Le Pen’s RN takes aim at dual nationals and ‘French of foreign origin’ – Technologist

For a political leader as confident in communication as Jordan Bardella, a slip of the tongue is never insignificant. Especially when uttered twice in the same minute. Eager to dispel the “caricatures” made of his policy platform, the president of the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party declared on June 14 on BFM TV that “French people of foreign origin or nationality” had “nothing to fear from the policy I want to implement,” were he to become prime minister after the snap elections on June 30 and July 7. Provided that they “work, pay their taxes, pay their contributions, respect the law and love our country.”

“French of foreign origin”? “I think he slipped up, it can happen, we’re a bit exhausted,” downplayed Marine Le Pen. Asked about his own words during a visit to the Loiret region on June 14, Bardella avoided the subject, saying that answering was unlikely to “raise the level of debate.” However, the expression, a classic of the French far right, has never put him off.

In December 2022, fearing trouble on the sidelines of a football match between France and Morocco, Bardella said there were “French people of foreign origin locked into in repentance and hatred of France,” a “generation that has reached adult age (…) and behaves like nationals of a foreign state.”

“‘Origin’ is an old fantasy of the Front National [FN, the former name of the RN], a way of casting suspicion, by principle, on foreigners or those who are thought to come from abroad,” said semiologist Cécile Alduy, a professor at Stanford University and associate researcher at Sciences Po’s political research center. “The RN, like the FN under Jean-Marie Le Pen [the party’s co-founder], defends a naturalistic philosophy of citizenship, defined by ancestry. It believes that it is in the flesh, in biological nature, that French citizenship is transmitted.”

‘French on paper’

Since 2011, when she took the head of the FN, Marine Le Pen has sworn she doesn’t differentiate between French citizens. “I’ve said it over and over again, and my message is extremely clear: we defend all French people, regardless of the conditions under which they acquired their nationality,” she repeated in January, to denounce the “remigration” project discussed by certain leaders of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, her former ally (until May) in the European Parliament. But behind her desire for “appeasement” and her promise of equality, the three-time presidential candidate and members of her party distinguish between several categories of French citizens, based on their presumed “origins” or their belonging to another nationality.

You have 63.13% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.