‘Age Hasn’t Softened Me’
Jean-Marie Le Pen, France’s confrontational far-right leader, is getting ready to rock France in the upcoming presidential elections the way he did back in 2002. Will he succeed?
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By Tracy McNicoll
Newsweek
Updated: 6:05 p.m. ET Feb. 16, 2007
Feb. 16, 2007 - Can he do it again?
Jean-Marie Le Pen, France's combative far-right leader, caught mainstream politicians off-guard in the presidential elections of 2002 with an upset defeat of a sitting Socialist prime minister, which earned him a spot in the runoff against President
Jacques Chirac. The surprisingly high level of popular support sent a soul-searching nation into the streets and out to the polls to keep him out of France’s top job. In this year’s elections, which start April 22, Le Pen, 78, has lost the element of surprise. Mainstream candidates won’t underestimate him this time—they’re already angling to keep Le Pen and his National Front party at bay. But the veteran provocateur seems to be calm. He spoke with NEWSWEEK’s Tracy McNicoll by phone from the European Parliament in Strasbourg. Excerpts:
NEWSWEEK: After your first-round upset in 2002, are your opponents adapting to your candidacy this time?
Jean-Marie Le Pen: Sure. Mostly because my warnings proved correct in most cases. The things that had people demonizing me before now have people considering me, saying, “Actually, he wasn’t wrong. He was seeing things the way they are.” It’s a phenomenon political analysts have called the “Le Pen-ization of mentalities.” I didn’t name it. It’s about my competitors’ analyses being close to mine. And their proposals are often, even bluntly, borrowed from my program.
And your competitors’ methods? [Socialist candidate] Ségolène Royal’s “participative democracy” and “citizen meetings” for example—is that a reaction to your 2002 success?
It isn’t too effective. Madame Ségolène Royal is gathering her friends together. And it’s always nice to get together with friends. But, to be president, you need a little more than your friends. So, these meetings where the choir comes to applaud you don’t seem to me the key to success.
[Interior Minister] Nicolas Sarkozy’s adversaries accuse him of fishing for your voters.
He tries—that’s the name of the game. But his method benefits me more than it hurts me. You can see it in polls, when Sarkozy says things close to mine, people say, “Oh, Sarkozy’s great! He’s nice!” But that doesn’t mean they’ll vote for him. At least not in the first round.
Some are saying you have become more moderate with time, perhaps with age?
No, I haven’t softened too much, don’t worry. Age hasn’t softened me too much.
But your style has changed.
Sure, one adapts to the adversary, to the environment. We’re in battle—is the battlefield not master of the tactical soul? Surely a sailor fighting on land adopts the tactics of an infantryman. And an infantryman who finds himself on a ship becomes a sailor. It’s pretty instinctive for me. I don’t feel like I’ve changed. But if I have, maybe it’s because the media and my adversaries don’t have the same hostile, bellicose attitude they used to have. So since I feel less threatened or attacked, I’m easier to talk to.
You used to express yourself differently. What happened to that old Le Pen? Didn’t you used to say things like that the Arab-Islamic world was colonizing France?
That it was a risk, yes. I provide the example of Kosovo. Kosovo was Serb, and Albanian immigration progressively invaded it and Kosovo is no longer Serb; now it wants to be Albanian and independent. The same goes for Sri Lanka. And for everywhere because there are these imperative rules. It’s also a little like what happened in the United States, is it not?
In your words, not mine.
At its birth. Immigration conquered, do you see? It’s true.
Sure, it’s a country of immigrants.
European immigration conquered the peoples occupying that land, did it not?
Yes.
Yes, there. Right. I won’t say more. There are these historically notorious phenomena. So we can’t pretend we don’t notice the threat weighing on us. When 10 million foreigners enter a country like ours in 30 years, mostly from the Third World—and when the global population rose from 1 to 7 billion in 100 years and continues to grow—I worry about finding myself in a country without defenses or borders, subject to a crazy and criminal immigration policy. But I’ve always said it wasn’t the immigrants’ fault and that we shouldn’t be angry with them but exclusively with the French politicians, right and left, who betrayed their mission to defend the French nation and people.
A recent survey found 48 percent of French people would find it acceptable to have National Front ministers in government within the next few years.
Why not? You know, we have millions of voters and no deputies. That’s shocking for everyone.
Does it prove that 2002 legitimized you in French public opinion?
But I was first elected as a parliamentarian 51 years ago. So, it seems to me difficult to quarrel with my democratic legitimacy since I have spent over 30 years as a parliamentarian.
But your 2002 upset changed public opinion on your National Front party?
Well, yes, the National Front doesn’t get TV, radio or newspaper coverage. So its image depends on its adversaries, since it can’t create it itself. Except a little bit during election campaigns, when people can see it directly.
Does UDF leader François Bayrou worry you? Some peg him for “third man” this time around.
But I will either be first or second. So it doesn’t bother me if Bayrou is third.
Tough to talk about a “third man” anyway when there’s a woman this time....
Absolutely! Me, I have nothing against women. I am pretty much a gynophile. [Laughs.]
If you make the May 6 runoff, will you be facing Royal or Sarkozy?
Who knows? I’ll take the one the Good Lord gives me.
Do you have a preference?
No, my word, no. I’ll take either one on, perhaps with different tactics. But they represent the same forces, don’t they? It’s the system—that has gone on 30 years, alternating or cohabiting—that tolerates one as well as the other. For me, there is no difference. Whether it be Madame Royal or Monsieur Sarkozy. I will fight them with the same ardor and loyalty.
You voted “no” in the 2005 referendum on the European Constitution.
That must be an advantage; 55 percent of French people voted no when Bayrou, Royal and Sarkozy supported the yes side. They represented 92 percent of the political class and they were crushed.
Will that reflex kick back in? It’s not showing up in polls today.
Polls go up and down. One day we’re at the peak, the next day we’re lower down. I was, generally speaking, under 10 percent—at 8 or 6 percent—a few days before I was in the runoff [in 2002]. So I don’t worry much.
What about the pronouncement you made several years ago, that Nazi gas chambers were “a detail of WWII history”?
These are subjects that I don’t discuss. They are too costly for us.
How?
They are subjects I forbid myself to discuss. One day, I happened to discuss it and it cost me 150 million old francs [in fines, or €183,000—about $240,000]. I consider it off-limits to me.
Are there other subjects like that?
They are multiplying. The space for liberty is diminishing in a country that doesn’t have the Second Amendment. So we must make a virtue of necessity.
Newsweek interviews Le Pen
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Originally Posted by Erik
! But even discounting that fact, you somehow managed to flunk your division by 6.56 :hmmm: )
