FN’s rise has since then been called “La vague Bleu Marine” – The Navy Blue wave, a pun on the word “marine” meaning both navy for the iconic colour of the party and the first name of Le Pen.
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The FN’s success on Sunday has triggered an immediate debate on whether the traditional parties should urge voters to back any candidate opposing the far-right in the second round.
Marine Le Pen’s region includes Calais, where thousands of migrants live in makeshift camps in hopes of reaching Britain.
The governing Socialist Party, which dominated councils of French districts, failed in the third election test to appease discontent voters on economic woes and security worries that the National Front benefit from to reshape the country’s political landscape and challenge for the presidential election in 2017.
First, you’ve got Marine Le Pen, the president of the right-wing National Front, which just won big in regional elections. The Republicans and its allies won 26.65 percent and the Socialists 23.12.
But many in President Francois Hollande’s party are unhappy about giving up all regional representation across swathes of the country, and on Monday, Jean-Pierre Masseret, who leads the Socialists in the eastern region, resisted calls from his party chief to pull out.
The anti-Semitism that pervaded the party under its former leader Jean-Maire Le Pen has been replaced by anti-Islam sentiment, with Le Pen targeting everything from halal meat to replacement pork dinners for Muslim pupils in schools. “Congratulations to marine Le Pen and National Front!” wrote a popular Russian nationalist blogger.
After the anti-immigration party’s strong showing, the main parties on the right and left must now decide whether to come to an agreement to try to stop the FN from winning control at regional level in next Sunday’s second-round run-offs.
What is to be done to minimize the advance of the National Front, in the December 13 runoff election and thereafter?
As France has runoff elections, there will be a second round on Sunday, Dec. 13 to determine who will actually serve the six-year terms. “We’ll see”, she said. In modern politics, this tendency tends to benefit the political right.
The FN’s anti-EU and anti-immigrant narrative has been a lightning rod for many French who have lost faith in mainstream parties after years of double-digit unemployment and a sense of deepening inequality.
The FN’s repeated linking of immigration with terrorism has also helped it climb in the polls since the gun and suicide bombing assaults in Paris. Here are three things you need to know about FN. In 2010, Le Pen compared French Muslims praying in the street to Nazis in German-occupied Vichy France.
“Take heart at a time of ill fortune”, he said in a tweet accompanying the footage, which has since been removed.
Le Pen admitted in September 2014 that her party received an .7 million loan from the Russian-owned First Czech-Russian Bank.
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“A vote for the far right is a vote for Isis” (or Daesh as the extremist group is known in France) has been a common statement from mainstream French politicians in recent weeks.
