Who runs the Front National?

Where does Marine Le Pen stand today in French politics? There have been some unfortunate changes since the 2012 presidential election when she seemed poised to gradually rise to the top level of accepted national candidates, a nationalist, pro-sovereignty and anti-Islamic patriot, a defender of tradition (within some obvious cultural limitations), courteous to Catholicism if not overtly religious, and concerned about the impoverishment of the country in the hands of Socialists bent on infinitely extending the Welfare State and the fatal open-borders policies.

I have pointed out more than once that her image began to change last October after her indifference to the occupation of the Poitiers mosque by the Génération Identitaire. But it worsened considerably when she was cool to the Civitas Catholic demonstration of November 18, 2012, and later when she declined to join in the big Manif pour Tous against gay marriage and adoption, held in Paris on January 13, 2013. Her reasons were always based on her belief that Taubira's law was just a smokescreen to deflect public attention away from the real problems.

The reason for her behavior, according to Nicolas Bonnal, writing at Les 4 Vérités, is that the Front National is, today, basically governed by a "camarilla" of homosexuals to whom she is loyal and beholden. Bonnal's article is very long, almost impossible to translate and relentlessly critical of Marine Le Pen's tolerance of homosexual collaborators, as well as other policy choices she has made that endanger the success of the Front National.

Here, in rather hasty translation and abridgment, are excerpts. He begins by pointing out that he liked her father, and had hoped that even a diluted version of the father would be acceptable. But that is not what has happened. Instead, he feels there has been an overestimation of her much talked-about performance during the 2012 presidential election that has misled everyone into thinking she is a viable candidate with a winning program:

Recently Eric Zemmour said ironically: the Front National is becoming a left-wing party, even an extreme left-wing party. (…)

Is the Front National losing momentum? Is the message of the formerly demonized party still being heard? Is there a message at all? Or is it being blurred now that the best party has been whitewashed, or I should say undemonized? Did they understand in some not very high place that January 13 was a splendid opportunity gone to waste? Did they understand that for Chesterton the family is the only State that creates and loves its citizens, and that for this reason it is worth all the States and all the parties in the world? Or did they flatly submit to the commands of an exceptionally efficient camarilla and a subversive lobby? Since when is the FN supposed to be the party of Islamophobia when in fact it is the party of the French homeland betrayed by the Gaullists? Since when has the FN, instead of being an arrogant and harassing factor, become the party of ultra-laïcité, when this very laïcité has, since 1870, been the bedfellow of the modern nihilistic and hedonistic nation? And since when has the socialized FN promoted a ridiculously high minimum wage when it used to be the party of low taxes? Above all, since when does the FN no longer care to be the party of unfettered thought (…)

Note: G.K. Chesterton (1874 - 1936) was an English writer who converted from the Anglican Church to Catholicism.

Bonnal then speaks of Eric Zemmour who, in a television appearance, attempted to nudge Marine Le Pen in the right direction, to bring her back home, with his accusation that the FN is now extreme left:

(…) Since she can provide few arguments to justify her noticed absence on January 13 during the demonstration to save the French family, Marine Le Pen mobilizes her strength and, in her loud, ever hoarse voice takes aim at the person of our favorite journalist (i.e. Zemmour) and his colleague. She gets mixed up and hands us a political stew on her reasons for not going: she didn't want to fall into the government's trap (when in truth she fell in by not going) that seeks to turn attention away from the grave social situation and so on and so forth.

What a stupid argument that is. For the social situation is indeed grave, it has been for a thousand years, but it never brought together a million people in the street. The social situation doesn't bring anyone together any more. The family does. It brings people together, and that is why the Socialists want to finish it off.

He explains that the family was the last obstacle standing between the Market and the Individual. The individual, alone, will go beyond what is human and seek only bizarre freakish pleasures and technologies: cloning, tattoos, narcissism. And a million years of history will be abolished so that the individual can inject himself with the eternal present.

He notes that Marine Le Pen's companion Louis Aliot justified the presence of homosexuals in the Front National by saying they fear the Muslims. For them the FN is a guarantee of laïcité.

(…) It is clear that by acting as an elite and domineering social group, to use a term that caused a scandal because it was so true, the gay lobby has earned the respect of the Front National - all the while affirming that a gay lobby does not exist - and has done its job well. (…) Of course, the media like you more. Or do they? Is it so certain, since she is always losing her temper with journalists who have presumably been won over to her side?

The camarilla, once in place (my various sources say twenty-two counselors, always hard-working, fresh and ready to go - since they have no family!) imitated Pim Fortuyn and demanded laïcité because of the Muslims, became post modern and tried to please the media and the so-called serious papers! Even on the diplomatic level, they did the worst thing - they wanted a satisfecit from the United States, and ended up with humiliating expenses, instead of developing an alternative diplomacy and breaking with the disgusting support of France for an outdated and dangerous Atlantic policy (a certain Mrs. Rubin writes in the Washington Post that France in small wars everywhere does more for peace now than poor Obama!!!) (…)

I will cut it off there even though there is much more. I don't know if he has made a good case against the gay group in the Front National since his prose is not always coherent, nor do I understand what the "camarilla" did with regard to the United States, unless he means that Marine Le Pen made trips to the U.S. to seek support. There was nothing unusual about that when she took control of the party. And if France is at war in various parts of the world today it has nothing to do with the Front National, gay, straight, or otherwise. It was Nicolas Sarkozy who sought a satisfecit from the United States and who steered France into anti-Western wars, and François Hollande who followed the same policies.

However, Marine Le Pen does appear all over the media. Bonnal makes a good point when he says:

It would be good if the eggheads surrounding the naive Front National president explain to her in three words the ideas of Marshall McLuhan: the medium is not a tool, the medium is an ideology. If you spend all your time on television, you eventually submit to it totally.

I will have more on Marine in the days to come. Some readers at Les 4 Verités weighed in:

- I still prefer a Marine Le Pen who denounces halal meat that is forced on us without warning to a Jean-Marie Le Pen who sees the gas chambers as a "detail"… That said, as far as the Manif pour Tous against pseudo homosexual marriage is concerned, Zemmour, as usual, is right.

- It isn't enough to fill up a page with pedantic and useless references in order to write a good article. This one is pretentious and ridiculous. Who is this unknown writer working for?

 - She still has March 24 to show everybody that she defends the traditional family.

Final note: Marine Le Pen could have, and should have, simply made it clear to her homosexual colleagues that she would go to the demonstration on January 13, and if they didn't like it they could leave the party. She should have settled this issue at the very outset, but I don't think she realized the government would really go through with its plans, nor did she foresee the tremendous outpouring of opposition to the law. Still, she should have understood at once that this was an opportunity to seize. Her political acumen failed her. This does not necessarily invalidate all the good she has done, nor does it mean she cannot repair the damage. But she needs to be able to admit to herself that she made an error.