Step inside an office building in the town of Nanterre, just west of Paris, and you are confronted by what the nostrils register as an odour of the past, for it's a rare thing these days to encounter the lingering taint of cigarette smoke in public spaces. The trail of it leads upstairs to a corner office and to the woman who has, in the past few months, come to dominate French newspapers and chat shows, where she is depicted variously as the new face of European bigotry or a herald of a new European political realignment.
Marine Le Pen, the leader of France's far-right Front National party, greeted me with an aggressive handshake and the abrupt body language of a person who has a lot to do. It was spring. A flurry of polls had just come out showing she would beat Nicolas Sarkozy if the presidential election were held at that moment (the election will take place a year from now), and she was working hard to press her advantage. She wore a simple blue suit and no jewellery, and her hair was pulled back somewhat haphazardly, with stray wisps dangling. Her gaze is steely, but her eyes have humour in them. Her deep voice, with its smoker's rasp, carries authority.
Her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, was a founder of the Front National in 1972 and served as its leader, and perennial presidential candidate, until his retirement in January, at 82. Along the way, thanks in part to his penchant for crisply expressed opinions – that the Nazi occupation of France was "not particularly inhuman"; that the gas chambers were "a detail"; that "the races are unequal"; that someone with Aids is "a kind of leper"; that "Jews have conspired to rule the world" – he and his party became emblems of European right-wing extremism. The height of his popularity came in 2002, when he reached second place in the initial round of voting for president and won the right to enter a head-to-head contest with the incumbent president, Jacques Chirac. Le Pen was trounced in that election and his party faded as a force to be reckoned with.
Then in January, Marine – at 42, the youngest of his three daughters – won a battle to succeed her father as president of the party. Almost overnight, she brought the Front National not just back into the spotlight but also into outright competition. The polls that show her matching or outpacing Sarkozy have shuffled the French political game board. Of late, Sarkozy has fired his diversity minister, declared that multiculturalism has been "a failure" and staged a "debate on Islam" that French Muslims saw as a swat at them – all moves that are widely viewed as a direct response to Marine Le Pen's rise. She derided Sarkozy's support for the recently enacted ban on full-face veils as a pandering political manoeuvre that addressed only "the tip of the iceberg" of what she views as the Islamisation of French culture. » | Russell Shorto | Sunday, June 26, 2011
