Free Republic

A far-Right French TV pundit who says immigrants should be forced to have French names has overtaken Marine Le Pen for the first time in the presidential race, according to a new poll which suggest he would face Emmanuel Macron in a runoff for the Elysee in April next year. Eric Zemmour, 63, who holds convictions for inciting hatred, is threatening to upset the already unpredictable French political landscape with his diatribes against what he dubs the "great replacement" of white French by Muslims and the loss of French identity and traditional values, along with warnings of impending civil war....

L’ISLE-SUR-LA-SORGUE, France—Wedged between river tributaries in southeastern France, L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue is known for its cobblestone streets and its sun-dappled outdoor market. But ahead of local elections on Sunday, the debate in this small town, and in others across France, has centered on the fallout from the beheading of a schoolteacher near Paris last fall by a Chechen refugee as well as the slaying of churchgoers in Nice weeks later by a Tunisian migrant. Across France questions over the place of Islam in French society and tensions over immigration have come to preoccupy many French and have pushed the electorate rightward. In...

Marine Le Pen, the president of the French populist right-wing party Rassemblement National (National Rally), congratulated the United Kingdom for regaining its “freedom” but went on to say that Brexit was a “terrifying failure” for the European Union. “After multiple twist and turns, the UK has finally regained its freedom. But this is a terrifying failure for the EU”, said Ms Le Pen. “We will no doubt see, over the coming months and years, that the UK did the right thing and will probably benefit a great deal. In fact, I have already noticed that the disaster-mongering has already given...

An absolute, ROCK-STAR reception from our French conservative allies today at the Right Convention. There is a grassroots movement bubbling. The room was positively electric. My words to attendees: “I stand upon this stage in unity with the French conservatives because if history has taught us anything, it is that when the chips are down, the American patriots will always ally with the French and English patriots to fight for freedom.” Western civilization matters. We all need to start acting like it. #MAGA #ViveLaFrance

More than 70 conservative mayors and councillors pledged support for President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday in the latest sign that France’s centre-Right opposition party, The Republicans, is in danger of extinction. Some 31 per cent of party supporters favour an alliance with Mr Macron’s LREM party, while 26 per cent would back an alliance with Marine Le Pen’s far-Right National Rally, according to a poll published in the Journal du Dimanche newspaper. Senior conservatives fear that Mr Macron is taking over the centre-Right while hard nationalists swing behind the National Rally following The Republicans’ drubbing in the European elections. The...

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has been ordered to stand trial for tweeting pictures of Islamic State atrocities, a judicial source told AFP on Wednesday. Le Pen shared the gruesome images in December 2015, a few weeks after IS jihadists killed 130 people in attacks in Paris.

Pope Francis needs to take tougher action against the United States’ most influential Catholic in Rome, Cardinal Raymond “Breitbart” Burke. The renegade cleric is not only undermining Francis’s reformist, compassionate papacy, and gospel teaching as it applies to refugees and Muslims, but the rebel prince of the church is also using his position within the walls of the Vatican to legitimize extremist forces that want to bring down Western liberal democracy, Stephen K. Bannon-style. Simply put, the Vatican is facing a political war between the modernizing Pope Francis and a conservative wing that wants to reassert white Christian dominance. Burke...

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Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon has pledged to unite Europe’s far-right into an international alliance of populists, and the European Parliamentary elections will be the first test of whether his strategy is bearing fruit. Leading political scientist Ivan Krastev has argued that Bannon’s form of populism is “likely to be the major alternative to liberalism in the coming decades.”

BRUSSELS (Rooters) – Marine Le Pen’s far-right party edged just ahead of the centrist alliance of President Emmanuel Macron in exit polls as French voters led what pollsters expected to be a nationalist surge in an EU parliament election on Sunday. The defeat for the president was narrow amid a sharply increased turnout that was matched across the continent in what Brussels is portraying as a positive sign, in spite of gains for anti-EU groups.

Speculation has been mounting in France over the role former U.S. presidential aide Steve Bannon is playing in the European election. The ruling party of President Emmanuel Macron has expressed unease over Bannon’s support for the leader of the far-right party Rassemblement National (National Rally), Marine Le Pen. The head of Macron's La Republique En Marche (LREM) campaign, Stéphane Séjourné, tweeted that Bannon was behind “an attack on the sovereignty of the election... it makes you want to throw up.” Nathalie Loiseau, who heads the LREM candidate list for the elections, said, “[Bannon] does not even hide his desire to...

French conservative Les Républicains leader Laurent Wauquiez is set to name hardliner François-Xavier Bellamy to lead his party’s list for May European elections. The nod has been criticised within the party for pushing LR yet further to the right. Unknown to the general public, the 33-year-old Bellamy is an unabashed conservative and a rising star in French conservative circles. A deputy mayor of Versailles since 2008, the young philosophy professor has authored two remarked-upon book-length essays. He notably also took part in the inception of Sens Commun, a political movement that grew out of the Manif Pour Tous anti-gay-marriage rallies...

Marine Le Pen has asserted that neither she nor her party want France's withdrawal from the eurozone. Speaking at a gathering of her supporters on Saturday ahead of the European elections, the National Rally (RN) leader said that her platform would now “look to change the EU from within”. Nationalists, Eurosceptics, and far-right parties are increasing their voter base all across Europe. The former French presidential candidate wants these parties to join forces in the European Parliament as part of one single "powerful parliamentary group". She even spoke of a "fusion" of three factions: the Europe of Nations and Freedom...

The champion of Donald Trump’s “America First” agenda, who was invited to speak at the National Front party congress in northern France by Marine Le Pen, spoke only about her 28-year old niece at their joint press conference. “She is not simply a rising star on the right in France. She’s one of the most impressive people in the entire world,” Bannon, an American nationalist who ran the right-wing Breitbart News, told reporters, without mentioning his host Marine Le Pen. Bannon met Marion, who temporarily withdrew from politics after her aunt’s presidential election defeat last May, at the CPAC conservative...

Marine Le Pen delivered a speech in Paris to thousands of her National Rally party supporters, who chanted “Macron, resignation!” as she spoke. She denounced Macron and the EU as agents of globalisation with contempt for ordinary people. She also said the European Parliament elections in May ought to be a referendum on whether Macron stays in office. “If Macron does not have the wisdom to go back to the people by dissolving parliament, then let the political arbitrage come from European elections,” she said. “The European Union as it stands is a menace to our identity and to our...

French President Emmanuel Macron called Yellow Vest leaders ‘hateful’ in his televised New Year’s speech. Macron promised that his reform agenda would continue despite the ‘hateful’ Yellow Vests continued protests against him and his government. Marine Le Pen, who has strongly overtaken Macron in voter polls, hitted back at ‘pyromaniac’ Macron on Twitter. Le Pen was unimpressed by his un-appeasing attitude toward those protesting his reforms agenda, calling him an “imposter” and a “pyromaniac” on Twitter. Her party, the French National Rally Party, on Facebook replied in depth. “At a moment when the nation is in need of conciliation, of...

Marion Maréchal, the niece of Rassemblement National (National Rally) leader Marine Le Pen, revealed she attended the Paris Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vest) protests on Saturday and claimed to witness violence coming from left-wing extremists. Ms Maréchal, who dropped the ‘Le Pen’ from her name, also said that by the time violence erupted at the iconic Champs-Élysées, the real members of the movement had already left. Saying she arrived shortly after 2 pm, she said, “When I arrived on the Champs-Élysées, the real ‘Yellow Vests’ were long gone. The movement was totally absorbed by left-wing activists. We heard: ‘death to capitalism!’...

With the European parliamentary elections just six months away, polls by Ifop and Odoxa show Le Pen’s National Rally in a dead heat with Macron’s centrist Republic on the Move party, each with around 20 percent of the intended vote. "There is growing discontent over high taxes, rising fuel prices and controversial reforms. Macron’s popularity has reached record lows,” Nona Mayer, research director of the French National Centre for Scientific Research, told FRANCE 24. Since taking office in May 2017, Macron’s approval ratings have steadily plummeted to between 20 and 25 percent. His image has been hurt by a number...

Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN, formerly Front National) party has moved ahead of beleaguered globalist Emmanuel Macron’s En Marche! (LREM) in voting intention polls for 2019’s European Union elections. The Ifop poll, published Sunday, is the first time Le Pen’s populist conservative party has moved ahead of Macron’s recently founded governing LREM centrist group in an EU elections poll, reports Euractiv. While the latest figures putting Macron at 19 percent resemble only a slight one point fall from the last polling, they see much bigger gains for Le Pen, who has jumped four points to 21 percent in three...

This month, the doors will open at the Institute of Social, Economic and Political Sciences (ISSEP) in Lyon, France’s third-biggest city. It will, its high-profile backers hope, become a breeding ground for the country’s next generation of conservative thinkers and leaders. It also marks the return to public life of Marion Maréchal, once the great hope of the French far right, who is the college’s director. She said the idea was to train a new crop of politicians and officials to replace the “visionless” Parisian elite. She was the youngest member of France’s parliament before stepping away from politics in...