French right leader Marine Le Pen announced her plans to attend a weekend march to protest against growing anti-Semitism in the country, sparking a storm of criticism.
Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, numerous political parties and citizens will join Sunday’s march. Le Pen announced that she and her National Rally Party will also attend the rally, which some see as an attempt to use the Middle East conflict to gain voter support.
The party’s founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, her father, has been repeatedly convicted of anti-Semitic hate speech and downplaying the Holocaust. His daughter, runner-up in the last two presidential elections and a major contender in 2027, has been working to restore the party’s reputation by ousting her father and changing the name from National Front to National Rally.
Of course, I will participate. [Party president] Bardella will be there. All of our elected officials will be there, and I call on all our members, all our voters to come.
Current party president Jordan Bardella stated this week that he did not consider Jean-Marie Le Pen an anti-Semite. In addition, government spokesman Olivier Veran claimed on Wednesday that Marine Le Pen’s party “does not have a place” at the so-called “grand civic march.”
The march was convened by leaders of the Senate and the lower house of parliament, the National Assembly, amid an alarming rise in anti-Jewish actions in France since the outbreak of Israel-Hamas war on October 7.
The Interior Ministry announced that as of Wednesday, the country has recorded 1,159 anti-Semitic acts since October 7, almost three times as many as all acts against French Jews in 2022. France has the largest Jewish population in Europe.
The Jewish umbrella group known as CRIF is among those not welcoming Le Pen. House Speaker Yael Braun-Pivet stated on Wednesday night that no political parties had been invited, but she would not march “next to” Le Pen.
With 88 MPs from the National Rally in the lower house, Le Pen, now an MP herself, has become a political force to be reckoned with. However, her party remains distrusted.
Changing a name does not change the roots (…) Yes, also an inheritor of Petain.
Prime Minister Borne was referring to Marshal Philippe Pétain, who headed the collaborationist Vichy government in World War II.
French President Emmanuel Macron, addressing the extreme rights, without specifying names, stated that “some pretend to support our Jewish compatriots by confusing the rejection of Muslims and the support of Jews.”
This is not the first time authorities have restricted Le Pen’s activities during marches. In 2015, she was actually suspended from a “unity march” that brought together world leaders after three terrorist attacks. More recently, in 2019, she joined a large-scale protest against government pension reform, but had to be smuggled out due to protests against her.
