BBC: France's National Front - 'The party of poor people'?

[pampango]

The French presidential election, beginning in April, promises to be a close run thing and the right-wing National Front party are looking to gain votes out of France's social and economic unrest.

Little wonder then that support for the National Front, and its patriotic focus on French jobs, French pride and French money, is winning popular support. Some who once voted Communist are now joining hands with traditional right wing voters.

Gone is the neo-Nazi rhetoric that was a hallmark of the former National Front leader, her father Jean-Marie. Purged too, are the brutish skinheads who used to police entry to party meetings. "We refuse to be labelled 'far right'," he says. "In fact, we are turning a little bit to the left. We're the party of poor people."

Nonetheless, immigration remains a key preoccupation. Ms Le Pen would give French citizens priority over foreigners for jobs, housing and welfare. "Because we have five million French people unemployed and there's no reason for us to have overseas people arriving each year," Mr Mandosse told me.

Critics insist she's a fascist with a nice face, pointing out that only last month she attended a far-right ball in Vienna, that was held on Holocaust Remembrance Day.


Marine Le Pen has attempted to change the
National Front's image since becoming leader
in January 2011

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16952027

With Le Pen gaining in the polls on Sarkozy for second place in the first round of the presidential election in April, things could get very interesting in France this spring.

[Selatius]

1. I don't buy it. The National Front is winning because the other parties simply fucked up.

This is an issue the Socialist Party should simply murder the National Front on, but because many of their MPs voted for "austerity" and didn't really put up a strong fight against Sarkozy's more market-oriented ideas, they find themselves being out-flanked on the left by a party that is blatantly racist against non-white people in France and is intolerant of immigrants, a party that is only gaining traction by advocating French jobs and French help for French people, people they define as basically everybody but the black Muslims.

[DCKit]

2. So they're being a bit more subtle than the Nazis. It's still the same thing.

I'd say I thought the French were smarter than that, but then they elected Sarkozy.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

3. I'm always puzzled that "populist" in America appears to have positive connotations.

This woman is a classic example of populism, at least as the word is used in the UK.