In case you live under a rock, I will preface this ‘warning’ of Le Pen with who she is. Marine Le Pen is the daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, who founded the Front National / National Front in 1972. Initially, he did not have much success. Many times, in the early stages of the National Front, he would fail to even qualify as a candidate. However, after three decades of persistent efforts, Jean-Marie Le Pen and his National Front was finally a significant force. In the 2002 presidential elections, the National Front garnered 16.86% of the votes in the first round. This was enough to get to the second round, which was the first-time up to that point that a, “far-right party” had managed to do so. The opposition Jean-Marie faced was immense: international and French media began a campaign of character assassination after (((their))) actual attempt of assassination a decade prior had failed. According to the Guardian, “around a million demonstrated against Jean-Marie Le Pen in the largest show of opposition yet to the presidential candidate.” A popular chant among the gullible protesters was, “vote for the crook, not the fascist!” Unfortunately, Jean-Marie Le Pen ended up losing in the largest landslide in French history, but he managed to overperform in the number of votes he was expected to receive.

From there, the National Front began a decline, which culminated in the resignation of Jean-Marie Le Pen in 2010. Shortly thereafter, Marine Le Pen won her bid to become the National Front’s new incumbent leader. Marine is regarded as being more, “moderate” whence compared to her father and it shows. She has abandoned many of the core principles her father laid out, such as; a laxer stance on immigration, less ‘socialistic’ policies in order to appeal to the moderate right, and has almost entirely relinquished the promise to repatriate ‘non-European’ immigrants. Her recent traction among French voters can at least be somewhat associated with her decisions to discard many of the National Front’s founding principles. She is after all more appealing to the masses by being less fringe.

In 2016, after being relegated to and serving as Honorary Chairman, Jean-Marie was ousted from the party by his very own blood—Marine. This was done so after comments made over two decades prior surfaced of Jean-Marie describing the holocaust in a passing manner as, “another detail to history.” Without defending him from the French jewry or even consulting with her father beforehand, Marine unceremoniously kicked him out. What followed was a legal battle, instigated by Marine, to fully and thoroughly remove any influence Jean-Marie might still have in the party. She lost and ended up being ordered by court to allow her father to retain a position in the party, and one of the requirements was that Jean-Marie must be offered invitations to all top-level meetings within National Front. Despite this, Marine opted to forgo this court order and instead pay a fine each time Jean-Marie was not invited.

In 2017, after sitting down for an interview with Israeli newspaper, Makor Rishon, Marine quite boldly stated that she would be; “[the] greatest defender of Israel and French jewry” and adamantly disagreed with any accusations that she was an anti-semite. She has been staunchly against racially based immigration, which as I mentioned earlier was one of the founding principles of the National Front. Her party’s largest donors are all jews with nearly the majority of the funds the party has received come from jewish hands, a significant portion of her party officials are jews; and her closest advisor, campaign manager, and third spouse, Louis Aliot, is jewish. Louis Aliot makes frequent trips to Israel where he will discuss National Front’s agenda with local government officials.

Cercle Juif National / National Jewish Circle, an organization based within France that has Israeli officials in its ranks with at least 4 top seniors of the National Front being dual members. Under this secretive group’s guidance, Marine has been purging her party of “undesirables,” ie. those who have ever expressed discontent with jews and their conniving actions in the past. She has also, under her own volition, expelled many party members for “racism.” For instance, stating that non-Whites are ‘not French’ would qualify.

However, you might point out that she has made certain comments that flirt with alt-right views. This is merely a deception. Marine Le Pen has adopted the same strategy that Trump utilized to great affect: drop a few ‘dog-whistles’ during the campaign, but then relent on all that you supposedly stood for when elected. She is a fraud. The media is portraying Marine as far-right in order to soak up all nationalist energy that is building up within the country. This is a desperate attempt to quell the masses and to retain complete control over France. This strategy is only a quick fix and is ineffectual in the long run. It is not the grand solution they are searching for.

Now, if I were a Frenchman, I would still vote for Marine Le Pen. Why? Because just like with Trump, it will ultimately further along the nationalist cause and get even closer to the desired critical mass. The energy behind Marine Le Pen and Trump is what is needed—not themselves.