the real news is that for the first time an incumbent lost the first round.
This was widely expected. The strong score of Marine Le Pen wasn't.
Marine Le Pen's father is one scary man, who founded the Front National. Marine is also a member of that far right wing party.
Jean-Marie Le Pen - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Controversial statements
Le Pen has been accused and convicted several times[11] at home and abroad of xenophobia and anti-Semitism. A Paris court found in February 2005 that his verbal criticisms, such as remarks disparaging Muslims in a 2003 Le Monde interview, were "inciting racial hatred",[11] and he was fined 10,000 euros and ordered to pay an additional 5,000 euros in damages to the Ligue des droits de l'homme (League for Human Rights). The conviction and fines were upheld by the Court of Cassation in 2006.[12]
In May 1987, he advocated the forced isolation from society of all people infected with HIV, by placing them in a special "sidatorium". "Sidaïque"[13] is Le Pen's pejorative solecism for "person infected with AIDS" (the more usual French term is "séropositif" (seropositive))[14]
On 21 June 1995, he attacked singer Patrick Bruel on his policy of no longer singing in the city of Toulon because the city had just elected a mayor from the National Front. Le Pen said, "the city of Toulon will then have to get along without the vocalisations of singer Benguigui". Benguigui, an Algerian name, is Bruel's birth name.
In February 1997, Le Pen accused Chirac of being "on the payroll of Jewish organizations, and particularly of the B'nai B'rith"[15][16]
Le Pen once made the infamous pun "Durafour-crématoire" ("four crématoire" meaning "crematory oven") about then-minister Michel Durafour, who had said in public a few days before, "One must exterminate the National Front".[17] This was made in reference to the crematories in which both living and dead victims of the Nazi holocaust were placed[18]
In June 1996, he claimed that the French World Cup squad contained too many non-white players, and was not an accurate reflection of French society. He went on to scold players for not singing La Marseillaise, saying they were not "French".[19][20]
In the 2007 election campaign, he referred to fellow-candidate Nicolas Sarkozy as "foreign" or "the foreigner" due to Sarkozy's Hungarian, Greek, and Sephardic Jewish ancestry.[21]
Arguing that his party includes people of various ethnic or religious origins like Jean-Pierre Cohen, Farid Smahi or Huguette Fatna, he has attributed some anti-Semitism in France to the effects of Muslim immigration to Europe and suggested that some part of the Jewish community in France might eventually come to appreciate National Front ideology.
[edit]Prosecution concerning historical revisionism and Holocaust denial
Le Pen has made several provocative statements concerning the Holocaust which amount to historical revisionism and has been convicted of racism or inciting racial hatred at least six times.[11] Thus, on 13 September 1987 he said, "I ask myself several questions. I'm not saying the gas chambers didn't exist. I haven't seen them myself. I haven't particularly studied the question. But I believe it's just a detail in the history of World War II." He was condemned under the Gayssot Act to pay 1.2 million francs (183,200 euros).[22] In 1997, the European Parliament, of which Le Pen was then a member, removed his parliamentary immunity so that Le Pen could be tried by a German court for comments he made at a December 1996 press conference before the German Republikaner party. Echoing his 1987 remarks in France, Le Pen stated: "If you take a 1,000-page book on World War II, the concentration camps take up only two pages and the gas chambers 10 to 15 lines. This is what one calls a detail." In June 1999, a Munich court found this statement to be "minimizing the Holocaust, which caused the deaths of six million Jews," and convicted and fined Le Pen for his remarks.[23]
[edit]Prosecution, allegations of torture and association with militarists
In April 2000, Le Pen was suspended from the European Parliament following prosecution for the physical assault of Socialist candidate Annette Peulvast-Bergeal during the 1997 general election. This ultimately led to him losing his seat in the European parliament in 2003. The Versailles appeals court banned him from seeking office for one year.[24]
In 2005 and 2008, Le Pen was fined, in both case 10,000 euros for “incitement to discrimination, hatred and violence towards a group of people”, on account of statements made about Muslims in France. In 2010. the European Court of Human Rights declared Le Pen's application inadmissible.[25]
Le Pen allegedly practiced torture during the Algerian War (1954–1962), when he was a lieutenant in the French Army. Although he denied it, he lost a trial when he attacked Le Monde newspaper on charges of defamation, following accusations by the newspaper that he had used torture. Le Monde has produced in May 2003 the dagger he allegedly used to commit war crimes as court evidence.[26]
Although war crimes committed during the Algerian War are amnestied in France, this was publicised by the newspapers Le Canard Enchaîné, Libération, and Le Monde, and by Michel Rocard (ex-Prime Minister) on TV (TF1 1993). Le Pen sued the papers and Michel Rocard. This affair ended in 2000 when the Cour de cassation (French supreme jurisdiction) concluded that it was legitimate to publish these assertions. However, because of the amnesty and the statute of limitations, there can be no criminal proceedings against Le Pen for the crimes he is alleged to have committed in Algeria. In 1995, Le Pen unsuccessfully sued Jean Dufour, regional counselor of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur (French Communist Party) for the same reason.[27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34]
Le Pen has also been criticized for ties to "suspect" individuals, such as:
Roger Holeindre, a member of the political bureau of the Front National and a former member of the Organisation armée secrète (OAS), a movement against Algerian independence. However, Holeindre was also a Nazi resister during the Second World War[35][unreliable source?]
Roland Gaucher, a cofounder of the National Front in 1972, who was also a former RNP member.
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