In this blog project on the theme of far-right politics in France and Europe, a group of Lille University masters degree students in English-French translation present a wide range of reports published in the French media in the run up to municipal and European elections. Their English versions of the articles, complete with glossaries and information notes, provide an insight into the personalities, groups and issues influencing debate and how these topics are reported in France.
This article ("Pourquoi elles ont fuit le FN" by Stéphanie Marteau, 06/12/2013) taken from the women's magazine Grazia, profiles three former and present female candidates for the FN, all of whom were supposed to represent the disillusioned young left-wingers flocking to the FN in the wake of Marine Le Pen's reforms. What do these women say about how the party has changed?
For a glossary of party names, click here, for another on the French media click here and for an A-Z of key terms, personalities, dates and events, click here. For more about this project between the Lille University students and Mediapart English, click here.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As former members of the Front de Gauche or the UMP, they symbolised the 'evolution' of the Front National. Yet their recent departures show that the FN isn’t about to change...
She embodied the so-called ‘de-demonisation’ of the Front National, providing living proof that the “barriers have come down,” as Marine Le Pen put it: the perfect figurehead for an FN which insists on claiming to be a “party like any other.” Yet Anna Rosso-Roig, a former Front de Gauche candidate in Marseille, who switched to Le Pen’s Rassemblement Bleu Marine(RBM) in 2012, has just slammed the door on the FN. “The RBM is just window dressing for the media,” she explained. “FN representatives in Marseille are extremely violent and brutal.” In the same week, Arnaud Cléré, a northern farmer and ex-member of the UMP who joined the FN last year, distanced himself from a “sectarian and dictatorial” party.
The candidates who upset the activists
When they joined the FN, these symbols of ‘openness’, especially those who came from the left, received intense media coverage. They seemingly put a face to some edifying statistics: “Since the last election in Jérôme Cahuzac’s constituency [in southern France] in June, we have known that 10 to 15% of left-wing voters are likely to support the FN when they are up against other right-wing parties,” said Jérôme Fourquet a pollster for Ifop. But these ‘prizes of war’1 have had some trouble fitting in among party officials. This can be seen in the rather more discreet departure of another ‘icon’ of the FN, who emerged in the Yvelines, near Paris, in 2011. At 21, Venussia Myrtil, a former member of Olivier Besancenot’s NPA, and a mixed-raced woman whose father is from Guadeloupe, was seen to embody the “evolution of the party” that has supposedly taken place since the election of Marine Le Pen as its leader. For months, the philosophy student had been caught up in a marketing campaign that used her image as a tool, giddy at being on first-name terms with ‘Marine’, and being invited for lunch with ‘Jean-Marie’2. She was taken under the wing of Marie-Christine Arnautu, Vice President of the party, who coached her for numerous media appearances, and she stood as the FN candidate for the local elections in the Yvelines in 2011. Then she was abandoned by the party overnight. Nobody has heard anything from her since. “She was the focus of heavy media coverage and it went to her head, she even demanded to be nominated as head of the FNJ in her area despite having only been there for a few months,” said a regional party official. To hear him speak, it seems that the ‘liberal’ opinions of Myrtil, encouraged by Marine Le Pen, have often upset party activists. “She would display her homosexuality in a provocative way, she was in favour of gay marriage and adoption rights for gay couples,” said the young man in a navy (bleu marine) sweater. “She also campaigned for the decriminalisation of cannabis. We kicked her out.” Myrtil, who is about to enlist in the army, has moved back to the South of France.
Fake ‘happy’ turncoats
So, was this graft of left-wing defectors never really going to take? That is certainly what the numbers seem to show. “Of the 770 mayoral candidates for the FN, 9 have come from the PS, 5 from the PCand 1 from the EELV,” explained Nicolas Bay, deputy secretary-general of the party. One of these few happy ‘political migrants’ is Mathilde Palix-Androuet, a cheerful and unassuming communication consultant who works in Paris. Presenting herself as a “disappointed left-winger,” Palix-Androuet was able to attract media attention and give substance to one of the main themes of Marine Le Pen’s communications strategy, even if it meant glossing over some “details” regarding her political career and her family. Aged 29, this former intern at Terra Nova (a PS think tank) is an FN candidate for the local election in the Yvelines. She has worked her way up to become the n°3 of the FNJ in less than three years and owes her meteoric rise principally to her communication skills. She readily talks about her family “from a working-class background,” and her forebears who were “communists, railway workers and schoolteachers.”
“I was a scholarship student in Sciences-Po in Aix en Provence ,” she continues, “then in Paris. As part of my studies, I was an intern at Terra Nova for six months in 2010.” The public relations department of the FN could hardly dream of a better catch. Yet what Palix-Androuet fails to tell us is that her family broke any ties linking them to the left fifteen years ago. Her father, Didier Palix, is a veteran journeyman of the far right. A candidate for the MNR at the local elections in 2001, this craftsman model maker was also an FN alternate candidate in 2012 for the legislative elections in the Yvelines. Being a smart cookie, she initially only presented herself for the March local elections under her married name of Mathilde Androuet. “The truth is it seems very difficult for the party to attract candidates who are ‘disappointed left-wingers’,” suggests Jérôme Fourquet. Like Mathilde Palix-Androuet and the schoolteacher Valérie Laupiès, candidate for Tarascon in Provence, most of these pseudo turncoats have long since nailed their nationalist colours to the mast. If they take their time to make this public, it is because they have realised that being labeled as an FN candidate can be a heavy burden to bear. Palix-Androuet, aka “Elsa Vassent”, insisted on one condition before publicly committing to the FN (and being outed by her rivals): she would need a pseudonym.
Editor's Notes:
1. 'prizes of war': there are several terms used in the source article which, like this, recall naval or maritime idioms. This is the journalist playing on Marine Le Pen's own self-conscious construction of an image of 'clear blue water' (as the UK's Michael Portillo put it) based upon the punning use of her first name 'Bleu Marine' (navy blue).
2. Jean Marie: Jean Marie Le Pen, Marine's father and the former leader of the FN.
Translated by: Amélie Charlon et Steffi Sellier
Editing by: Sam Trainor