The old demons are still there. Marine Le Pen took the reins of the Front-Rassemblement national ten years ago, and despite her efforts to normalize her father's party, the legacy remains present. Like every local election, the regional and departmental elections that take place on June 20 and 27 have shown that the RN is struggling to renew the profile of its applicants. By searching, sometimes little, the positions of its candidates, one can find racist, xenophobic, anti-Muslim, anti-Semitic opinions, insults, and many prejudices on the color of the skin or the life of such a community.
Last weekend, the RN candidate for the presidency of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, Andréa Kotarac, confirmed having requested the suspension of Juliette Planche, in 6th position on his list and candidate for the departmental in the Loire, for having relayed anti-Semitic remarks by Yvan Benedetti, a figure of the far right, even more since his exclusion from the FN in 2011. Juliette Planche was before that a complete stranger, including in the ranks of the National Rally. She had never given an interview to the press, and her campaign was barely visible.
Alert 🚨 🚨 Juliette Planche, RN candidate for regional and departmental in AURA, deleted her Twitter account in May 2021. There were anti-Semitic retweet and sharing of publications from Jeune Nation, a movement with a Pétainist tendency.
They don't change.
pic.twitter.com/fDDkxDLggX
- Thomas Portes (@Portes_Thomas) June 8, 2021
In the Creuse, Geneviève Veslin was sidelined after an investigation by 20 hours of France 2, on May 31, revealed that she was the author of more than sixty racist or anti-Semitic publications on the social network Russian VK; it paid homage there in particular to the negationist Robert Faurisson. Placed in front of the messages posted by his running mate, Damien Demarigny, head of the RN in Creuse, had been firm: "for me it is not admissible", he had reacted, leaving to headquarters the task of judging the fate of Geneviève Veslin . Reached by us this Thursday, he still seems embarrassed: "I have no comment to make because they no longer belong to the RN, I have already said everything I had to say," he says. full speed. Despite this story, "I have no doubts about my ability to perform well on Sunday night",he assures before ending our exchange.
🔴 Survey - Departmental elections: these RN candidates who let loose on the Internet.
▶ The Eye of # JT20h pic.twitter.com/SQV8iZezOh
- Info France 2 (@ infofrance2) June 1, 2021
In Loiret, it was Pascal Auger who withdrew after the publication of racist tweets, while in New Aquitaine, Marta Le Nair saw fit to make a very dubious joke about Jews on social networks in 2015. , anti-Semitic statement she repeated in 2020, which earned her to have been excluded.
Jacky Marcaille, 31st on the list in Paris, still posts a thunderous “Sieg Heil Macron” on one of his Facebook profile, despite the many press articles mentioning it.
Departmental, "a real problem at the RN"
Nothing to do with Eric Dureux, sentenced in 2017 for sexual assault on a minor, but who had managed to hide it from his federation.
"The National Gathering discovers today (Thursday June 3) the sentence, which had been hidden from the National Investiture Commission, targeting Mr. Eric Dureux for extremely serious facts", thundered on June 3 the
campaign leadership of the party's departmental elections, specifying that the ex-candidate was also suspended as an activist while waiting to go before the conflict commission.
In 2015, this conflict commission, led by Nicolas Bay, had handled 33 cases of condemnable comments. 31 had been examined and 16 candidates had been excluded from the party. The others had been suspended long enough to settle things. The difference in treatment was explained by the responsibility for the comments, whether they were the author or whether they were relayed. No name had been given, no more than a period of suspension or exclusion, which was temporary. No figure could be given to us six years later, while other candidates who had made controversial remarks in the past are again invested, notes Liberation.
Why does the RN seem to have learned so little from his mistakes? He has little choice in his workforce, first decrypts Jean-Yves Camus, a specialist on the far right. “Departmental elections pose a real problem for the RN, because they require a joint pair coupled with a pair of substitutes. The party is not staffed enough, so that sometimes forces it to take those who show up. And despite the day before that the RN is used to exercising, there are from time to time holes in the racket, ”he explains.
Holes which could be bigger than they seem: the frontist party still has "a lot of people who joined at the time of Jean-Marie Le Pen", who are "no doubt" in disagreed with the choices of his daughter but who feel the wind blowing with an electoral opportunity.
"They say to themselves that this is not the moment to make their ideas prevail", and all the less since all the attempts outside the party have failed, evidenced by the 3% obtained by Bruno Mégret in the Europeans one year after his split , adds the political scientist.
"We do the maximum"
“The only political movement that does not have the right to have black sheep is us. They must be identified and they are obviously immediately sidelined, ”defends Jean-Lin Lacapelle, national delegate and member of the party's nomination committee. "I would prefer to have none and unfortunately we are discovering people who have fallen through the cracks, but there are also all those that we have not invested", adds the vice-president of the RN group to the Regional Council of Île- of France.
The party has however largely put forward its efforts to avoid seeing such situations appear. “They [the would-be candidates] have to fill out a form, indicate that they don't have a criminal record, and we do filter work on social networks. It's a monstrous amount of work, ”argues Jean-Lin Lacapelle. Monstrous but visibly insufficient. "We do the maximum: criminal record, exploration of social networks ... There may be bad apples on almost 4,000 candidates but what matters is to punish them immediately", abounds Sébastien Chenu, spokesperson for the party and candidate for regional elections in Hauts-de-France.He himself claimed to have separated from the community manager with whom he had been working for five months after discovering that it was the ultra-right activist and ex-spokesperson for Génération identitaire Thaïs d'Escufon. The young woman had presented herself under a shortened version of her real name, she had been hired as a self-entrepreneur "without knowing her commitments" or her media pseudonym, he said Wednesday, reacting to an article in Politico.
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It remains to be seen the impact that all these episodes could have on the scores of the RN in these two polls, from which he could emerge victorious in several regions and departments. In 2015, none of the candidates who had been singled out for their projections by associations, opponents or in the press, was elected. “It is a bit of a task but does not reach the electoral capacity of the RN, still believes Jean-Yves Camus. Even with the example of Anne-Sophie Leclère, particularly rude [in 2013, this former municipal candidate had compared Christiane Taubira to a monkey, Editor's note]. There was no effect on the result of the vote. It would undoubtedly be necessary that a major candidate, for example a head of the list, ends up with a considerable pot, and not only candidates at the end of the list, "he says. Julien Odoul,head of the list in Bourgogne Franche-Comté, he is targeted by accusations of fictitious employment and of having made fun of the suicide of farmers. But he defends himself to the point of having lodged a complaint for defamation.