Abstract
This chapter is dedicated to the two leaders Jean Marie Le Pen and Marine Le Pen, their leadership styles, the party elites that surround them and the two leaders’ media relations. An in-depth analysis of the secondary literature and some primary sources highlights that there is continuity in the way the two leaders have run the FN. Both leaders are charismatic, they have created a personality cult around their name, they have governed the FN with an iron fist, and they have had a strong record in nominating family members to important inner-party offices. Yet, Le Pen father and Le Pen daughter differ in their relationship with the media. Jean Marie Le Pen has always had a strenuous relationship with the media. Yet, he nurtured this negative media broadcasting through provocations and anti-Jewish statements. In contrast, Marine Le Pen has normalized her relationship with the media. Seen as a young and dynamic woman, she is even a media favorite, who is regularly invited to talk shows, political shows and news broadcasts.
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However, she does not refrain completely from hate speech. In December 2010, she spoke at a political rally in Lyon and compared Muslims praying on public streets to “the German occupation of France in World War II”. She stated, “For those who like to speak about the Second World War , here we can talk about occupation … certainly there are no tanks, there are no soldiers, but it weighs heavily on local people”. Following this incident, she temporarily lost her European parliamentary immunity and was fined (Euroactiv 2014). However, she was acquitted in court in 2015. According to the judge, her remarks fell under the rubric of freedom of expression (Le Monde 2015).
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Among other things, Jean-Marie Le Pen commented that he was “deeply shocked, hurt, and the victim of a political witch-hunt” and would not support his daughter in the 2017 presidential election (New York Times 2015).
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In fact, according to Albertini and Doucet (2013), by opening up the media path and introducing the PR system into parliamentary elections in 1986, among other things, Mitterrand deliberately favoured the FN. However, this was probably a successful move for Mitterrand because it deflected the public dissatisfaction with his own party and policies and weakened the moderate right.
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Stockemer, D. (2017). The FN’s Leadership and Elites Under Jean-Marie Le Pen and Marine Le Pen. In: The Front National in France. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49640-5_4
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