Marine Le Pen has polished her speech but her program remains just as radical, says a study by the Jean-Jaurès Foundation published on Monday.

The far-right presidential candidate has striven, since her arrival in 2011 at the head of the National Front (now National Rally), "to adopt a much smoother communication" but her positioning is "just as radical" particularly on cultural and migratory issues, writes this center of reflection classified on the left.

“If de-demonization is not programmatic, it is clearly discursive,” says this study.

Facing his rival Eric Zemmour

In form, this "de-demonization" was favored by the "harsher rhetoric" of his rival, Éric Zemmour, and a "stricter line" of the so-called moderate right of LR, as well as by the presidential party LREM, in a context of “transformation of the media landscape” favoring a “normalization of radical right ideas”.

Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin thus accused Marine Le Pen of being "a little soft" during a televised debate in February 2021, while LR deputy Éric Ciotti pleaded for a "French-style Guantanamo" and that Valérie Pécresse, future candidate, established a “link” between terrorism and “the most recent immigration”.

Transformation of the FN?

If on the economic level, the FN moved, in the 2000s, from neoliberalism to "social-populism", from the anti-tax party to a "tax on financial wealth" and to measures in favor of purchasing power, it is “always radical” on cultural issues, underlines the Foundation.

Marine Le Pen always proposes “strong measures to promote law and order”.

She thus promised in Brest in February to put an end "to the reign of terror of the drug mafias, whose crimes are equaled only by the Islamizing ideology with which they are so often associated", and to establish self-defense for law enforcement.

Harder on the migratory level

In terms of migration, its program has "hardened" since 2010, according to the Foundation.

It plans for 2022 to include in the Constitution the “national priority” which will deprive foreigners of several benefits.

She also wants, like Éric Zemmour, to expel illegal immigrants, foreign criminals and delinquents, and foreign S-files, as well as foreigners who have been unemployed for more than a year.

In terms of her image, she still arouses the concern of a majority of French people (51%, against 53% in 2017) but now 39% of French people (against 21%) consider that she has what it takes. a President of the Republic, and 46% that she “understands the problems of people like us” (against 22%).

Dressed in light colors, smiling constantly, the candidate chose to present herself as the “president of civil peace”, of “national unity”.

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  • Elections

  • Presidential election 2022

  • Marine Le Pen

  • National Front

  • National Rally (RN)