It’s a glass ceiling Lees said she may have a difficult time shattering.\n\n“We’ve never had a female president, we’ve never had a female leader
 really in France,” Lees said. “So there really isn’t precedent there.”\n\nWith the first round of voting less than two months away, Le Pen has
 the task of maintaining the lead polls have given her since the start of the election.
 But it will also involve not being derailed by recent <a href=\"http://www.theatlantic.com/liveblogs/2017/01/europe-elections/513677/14799/\">allegations</a>
 she misused 300,000 euros of EU funds to pay her parliamentary assistants. It’s
 a charge Le Pen denies, and one that has resulted in the arrest of her chief of
 staff, Catherine Griset, who has been <a href=\"https://www.theatlantic.com/liveblogs/2017/01/europe-elections/513677/14799/\">charged
 with breach of trust</a>. Le Pen’s lawyers say the investigation is an attempt to
 harm the presidential hopeful “at the very moment when her candidacy is making a
 major breakthrough.”\n\n\n"
author: Yasmeen Serhan
title_type:
published: 2017-02-24 14:08:20.000000000 Z
summary: The far-right candidate leads in French polls, but her challenges may prove
 insurmountable.
links:
- https://www.theatlantic.com/news/archive/2017/02/marine-le-pen-france/517155/
title: 'Marine Le Pen: Madame Présidente? '
carlessian_info:
 news_filer_version: 2
 newspaper: US general30
 macro_region: USA
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categories:
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url: https://www.theatlantic.com/news/archive/2017/02/marine-le-pen-france/517155/

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