Paris (AFP)

While his party has historically fought it, Marine Le Pen now assumes a "continuity" with General de Gaulle, which allows him both to continue his work of demonabolization of the RN and to underline his opposition to Emmanuel Macron.

In a long article revealed by AFP and published Monday in the Political and Parliamentary Review, the president of the National Rally considers it "urgent" to "take inspiration" from the famous general in the current health crisis.

It even assures the Parisian that the RN is "the continuity" of the general's ideas while Emmanuel Macron is "the antithesis". And on Thursday, she announced that she would commemorate the 80th anniversary of the June 18 appeal on the island of Sein. Over a hundred Senans had sailed to Britain to form the first units of the Free Naval Forces.

It is not the first time that Marine Le Pen has displayed her "closeness" to de Gaulle since she arrived at the head of the FN (now RN) in 2011. She already mentioned it within the Generation Le Pen movement, which wanted "demonize" the party of accusations of racism and anti-Semitism.

General de Gaulle was however long hated in the party, founded in 1972 in particular by former collaborators and former supporters of French Algeria.

- "Pain" -

Marine Le Pen's adviser, Philippe Olivier, recognizes that there was "a strong anti-Gaullist current" in the party. "But this generation is gone now" and "time has erased passions," he said.

"To say de Gaulle is to say that we have nothing to do with Vichy or the OAS" and "it allows us to rewrite history", explains Nicolas Lebourg, coordinator of the Citizenship Chair at Sciences-Po Saint-Germain-en-Laye and specialist of the extreme right.

The reference to de Gaulle at least allows Marine Le Pen to break away from his father and former president of the FN Jean-Marie Le Pen, who writes in his Memoirs that Marshal Pétain "did not fail in the spotlight in signing the armistice "in 1940 and that General de Gaulle" remains a horrible source of suffering for France ".

In 2018, the co-founder of the FN had even told how he had tried in 1963 to escape Jean Bastien-Thiry, condemned to death for his participation in the attack on Petit-Clamart against General de Gaulle.

To his constituents, in particular blackfoot, Marine Le Pen said he kept "a critical vision" on the "way in which the independence of Algeria unfolded", without seeing any "contradiction".

- "Recovery" -

By opposing de Gaulle who is in his eyes "from France" to Emmanuel Macron who "is not from the country" but "from an economic class, from finance, from a caste", and by citing their differences, Marine Le Pen also highlights the gap which, according to her, separates her from her adversary whom she expects to find in the second round of the presidential election in 2022.

In the health crisis, which highlighted France's economic dependence on China, the reference to Gaullist "sovereignty" also gives weight to the "strategic state" defended by Marine Le Pen and to a less liberal economy . "De Gaulle gives a good dressing to a somewhat directed liberalism", summarizes Mr. Lebourg.

But "Gaullism cannot be reduced to sovereignty," notes political scientist Jean-Yves Camus.

"The patriot of Gaulle has never behaved as a nationalist", "a France locked in its only national sovereignty did not correspond to its vision of the world", abounds the president of the Association of deputies and former Gaullist deputies, Stéphane Viry .

He noted that de Gaulle was in favor of the majority voting method, while the RN wanted a proportional vote. "The political situation at the time was very different," replied Marine Le Pen, certain that the general would now support proportional representation.

Stéphane Viry especially sees in the far right leader "a crude attempt at recovery" in view of the presidential election.

For the secretary general of LR, party of the heirs of Gaullism, Aurélien Pradié, "it is time that we reclaim our historical heritage and that we do not let it be robbed by political vultures who have no qualms about it topic".

General de Gaulle "would turn over in his grave on hearing" Marine Le Pen, estimates the boss of the presidential party LREM, Stanislas Guerini.

© 2020 AFP