Jean-Marie Le Pen

There are just two candidates left to choose from in French elections Sunday: Macron and Le Pen. But a third figure, Russia's Putin, also hangs in the air.

Macron will win regardless of me", Abdallah, the Paris resident, said. That is the price to pay for a life in peace, but it also makes us vulnerable. I think Marine Le Pen is wise to choose Russia over China for example", do Santos, the Carrières-sous-Poissy resident, said. We are not prepared for war on this continent," Reynié said. "You know, if you are not a superpower yourself, you need to be an ally of one or several. She condemned the war firmly but still insisted France would benefit from an alliance with mister Putin, especially facing China", Reynié said.

Her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, founded the French National Front (FN) in 1972, a political party long viewed as "racist and anti-semitic," according to BBC News ...

According to BBC News, Marine Le Pen said her father should "no longer be able to speak in the name of the National Front." Nevertheless, she did say the "psychological difficulties" of being a single mother to three children have prepared her to be President of France (via The Times). While speaking to a group of voters in Rheims, France, she said, "Such ordeals instruct you and construct you." A friend of the Le Pen family reportedly said that Marine Le Pen's personal and political life was all rolled up into one during her adulthood. She climbed the ranks in the FN and used her law background when she became the party's director of legal affairs. Marine Le Pen has advanced studies in criminal law and six years of legal practice under her belt. In 1998, Le Pen took more of an administrative role in the party and would go on to work as the National Front party's director of legal affairs five years later before becoming president in 2011. She continued, saying, "She has described how being the daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen as the National Front was emerging as a new controversial force, on one hand, lead her to idealize her father, who was greatly criticized. "Marine Le Pen grew up in a very odd atmosphere, a family that appeared close but was actually very distant," according to David Doucet, the co-author of Le Pen's biography, "La Politique Malgré Elle" (via The Guardian). "She lived almost 20 years without her mother. Le Pen didn't grow up with many friends and felt that she and her sisters were shunned because of their father's legacy, which followed them even in adulthood. In her memoir titled "À Contre Flots" (which translates to "Against the Flow"), Le Pen recalled the horrific incident. Pierrette dressed up in a French maid costume for the shoot to mock Jean-Marie, who told her she should look for work as a maid when she attempted to claim part of the couple's property. According to author Cecile Alduy, who wrote "Marine Le Pen prise aux mots," the Lalanne's departure was sudden and without warning.

After years of seeing Marine Le Pen as a dangerous extreme, many voters now see her as a politician like any other.

Although born in France, he is the product of a family that moved from Algeria in the nineteen-fifties, and does not share the same personal history as the predominately Ashkenazic community that was largely destroyed by the Nazis and their Vichy collaborators. He claimed that Philippe Pétain, the leader of the collaborationist Vichy regime, which facilitated the deportation of some seventy-six thousand Jews from France, was somehow a champion of French Jews. Jean-Marie told Le Monde in October, “The only difference between Éric and me is that he’s Jewish. It’s hard to label [Zemmour] a Nazi or a fascist. “I regret the persecution of which I was the object, unjustly,” he said. If Jean-Marie is still the devil of the Republic, he and his progeny are ultimately the devils that people know. I asked Jean-Marie directly that day if he regretted labelling the gas chambers a “detail.” Most of all, I remember the look in his eyes. I think I also believed, wrongly, that the memory of the Holocaust, especially in a nation plagued by the stain of wartime collaboration, would serve as a kind of eternal corrective, that the great postwar antifascist reflex would instantly render the political fortunes of any denier null and void. But, in this election, there is hardly any mention of it or the history of Jean-Marie’s party at all, perhaps because his daughter has carefully avoided the memory question and even sought to position herself as a protector of Jews against Muslims, her new target. Once my profile ran in the Post, he never contested anything in the piece, but he called me a “compulsive liar” on Twitter, adding “Truth Dies in Darkness!” Before co-founding the Front National, in 1972, Jean-Marie was an army officer in Algeria. He has been a political presence since 1956, when he was elected to the French Parliament. Holocaust revisionism became an obsession later in life. In the early spring of 2017, before France’s previous Presidential election, I took a taxi from my apartment in Paris to Saint-Cloud, a wealthy suburb to the west of the city. The two sparred in a lengthy debate on April 20th, during which Macron hammered Marine for her admiration of Vladimir Putin and reliance on a Russian bank, and she attacked him for ignoring the plight of ordinary citizens. I was a twenty-eight-year-old reporter, and Jewish, about to visit the home of Jean-Marie Le Pen, one of the country’s most notorious Holocaust deniers and far-right agitators.

French President Emmanuel Macron faces far-right challenger Marine Le Pen on Sunday, in a rematch of 2017's presidential election.

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In 2017, in the first round of the presidential election, Marine Le Pen came second with 21.30% of the votes against Emmanuel Macron. Two weeks ago, she came ...

Meanwhile, the thin net that separates us from Marine Le Pen in power becomes thinner and thinner with each election. Perhaps even earlier, in the June parliamentary election. The far-right has manoeuvred to smooth out its edges. And not just in any election, we were going to vote in the presidential election. We, the youth, but also a large number of French citizens, felt we had to mobilise and show our dismay. And abstention is their leitmotiv… A Le Pen in the second round has become routine. And who is still shocked by her strong showing today? A “vote utile” (useful vote). Even less our common front against the far-right. The euphoria was over. France had nothing to do with Le Pen and his fascist ideas.

There is a gulf between the rabble-rousing national conversation about Islam and the daily lives of these French Muslims. But how long will that last?

In contrast, some Muslims almost want Le Pen to win to expose what they say are her weaknesses. But the biggest cheer came when Le Pen reiterated her pledge to oppose Macron’s plans to raise the national retirement age. We give them the best of ourselves, and we’re seen as less than nothing. When Le Pen mentioned Charles de Gaulle during her speech, one supporter clenched his fists, punched the air and shouted "Vive le general!" Among the crowd was Ahleme, a 24-year-old Muslim from Arras, who had come to the rally on her own, just to see what it was like. For that reason, Casa and most of his group of friends said they will vote Macron. “We can’t let Le Pen get in," he said. Marine Le Pen came to Arras for her final rally on Thursday night. Several Muslims in Arras also explained that Le Pen appeals to people they know for reasons other than race. Do you wear a veil by choice or are you forced to?” Sara El Attar, a Muslim activist, later confronted Macron about the question, calling it “infantilising and patriarchal”. Under Macron, 650 mosques were closed," he said, referring to an “anti-separatism” law drafted to "free Muslims from the growing grip of radical Islamism", according to Prime Minister Jean Castex. (The actual number is 718.) “Macron is chill, more at ease,” said the 25-year-old. For some it was because of his generous economic policies, for others because he has not joined other candidates in slating Muslims.

The Crystal Palace boss and World Cup winner with France has given his support to the incumbent French president ahead of Sunday's second round of voting.

With radical left candidate Melenchon taking a huge 7.7million votes in the first round a fortnight ago, tactical voting could come into play in a big way on Sunday. Her priorities concentrate on law and order and immigration, while her policy to ban the burqa headdress worn by Muslim women remains one of the central points of her campaign. His opponent - right-wing candidate Marine Le Pen - is making her third attempt at the precedency after beating out Jean-Luc Melenchon in the previous round of voting.

French voters cast their ballots Sunday. Polls show incumbent president Emmanuel Macron ahead of his rival, populist candidate Marine Le Pen.

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Despite polls showing French president heading toward reelection, there is concern that low turnout, leftist disillusionment could still see far-right ...

Financial support from readers like you allows me to travel to witness both war (I just returned from reporting in Ukraine) and the signing of historic agreements. Will you join The Times of Israel Community today? Israel is now a far more prominent player on the world stage than its size suggests. But her answers aren’t viable,” he told France Inter radio. That would be a much closer result than in 2017, when the same candidates faced off but Macron carried the day with 66 percent to 34 percent — a sign for analysts that Le Pen’s efforts to soften and “de-demonize” her party’s image have paid off among a large part of the electorate. Macron for his part said Le Pen was trying to mask an authoritarian “extreme right” platform that stigmatizes Muslims with a plan to outlaw headscarves in public, and to “abandon the founding texts of our Europe… that protect individuals, human rights and freedoms”.

Centrist presidential candidate and French President Emmanuel Macron wears boxing gloves as he campaigns in the Centrist presidential candidate and French ...

The leader of the France Unbowed party has urged his supporters not to vote for Ms Le Pen but has not explicitly endorsed Mr Macron. The big question is whether these voters will not bother to vote. Ms Le Pen does not rail against immigration and Islam as much she has in the past, but her programme includes hardline measures that would make France a much less welcoming country. Mr Macron has helped drive the EU’s massive package of measures designed to fight the climate crisis, has vowed to put the environment “at the heart” of a second term, and wants France to be the first big country to stop using coal and gas. Ms Le Pen has dropped her calls for France to leave the European Union and the euro, instead proposing a referendum on a new ‘France-first’ law giving citizens priority access to welfare, social housing and jobs. She has also steered clear of the capital, campaigning in rural France and former industrial towns, where these issues mean more, styling herself as a defender of “the people” against the Paris elite, embodied by a “globalist” president. Ms Le Pen, 53, is a populist-nationalist and castigator of modern, multicultural France, carrying the anti-immigrant flame of her father, the former far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen. Mr Macron won their 2017 run-off handsomely, but the polls put them much closer this time, with his lead currently around 55 to 45 per cent.