She is best known as a member of the first family of the French far right. Her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, founded the National Front in 1972, a political party long regarded as racist and anti-Semitic. When the younger Le Pen took the reins from her father as party leader in 2011, she tried to redefine the National Front as more mainstream – to the point of ousting her father from the political party she founded after reiterating her claim that the Nazis The gas chambers were just a detail of the story. Le Pen, however, shares her father’s views on immigration. In her failed campaign against Macron, she sought to position herself as the Frenchman Donald Trump, claiming to represent the forgotten French working class that has suffered in the wake of globalization and technological progress.
But her economic nationalist stance, her views on immigration, her Euroscepticism and her stance on Islam in France – she wants to make it illegal for women to wear headscarves in public – have proved unpopular with the French electorate. was defeated in its first match against Macron. While “stopping uncontrolled immigration” and “eradicating Islamist ideologies” remain her platform’s top two priorities, Le Pen has sought to broaden its reach.
In the weeks leading up to the first round of elections, Le Pen launched a tough campaign for pocket money, often launching interviews and media appearances explaining to voters how it would help them tackle inflation and rising fuel prices, top issues French public. . The strategy seems to have worked. Le Pen had a much better poll in the first round of 2022 than five years ago, and polls by pollster Ifop showed Macron-Le Pen second round could reach 53% to 47% in favor of the incumbent. . But some of Lepen’s other political positions could haunt her in the second round because of the war in Ukraine. He has long been a fan of Vladimir Putin, the powerful Russian man who has become outspoken in the West over the Kremlin’s decision to attack its neighbor. Le Pen visited the Russian powerful man during her 2017 presidential campaign, but this time she was forced to remove a leaflet with a photo of herself and Putin from that post-invasion trip. Its previous abhorrence of NATO – Le Pen’s campaign platform in 2017 included France’s withdrawal from the alliance – could also be a responsibility. A recent IFOP poll shows that 67% of the French public do not believe that France should leave NATO. CNN’s Melissa Bell and Joseph Ataman contributed to this report