Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s National Front (FN), called for banning her father, the party’s founder, from running for regional office after he engaged in rhetoric of implicit Holocaust denial. The elder Le Pen, who has a long history of anti-Semitism, at first refused to back down but then withdrew his candidacy. His decision, writes Nicholas Farrell, is a sign that the daughter may finally be succeeding in distancing the FN from the ugliest aspects of her father’s legacy:
When Jean-Marie Le Pen says, as he so often does, that the Holocaust is “a detail of history,” he tries to justify the remark by saying that he is stating a fact rather than expressing an opinion—but it does not wash: it is, of course, an opinion. His real target, I am convinced, though, is not the Jews but the big banks and of course Israel. This puts him in perfect tune with standard left-wing anti-Zionism: it’s not the Jews (good); it’s the Israelis (bad). . . .
Whatever. For someone like Jean-Marie Le Pen even to mention the Jews is fatal. This is why his daughter has insisted that the FN abandon all discussion of the Jews unless positive. What Marine Le Pen has not abandoned, though, is the FN’s hostility to rampant immigration and radical Islam. Indeed, she defends the Jews against Muslim anti-Semitism.
Read more on Spectator: http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2015/04/marine-le-pen-is-now-willing-to-sacrifice-her-father-for-the-sake-of-jewish-votes/