PARIS — You’d think the National Rally would be in turmoil after a key architect of the far-right party’s “de-demonization” campaign was found to have written homophobic, racist and antisemitic comments in a magazine and supported a Belgian Nazi until 2020.
But the response to the news regarding Caroline Parmentier, a National Rally parliamentarian and longtime close ally of Marine Le Pen, as well as revelations that the party’s lawmakers were found to have joined Facebook groups that contained offensive content, was a collective shrug.
Parmentier — who said her quotes had been taken out of context and denied the accusations of homophobia, xenophobia and antisemitism — does not appear to be in any danger of losing her job. And the National Rally as a whole does not appear to have taken a popularity hit.
Given the party’s sordid history of antisemitism and xenophobia under its founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, such scandals aren’t exactly a surprise. The French are probably even a bit desensitized to them after all that has emerged over the years.
The National Rally’s response has been to downplay the affair as ancient history that doesn’t interest most of the public.
Le Pen said the French are “miles away from stories like that.” Sébastien Chenu, a National Rally vice president, called the allegations “an old thing pulled out a dustbin.” And a far-right lawmaker who was granted anonymity to speak about the issue was even more candid.
“Nobody gives a damn,” the lawmaker said.
That public relations strategy includes a fair mount of political spin. Every little scandal threatens Le Pen’s relentless quest to make her party squeaky clean as she sets her sights on taking power in France.
“When they say that the electorate doesn’t give a damn, they are somewhat lying,” said Sylvain Crépon, a specialist on the far right at Tours University.
The National Rally appears increasingly immune from scandal, but Le Pen isn’t exactly an unstoppable juggernaut hurtling toward the Elysée Palace.
Going mainstream
Le Pen has for years doggedly worked on detoxifying the image of the National Rally, ruthlessly sidelining officials with extremist views or unsavory pasts. In a denouement worthy of a Greek tragedy, Le Pen kicked her own father out of the party in 2015 after he repeated his claim that the Nazi gas chambers used to commit genocide against millions of Jews had been a mere “point of detail” in the history of World War II.
While Le Pen ended up losing both the 2017 and 2022 presidential elections to Emmanuel Macron, her party’s support grew between the contests.
A study of the 2022 election by the Paris-based Jean Jaurès Foundation published last year showed that Le Pen has successfully erased the far right’s toxic image for a large chunk of the population.
Polls show that Le Pen is a frontrunner ahead of the next presidential vote in 2027, despite an embezzlement conviction earlier this year that threatens to keep her off the ballot.
But not everyone is convinced her politics are popular enough to win.
Bruno Jeanbart, head pollster at OpinionWay, said Le Pen has noticeable weaknesses with “older voters, more traditional conservative voters who haven’t joined the National Rally, and upper-middle class voters who still doubt [the party’s] economic agenda and are sensitive to discourse that is too extreme.”
“She is doing better, but not enough to break the glass ceiling,” Jeanbart said.
Weeding out the undesirables
The National Rally knows it needs to do a better job of vetting prospective leaders, especially considering how some of its candidates embarrassed themselves in the final days of campaigning during last year’s snap election.
Party President Jordan Bardella dismissed those problematic politicians — including one revealed to have been photographed wearing a Nazi Luftwaffe cap and another sentenced for taking someone hostage — as a “few black sheep.”
But internally the issue is being thoroughly addressed, a senior National Rally official said. The party is now using questionnaires and social media checks to thoroughly screen potential candidates in case Macron calls a snap election before his term ends.
“There is absolutely no tolerance for racism or xenophobia,” the official said.
But there’s also a limit to how normal the party can become. The National Rally must walk “a fine line between radicalism and becoming normal,” said Crépon, the academic.
“If it becomes too normal, it will lose its uniqueness and its appeal,” he said. “But if it stays too radical it will remain a marginal player.”
Le Pen ally working to clean up French far right’s image embroiled in racism scandal
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