Why the victory of Marine Le Pen will defeat feminism
Ksyusha Petrova
French TV channels last night broadcast live exciting reality show, which can be seen only once every five years: this, of course, about the debate between the two candidates for the presidency of the country, the climax of the election race. In the final ballot, which will take place on May 7, were centrist Emmanuel Macron and ultra-right Marine Le Pen, who, according to polls, is sympathetic to the majority of Russians.
In contrast to the restrained Macron, relatively recently appeared in the field of attention of French voters, 48-year-old Le Pen is a political activist with extensive party work experience, a pool of loyal followers and complex family baggage. The candidate's father is Jean-Marie Le Pen, an odious nationalist and founder of the National Front conservative party, which until recently was led by Marin herself. We talk about the main woman in French politics and why her coming to power (judging by the polls is unlikely, but we all remember the recent elections in the USA) would mean defeat, not victory of feminism.
Dynasty
The official autobiography of Marine Le Pen's "Against the Flow" begins with a terrible episode from childhood: she talks about an explosion that destroyed her family's apartment and injured for life - according to Le Pen, just like that, when she woke up in her own bed in the middle of shards She learned about her father's profession. Responsibility for the terrorist attack, which destroyed half of a multi-storey building in the luxurious suburb of Paris Neuilly-sur-Seine, was claimed by an unknown extremist "group of Jewish memory." But Jean-Marie Le Pen was in difficult relations with many: throughout his hectic career, which continues to this day, the politician managed to insult everyone who could be insulted, sent journalists to hell, shouted at party members and threw fists at opponents. In 1956, in one of these fights, Le Pen lost an eye, because of which he wore a bandage for a long time, later changing it to a prosthesis that attracted less attention.
Relationships between Marin and her two older sisters with her father were never simple: in 1987, the tabloids relished the details of the ugly divorce of their parents who had revenged each other, in school girls were harassed by classmates and teachers, and after graduating from law school Marin with great difficulty settled down to practice: none of the law firms wanted to deal with the Le Pen family. According to Marin herself, not the happiest childhood and the need to unite against the offenders in the school pushed her to a legal and then political career.
Now PR candidates present their whole life as a big conscious way to the presidential chair, however, according to a few testimonies, you can guess that Marin’s youth was quite ordinary and not in everything corresponded to the party line: university teachers spoke of her as a simple student shirker, and the former friends remember that Marin loved clubs, where she danced smartly under the afro-pop and samba. In addition to the father in the girl's life was another bright man - the godfather "Monsieur Eric," the legendary mafia, who has been repeatedly prosecuted for pimping. Apparently, the politician did not always share the ultra-right views: Le Pen’s first advocacy work was to protect the rights of migrants. Journalists Mathieu Dejean and David Doucet collected all these stories about youth Le Pen in their investigation-book Politics Contrary - there is a feeling that in this edition and in the official autobiography we are talking about completely different people.
Today, the daughters of the infamous nationalist do not spread about their relationship with their father: it is known that the eldest Marie-Caroline, who left her father’s party for the sake of the National Republican Movement, and Marin herself have not spoken to him for many years. Perhaps at first, the participation of the future presidential candidate in the life of the party was only an attempt to build a relationship with his father and win his respect: in one of the interviews, Marin bitterly recalled that the head of the family was always far from his daughters and was not interested in their lives, and barely If not their first meaningful conversation took place during the municipal elections, where the father and the eighteen-year-old daughter worked together.
Political program
Marine Le Pen, as Vladimir Putin diplomatically put it, represents a “fairly rapidly developing spectrum of European political forces” - that is, the far right, who won unprecedented popularity in France against the background of the migration crisis during the reign of the socialist Hollande. Although her position is obvious and even close, in an attempt to attract more voters, Le Pen deliberately distanced herself from her father’s National Front: Jean-Marie Le Pen’s party is associated with racism, xenophobia and anti-constitutional claims that the presidential candidate reasonably considered the risk for your campaign. At the end of April, Marine Le Pen announced that she would temporarily deviate from her duties as head of the “National Front” - to all appearances, this is a symbolic gesture that should remind voters that in the elections, Le Pen represents first of all herself and the people of France, and not some then political power.
In 2016, Marine Le Pen said that the traditional system is outdated, and she does not consider herself to be either left or right. At the same time, her election program fits into right-wing rhetoric: the candidate promises that within a year after the elections she will withdraw France from the joint military command of NATO, arrange a referendum on the Frechzit (France’s withdrawal from the European Union), return the national currency - the franc, as well as hard reduce immigration - primarily at the expense of migrant workers, refugees, family reunification programs and the "right of the soil". These are very radical measures for France with its concept of equality and fraternity, where they are especially sensitive to ethnic diversity. The past debates have shown once again that Le Pen is ready to defend his position sharply, not always worrying about the credibility of the arguments. Rational Macron criticized the economic aspects of the Le Pen program; she, in turn, showered her opponent with insults, saying that he would “sell all France with guts” as soon as she was in the presidential chair.
Nevertheless, Le Pen’s work on the transformation of the father’s party is worth paying tribute to: if before the National Front was quite marginal, today it is a popular party with a coherent program, in some aspects even more liberal than the centrists and leftists. After taking the post of head of the party in 2003, Marin removed her father from management - under her leadership, things quickly went uphill, and the extensive campaign for “de-demonization” bore fruit: in 2014, the National Front received 24 seats in the European Parliament (there are 74 in France ). Although the rating of Le Pen is lower than that of centrist Macron, the situation in the upcoming elections is very different from 2002, when her father went to the second round with Jacques Chirac: the French were so terrified by the prospect of Le Pen, the president, that they voted massively for the unpopular Chirac, avoid disaster In 2017, the candidacy of Marine Le Pen in the second round of elections is much less like a joke - and it scares.
"Almost feminist"
Particularly fierce discussion revolved around Le Pen’s promises to fight for women's rights. It would seem that the politician had all the prerequisites to become a consistent feminist: Marin lived with a despotic father, divorced twice, gave birth to three children in a year (two of them are twins), admits that the working week of women lasts much longer because of the "second shift ", and it is impossible to combine a political career with motherhood. However, human rights activists and activists do not get tired of explaining that Le Pen’s “feminism”, which opponents of equal rights sarcastically dubbed “national feminism”, is only a bait for voters who are increasingly taking part in political life and will make up more than half of the electorate this year.
French feminists launched a special website where they explain why the struggle for gender equality is incompatible with the far-right agenda, and prove that the National Front did nothing to improve the status of women. The most dangerous of the statements of Le Pen feminists include the thesis that all rapists are migrants, as well as her position on reproductive rights: the candidate believes that "women should have a free choice not to have an abortion." Instead of sex education, affordable contraception, support for family planning centers and daycare centers, Le Pen suggests “mother wages” - women’s advocates believe that this is only a way to chain women to the house and not allow them to realize themselves outside the family. The candidate herself has repeatedly expressed her support for the “traditional” family: Le Pen claims that “the family is mom and dad” and does not approve adoption by childless couples without medical indications. The participants of the Glorieuses movement studied the results of all meetings of the European Parliament, in which Le Pen represented France since 2004, and found out that the politician systematically votes against or refrains from discussing all projects with a "women's" agenda.
Although Le Pen regularly talks about equality and even quotes Simone de Beauvoir, she refuses to call herself a feminist: in her autobiography, talking about how hard motherhood was for her, she says that during that period she became "almost feminist" - but then, apparently , refused this thought. According to Le Pen Jean Messiah, the campaign coordinator, feminism is “a radical movement of the 70s”, which has already achieved all its goals, therefore its existence today is meaningless. Apparently, this is the official position of the headquarters of the candidate. The "fight for equality", proclaimed by Le Pen, concerns only white heterosexual French women from the privileged strata of society - such as Marin herself and her sisters. Anyone who does not get into the electorate of the National Front - women of Asian and African descent, refugees, hijabs, transgender women, lesbians and single mothers who do not have money for a babysitter - do not fit into the course towards equality. .
Photo: Wikimedia Commons, www.marine2017.fr (1, 2, 3)