No, Marine Le Pen isn't okay, no matter what her view of Islam

French far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen speaks after his re-election to the far right party as his daughter Marine Le Pen, left, applauds during their national congress in Bordeaux, southwestern France, Sunday, Nov. 18, 2007. (AP Photo/Bob Edme)

The US Presidential election is done, with the polls being handed their biggest defeat in decades.

As a result, people are starting to wonder if the polls could also be wrong in France, giving Marine Le Pen a chance to win she might otherwise not have. So it’s worth looking at her, and the National Front party in France, and why conservatives shouldn’t rush to hug and adopt her, no matter what she says about Islam.

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This is a really bad habit American conservatives have picked up. We watch European politicians take positions on a few cherry picked issues, and rush to celebrate them, no matter what their views on other issues are. People we’d consider entirely unacceptable at home, suddenly look better across the Atlantic.

Tony Blair is terrible, but you’d never know it from many American commentators, just because he happened to be right on one issue: Iraq. Geert Wilders is an actual, committed socialist. But just because he opposes Islamic immigration, suddenly he’s held up as a HERO. It’s just like Donald Trump and his famous claims that he’ll build a wall.

But Donald Trump was unacceptable in the net, and the same is true of Marine Le Pen. Marine Le Pen is the head of the National Front (Front National) in France, a party founded by Holocaust Denier-Vichy Apologist Jean-Marie Le Pen. Marine is his daughter, and has now taken over the party.

It is true that sometimes parties start off run by nutjobs, but eventually go sane. We’ve seen that in Sweden, when Jimmie Åkesson took over the Sweden Democrats, purged the Nazis, and turned the party into a legitimate right-wing alternative to the Moderate Party.

But Marine Le Pen has not done this. She booted her father from the party because he actually broke French laws against Holocaust Denial. But let’s be clear on this: She’s not just her father’s daughter. She chose to join his party. She chose to work beneath him. She’s built a career trying to advance his party and his agenda. That she now uses him as a scapegoat doesn’t absolve her of that.

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She’s never apologized for that. And she shows the same tendencies. She compared the brutal Nazi invasion and occupation of France, with Muslims praying on the streets!

Under her, the party has taken large payouts from Vladimir Putin’s Russia, allowing itself to be used as a foreign agent. For her part, she’s praised Putin, calling him the defender of Christian values.

In Greece, she supported SYRIZA, the extreme left coalition that’s been trying to tear that country down. This itself is a key sign that she literally is a National Socialist. Even Socialist President François Hollande has compared her with a “leaflet of the Communist Party.”

In her current Presidential run, she’s declared herself against privatization, and supports a large, strong state apparatus.

She’s backed John Maynard Keynes’s Havana Charter for international economy.

In the US she’s joined the extreme left of the Democrats, and called for Glass-Steagall to return.

She’s called for something even stronger than Too Big To Fail: Nationalization of banks.

She has called for France to abandon nuclear power.

She has called for tax hikes on corporations, depending on how the profits are used.

After taking large sums from Putin, she’s declared herself to be anti-NATO and pro-Russia. She would recognize the Crimean Anschluss as President.

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No, Marine Le Pen is not a friend to conservatives. She’s a nationalist, yes. But she’s a national socialist, at the head of a party founded and built by Holocaust deniers and Nazi sympathizers. This is a party she’s joined her entire life. It’s now politically expedient for her to change the party’s image, but the substance has not changed. And neither has she.

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