The Silence of the Far-Right Leader of France; A Legacy That Has Multiplied

On Tuesday, January 8, French media reported the death of Jean-Marie Le Pen, a prominent figure of the far-right, at the age of 96. Le Pen founded the far-right party 'National Front' in 1972 and ran for the presidency five times. He published the first volume of his memoirs in 2018 titled 'Son of the Nation'; a reference not only to the early death of his father, who died in 1944 when his boat hit a German mine during World War II, but also an emphasis on the extremist view he held regarding nationalism. In these memoirs, he recounts being expelled from a Catholic school during World War II due to disorder, but the school officials, not wanting to confront him directly about his expulsion, told him, 'Your mother is dead, and you must go home.' However, he found his mother alive at home, which led to a severed relationship and hatred between him and his mother towards the church. Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the far-right party in France, was born on June 20, 1928, in Trinité-sur-Mer in Brittany and became a war orphan at the age of 16 after his father's death. His plan for revenge against the Germans for his father's death failed. He wrote in his memoirs that although he had the opportunity to kill a German soldier, he suffered a heart palpitation and admitted to his friends that 'he was not cut out for this.' Nevertheless, Le Pen became one of the most prominent defenders of the Nazi occupation after the war and justified General Pétain's collaboration with the occupiers. Pétain, a famous French military commander in World War I, turned to collaboration with the Nazis during their occupation of France in World War II and became the ruler of occupied France. To downplay the crimes of the Nazis during World War II, Le Pen wrote that the killing of 76,000 French Jews could also be considered 'inhuman details' of this war. After World War II, he moved to the capital to study law and began his 'political struggle' by expelling leftist student representatives from the law school; a struggle that was more physical and involved brawling than based on reasoning and competition of ideas. In one of these brawls, one of Le Pen's eyes was severely injured, but this did not prevent him from desiring confrontation even in old age. Le Pen became a member of the French National Assembly in 1956 and proudly speaks in his memoirs about opposing the Treaty of Rome, which was the basis for the formation of the European Union, to emphasize his extreme nationalist thoughts. In 1972, he founded the 'National Front' with veterans of the India-China and Algeria wars, gradually transforming it from a disorganized and sectarian group into a political organization based on individual leadership. The day the French held their noses and voted. Jean-Marie Le Pen participated in presidential elections five times until 2011 when he stepped down from leadership of the 'National Front' and became its honorary and spiritual leader. His participation in the 2002 elections, in particular, garnered high votes, allowing him to advance to the second round of elections for the first time by eliminating the Socialist candidate and facing Jacques Chirac, the conservative candidate. For several days, the streets of Paris and other cities in France were scenes of protests against Le Pen, and ultimately, with an unprecedented electoral alliance among various left, center, and right factions in France, Chirac won the election. During this campaign, many people who never imagined they would have to vote for a right-wing candidate to prevent a far-right victory symbolically held their noses and cast their votes. Interestingly, Le Pen preferred to remain a critic and opponent of the 'establishment' and 'ruling elite' and had little desire to ascend to higher levels of power, to the extent that after a decisive defeat in the elections, he seemed almost comfortable returning to his role as an unpredictable critic of the ruling institutions. In 2011, Le Pen handed over the leadership of the 'National Front' to his youngest daughter, Marine Le Pen, while remaining the party's spiritual leader. The daughter who expelled her father from the party. Marine Le Pen gradually sought to distance her father's far-right ideas from the party's platform and to transform the inherited organization into a refuge for groups beyond extreme nationalists and those left behind by France's modernization train. This effort also aimed to create a more acceptable image for the party at the European level and beyond. In this context, the differences between father and daughter gradually became more pronounced. While Jean-Marie Le Pen was extremely strict on immigration to France and sought a complete ban on the entry of immigrants, describing the reform of immigration laws as cliché, his daughter aimed for 'reforming immigration laws' and making them stricter. Marine Le Pen also distanced herself from Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism for which her father had been condemned multiple times, shifting from a complete denial of immigration to reforming immigration laws; although like her father, she remains a staunch defender of 'French traditions and culture' and keeping them safe from the dangers of immigration and globalization. The father was also a staunch advocate of reinstating the death penalty, but the party under his daughter's leadership does not insist on this matter. Opening the party more to right-wing intellectuals has also been one of Marine Le Pen's initiatives. In foreign policy, Jean-Marie Le Pen was a staunch opponent of the United States; a tendency that his daughter is not entirely alien to and, prior to the Ukraine war, had good relations with the Kremlin and Putin's administration. Despite her father's anti-American inclination, in 2016, he had no qualms about saying that if he were American, he would definitely vote for Donald Trump. Marine Le Pen's efforts to distance herself from her father's thoughts and opinions, or at least to push these thoughts to the background, reached a point where in 2015 she expelled her father from the party and three years later, with the renaming of 'National Front' to 'National Rally', she practically sought to make the break with her father's legacy more definitive; although the initial ideas of her father's party still somewhat persist in the current party, especially the demarcation with Islam, not only with its extremist version, is still prevalent in the current organization. A party based on protest votes? In the context of the weakening of the levers and capabilities of national governments as a result of globalization trends and the inability of conventional parties to respond to the diverse demands of society, the 'changes and reforms' that the main far-right organization in France has made have created a suitable platform for garnering votes from a wider segment of society; to the extent that it is now less applicable to say that the party inherited from Le Pen relies solely on protest votes. It is said that a significant generational change has occurred in Le Pen's party, with 80% of its members having joined since the leadership was handed over. Marine Le Pen was able to reach the second round of the presidential elections in 2017 and 2022 alongside Emmanuel Macron, effectively eliminating the conservative and socialist parties that had continuously competed in the second round. Unlike in 2002, when protests against her father's victory in the first round were widespread, this time fewer people in France protested. Currently, the 'National Rally' party has a favorable position in polls, and it is not unlikely that in the 2027 elections, it could claim the keys to the Élysée Palace. A historic event in Austria as the far-right party is tasked with forming a government. Jean-Marie Le Pen passed away while his far-right ideas, once considered unconventional and solitary in France, have now become a major trend across Europe, with similar parties becoming an inseparable part of the political landscape of this continent and beyond. In Italy, the ruling party 'Brothers of Italy' (the party of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni) has emerged from the extremist thoughts of Benito Mussolini, a dictator with fascist ideas during World War II, and is currently governing the country in coalition with a party with similar ideas. In Scandinavian countries, populist right-wing parties are either part of the government or indirectly supported by them. In Hungary and Slovakia, populist parties are in power, characterized like all far-right parties by undermining the separation of powers, weakening or abolishing the rights of minorities and women, limiting media freedoms, xenophobia, and opposing the power of EU institutions in Brussels. A positive view and relationship with the Kremlin and opposition to aid for Ukraine in its war with Russia are also among the other characteristics of many of these parties. One day before Le Pen's death was announced, it was reported that Austria would likely face a government for the first time in its contemporary history where the far-right 'Freedom' party would hold significant power, and the leader of this party would become the Chancellor. Two decades ago, when this party entered the Austrian government as a small coalition member, there were widespread protests in the country. However, now the acquisition of the highest executive power by this party is not met with much protest. Over the past two to three decades, two approaches have emerged in the face of the rise of the far-right across the Western world: one is maximum effort, including through unconventional alliances between left and right parties, to keep these parties from entering higher levels of power while simultaneously adopting parts of their programs and slogans by conventional parties; the other is integrating these parties into power structures, hoping to demystify them in the eyes of the public and show that the slogans of these parties cannot be implemented, thus reducing their votes. It seems that neither approach has necessarily led to the desired outcome, and the rise of populist right-wing parties continues to peak. Various and repeated social, economic, and cultural crises resulting from globalization trends, as well as related or unrelated crises to this mega-crisis, such as the financial crisis of 2008, the euro crisis in 2011, the massive immigration crisis to Europe resulting from the Syrian war in 2015, the failure of military and security policies in Afghanistan and Iraq, the COVID-19 crisis, and ultimately the negative consequences of the Ukraine war, have all practically provided grounds for a shift away from conventional parties and politicians and a turn towards slogans and parties on both sides of the ocean that have come to hunt for votes with polarizing analyses and populist slogans. A significant difference between current far-right parties and former neo-Nazi parties is that anti-Semitism and opposition to Israel, even if only superficially, have more or less fallen off their agenda, and the struggle against Islam in all its versions has replaced this tendency. This change has progressed to the point where, for example, the ruling populist party in Hungary under Viktor Orbán has become one of Israel's strongest allies in the European Union. The Trump administration and its advisors' efforts to support these parties and help them gain power have also been noteworthy. During the previous Trump administration, Richard Grenell, the U.S. ambassador to Germany, was a strong supporter and executor of this policy. Currently, especially Elon Musk's support for the German populist right-wing party (Alternative for Germany) and his clash with the ruling Labour Party in Britain and support for that country's far-right party has sparked much debate. These actions have intensified the discourse of forming an alliance of populist right-wing parties on both sides of the ocean. Jean-Marie Le Pen, like most populist tendencies, was not one to criticize his record. In his memoirs, he sees no mistakes in over 65 years of political activity in the French political scene and continues to deny the gas chambers and the Holocaust; a sentiment that also applies to his dealings with his record in participating in the Indochina War and the Algerian War. There is evidence that he was involved in the torture of Algerian prisoners. He justified this by saying, 'Supporting and defending a young girl is more important than how to treat a bomber.' Le Pen opposed any potential attack on Iran and expressed concern that such an action could lead to World War III. In this context, he even defended the Islamic Republic's nuclear program and was a special guest at the celebrations of the 1979 revolution at the Iranian embassy in France, including in 1997 and 2008, where he again supported the Islamic Republic's nuclear program.