A dispute over an apparent allusion to Nazi gas chambers has caused a public split between Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s National Front (FN), and her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, shaking the far-right party just two weeks after its unprecedented victory in European elections.
The uproar threatened to undermine Ms Le Pen’s efforts to shed the anti-immigration party’s racist image as she is negotiating the construction of an FN-led group in the European Parliament and working to consolidate its growing political influence at home.
In rare move, Ms Le Pen publicly admonished her father at the weekend for making “a political mistake for which the FN is suffering the consequences” after he made remarks published on his online blog about a Jewish singer that appeared to invoke the gas chambers of Nazi concentration camps.
His comments drew condemnation from mainstream politicians, Jewish leaders and anti-racist groups. They said the comments by Mr Le Pen, a member of the European Parliament who remains honorary president of the party he founded in 1972, revealed the unchanged extremist nature of the FN.
Aware of the potential damage, other senior FN aides to Ms Le Pen, who took over the party leadership in 2011, also weighed in, calling her father’s comments “stupid”. Gilbert Collard, one of the FN’s two members of parliament, called on Mr Le Pen to retire from politics. But Mr Le Pen shot back at his daughter yesterday, saying “several leaders of the FN” had given credence to “the phantasmagoria evoked by our enemies”. Denying he had ever made any anti-Semitic statements, he added: “It is [other FN leaders] who have made a political mistake, not me.”
Controversial remark
Mr Le Pen triggered the split when he launched an attack in the video interview, now removed from his website, on French and foreign artists who had condemned the FN’s European election success.
After being asked about Patrick Bruel, a French singer who is Jewish, he said: "We'll make up a batch next time." He used the word fournée for batch, which literally means a baking lot that will fill an oven.
Ms Le Pen said her father had been misinterpreted but criticised him for not realising the political damage his words could cause. She has insisted the party is not anti-Semitic or racist as she has tried to move the FN closer to the mainstream, albeit sticking to hardline policies on immigration and crime and in favour of dismantling the EU and protectionism.
Mr Le Pen's outburst will reinforce the refusal of Nigel Farage, leader of the anti-EU UK Independence Party, to enter into any kind of formal alliance with the FN, a move that has angered Ms Le Pen.
It also drew condemnation from Geert Wilders, leader of the Dutch Freedom Party, which is allied to the FN. – (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2014)