Le Pen mutates again and moves closer to Trumpism

ParisThe ruling condemning Marine Le Pen to four years in prison and five years of disqualification—which will make it unlikely she will be able to run in the 2027 presidential elections—has changed everything. Since a Paris court On Monday, the far-right leader was sentenced for embezzlement of public funds.Le Pen has abandoned her moderate rhetoric and has dedicated herself to attacking state institutions with unprecedented vehemence and anger. This week, the leader of the National Regrouping (RN) party accused "the system" of using a "nuclear bomb" to prevent her from running for president, and the party called for street mobilizations. "If they're using such a powerful weapon against us, it means we're about to win the election," she asserted, referring to the nuclear bomb.

Her party's heavyweights have appeared in the media daily with clearly populist arguments denouncing a "political" ruling and a "violation of the rule of law." For the first time, the RN is speaking of conspiracy theories, of a "system" working against it, and is attacking state institutions, as other European far-right parties do. Le Pen's media offensive, populist arguments, and the strategy of pressuring the courts she's implementing in response to the ruling are bringing her closer to Trumpism, although she has always sought to distance herself. "Offensive with Trumpian accents," was the headline on the front page. Le Monde in its Wednesday edition.

"We are witnessing a form of Trumpization of discourse as the RN attempts to overturn the very meaning of democracy: it attacks the judges who represent the people and holds them responsible for the decline of the democratic order," he highlights in The Parisian Political analyst Olivier Rouquan: "Neopopulists want to monopolize popular sovereignty, so their rhetoric is: If we attack them, we attack the people.. Trump and Putin also use this reverse logic," the analyst explains.

Le Pen's contradiction

The strategy contradicts the de-demonization and normalization maneuver that Marine Le Pen has promoted since taking the reins of the party in 2011 and expelling her father in 2016 for anti-Semitic statements made by the founder of the National Front. The current leader's transformation of the party to broaden its electoral base, moderating its discourse and presenting the party as a party of law and order capable of governing, clashes with calls for street mobilizations to protest a court ruling and with the tone now employed by Le Pen, reminiscent of that of the President of the United States.

Trump has also demonstrated his sympathy with the RN leader with his criticism of the sentence on his social network, Truth Social, calling the conviction a "witch hunt." "Free Marine Le Pen!" exclaimed a hyperbolic president.

Le Monde This week, the newspaper wondered whether the RN's new rhetoric will continue until the elections and mark a change of direction for the far-right party. "A campaign with Trumpian overtones against the Republic's justice system could be a blow to this normalization, already fragile since Michel Barnier's government was censured in December," it noted. The newspaper also highlighted that the party's entire offensive against the justice system serves to avoid discussing the underlying issue: the embezzlement of more than four million euros through fictitious contracts for supposed assistants to the European Parliament. The ruling deemed the embezzlement proven and placed Le Pen "at the center" of the system that allowed the fraud to be committed.

Marine Le Pen, who had distanced herself from her father's approach and the more extreme ideology of the National Front, now appears to be closing the gap. Attacking justice and "the system" is a risky gamble for the far-right leader, who risks undoing the path forged by de-demonizing and attempting to present the party as the only force capable of putting the country in order and preserving the values of the Republic. "Leaving behind the famous de-demonizing and the search for respect, Le Pen, driven by anger, rediscovers the populist accents of her father. It's a relapse," journalist Renaud Dély stated in a Radio France editorial on Wednesday.

Back to the origins

Allergic to citizen protests, the National Regrouping (RR) has called for a protest rally against the verdict this Sunday afternoon, under the populist title "Save Democracy." It is a further step in this rapprochement with Trump and a return to the party's origins. The comparison is inevitable: in 1998, when Jean-Marie Le Pen was due to appear in court for assaulting a Socialist party member, thousands of people took to the streets of Versailles to protest against the disqualification imposed on the founder of the National Front. He was ultimately sentenced to a one-year ban.

At the time, Le Pen Sr. denounced a "judicial machination" and warned that "using the justice system to eliminate a political adversary is particularly serious," statements strongly reminiscent of those of his daughter after Monday's conviction.

The party, which has long criticized left-wing demonstrations that end in violence, does not want Sunday's protest to end in violence and has called for peaceful protests. "We have orders not to break anything, not to damage anything," one activist explained to France Info. "We don't have the strategy of storming the Capitol, but rather the strategy of Martin Luther King. We will do things in a very organized way," Philippe Olivier, a member of the MEP for the far-right party and close to Le Pen, told the same station.