March 28, 2025 - 1:00pm
When Jean-Marie Le Pen referred to the Holocaust as a “detail” of the Second World War in 1987, he probably didn’t know that it would cast a dark shadow over his party, the Front National. For decades, accusations of antisemitism played a large role in his political marginalisation — accusations which he never did much to brush away.
Nearly four decades later, his granddaughter Marion Maréchal and the leader of the rechristened Rassemblement National Jordan Bardella have both headed to Israel at the invitation of Israel’s Minister of Diaspora Affairs, Amichai Chikli.
The two nationalist leaders visited some of the areas targeted during the Hamas terrorist attacks of 7 October 2023, and warned against the rise of antisemitism. Bardella was quick to point out that France and Israel were both victims of “Islamic fundamentalism”, the “biggest threat” they face. The parallels between the attack on the Nova festival in Israel in 2023 and the Bataclan in Paris in 2015 are obvious to many French citizens. It is with this shared sense of danger that Bardella is trying to appeal to his Jewish compatriots.
Pilgrimages to Israel and meetings with Israeli leaders are common in nationalist European politics. Hungary’s Viktor Orbán has met Benjamin Netanyahu several times, while Geert Wilders from the Netherlands has met and lavishly praised the Israeli Prime Minister.
In France, Marine Le Pen went further and purged from the RN ranks any members deemed to be too toxic, starting with her own father, who was expelled in 2015 after reiterating his infamous “point of detail” argument.
In her efforts to clean up the party, she has been helped by an unlikely ally: La France Insoumise, the radical Left party of Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Over the last few years, and even more so since the 7 October attacks, Mélenchon and his allies have refused to condemn Hamas as a terrorist organisation and engaged in antisemitic dogwhistles, such as leaning on stereotypes about Jews and banking.
The staunch defence of Palestine has largely paid off politically in France’s suburbs, which host large Muslim communities. On the flip side, however, a staggering 92% of French Jews now consider La France Insoumise to be a driver of antisemitism, well ahead of the RN at 49%. Even the centre-left publication Le Monde ran an editorial blasting Mélenchon for his party’s use of antisemitic tropes.
The consequence of this is that many French Jews, if forced to choose between Mélenchon and Le Pen, are willing to look past the RN’s unseemly past. Take Serge Klarsfeld, the “Nazi-hunter” who discovered that Adolf Eichmann was in Argentina. “Marine Le Pen is the head of a party which supports Israel and supports the Jews,” he said last year. “So we gave this advice to those who will be faced with this runoff between the far-Left and what used to be the far-Right, which for us is now a populist party, to vote for the Right.”
Bardella’s trip to Israel this week also reflects a larger evolution in France, and in much of Europe, of nationalist politics. Now presenting themselves as muscular defenders of standard liberal values against the external threat of Islamism, the old battles of the traditionalist Right against Jews and sexual minorities are in the rear-view mirror. In fact, many of Le Pen’s arguments against mass migration are framed as a protection of women’s rights, freedom of speech and the defence of minorities.
The normalisation continues, as Bardella visits Yad Vashem, Israel’s official Holocaust memorial. His break from Jean-Marie Le Pen’s reticence about the Holocaust could not be more pronounced. “The concentration camps were the height of barbarism,” he posted on Wednesday. As political chaos continues to engulf a splintered French parliament without a majority, Bardella’s party has worked hard to remove any electoral barriers. Israel, clearly, is an important stop on the RN’s road to the Elysée.
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SubscribeJews are not an existential threat to the West, Islam is
Jews have contributed highly to the Arts, Science. Islam not so much
Jews have no desire to replace Western Society with a Jewish state, Islam does
you probaly listen to music that’s Jewish, comedy , movies that are Jewish, you benefit from advancements that came from Jews.
Now make that list of Islamic culture, advancements, very short isn’t it
btw not Jewish myself
Islam had its Golden Age
The Golden Age of Islam is way overrated. What little free speech and scientific development there was was obliterated by the emergence of ever more extremist religion by the 13th century. And let us not forget Christians and Jews had to pay jizya (protection money) living in the land they once legitimately owned and was colonized by invading Muslim armies. Do you know who else demanded protection money in modern times? The mafia. Time to take off those rose tinted glasses.
It’s a mistake to say that the Islamic world contributed nothing. Simple as that.
It’s at least a link in a classical chain going back to Aristotle.
Always interesting to consider the cultural and political factors that would have made it impossible for a scientific or industrial revolution to take place in the Islamic world, or elsewhere.
Political and religious authoritarian structures; No culture of individualistic inter-competition, etc.
Yes but a lot of this was despite Islam not because of it. Much of the advance in science during the “Golden Age”was based on the rediscovery of theories first postulated by the Greeks and ripping off and taking credit for Hindu mathematical advances (like the concept of zero). The translation of Greek works into Arabic and later into European languages was mostly done by Christians and Jews as they were competent in more than one language. Scientists were persecuted by the orthodox religious authorities just as later in Europe they were by the Church. The fact that this scientific flowering was so easily snuffed out leaving Islamic societies far far behind the West in terms of innovation even to this day shows what a dead hand the religion has on intellectual curiosity and progress.
It is small minded to equate all of Islam with the “Muslim Brothers” and their various subdivisions in different countries. This is like condemning all Christianity because of some radical factions and their historical pogroms. Such things are all to frequent in human history and no nation is immune to such mass hysteria. Especially during war, when social norms break down, and the existential struggle is for food and territory and becomes all against all, and devil take the hindmost.
Jews are always the canary in the coal mine. If it’s not safe for them, it’s ultimately not safe for anyone.
I wish more Jews in the U.S. would wake up as well. But too many of them are merely cultural Jews and not practicing. Therefore, they support the very people who, if in power, would call for their destruction. It’s sad to see.
i think it’s a generational trauma, i.e they said what’s the biggest threat to Jews, well it’s the White ,Christian far right, we need to dismantle that.
Of course in reality the only people who can really save the Jews are those same people, because while yes White people did cause the largest calamity in their existence, they also saved them from those people
As we see with Anti-semitic attacks, the large majority are from the Far left and Muslim
An Israel without the Strong , cohesive west, does’nt last long
Jews without that strong, cohesive west does’nt last long
China will be no friend of the Jews, they won’t protect them from the hatred all 2 common within Islam. Only the West can, and that’s means the White west
I think it’s more a case of them realizing that Islamic fundamentalism has very little support here in the US. The mainstream of both parties was pro-Israel before the populist movement, and Trump himself is strongly pro-Israel as are most of his supporters. Thus, the political realignment has yet to have much effect on American Jews specifically.
On a more basic level, Most of the people on college campuses chanting “from the river to the sea” are too young to remember 9/11, but most Americans do. I can’t imagine many who were alive to see the towers fall have much sympathy for Hamas. That was one of those defining events. Everyone remembers where they were and what they were doing when they heard about it. Everyone who can remember does remember that day and the motivations of the people behind it. Young people are badly outnumbered on this issue and will be for a while yet.
Still, it will be interesting to see if the trend shifts for the younger Jews, who are enduring the brunt of the antisemitism on college campuses and being harassed and blocked from entering buildings despite the fact that most of them probably have been Americans for generations even going back before WWII. To me, that’s what’s really sad, given how much the Jews have suffered over their history. To see people chanting in support of the disgusting terrorists who perpetrated the Oct. 7th attacks, the same sort who brought down the towers, that absolutely turns my stomach. It’s their right as Americans to say whatever they believe, and it’s my right to call it vile, disgusting, and unbelievably stupid.
Anybody who refutes or denies the real threat of Islam is living in cloud cuckoo land. The Jews are the clearest indicator out there of Islams intent and the West knows it but are like rabbits in the headlights, and we all know how that ends. Swathes of the U.K are unrecognizable as communities spread and encourage their preferred cultural norms, including hatred of anything and everything that doesn’t represent their singular thinking in Sharia Law and not separating Mosque and state. We’re in real trouble.
It will be interesting to see if the French election does come down to a run-off between Le Pen and Melenchon. That has to be the globalists’ worst nightmare, like a Trump/Sanders election in the USA. They lose either way. The only question is whether they prefer a populist/nationalist or a true socialist. The first promises to destroy the political foundations of globalism, the latter the economic. My guess is that at some point they’ll realize they’re better off with the nationalists much the way many business titans have reconciled with Trump over in the US.
Are European populists obsessed with economic nationalism – tariffs – like Trump. I don’t see that.
An astute observation. They’re not, not yet anyway, but to some extent they don’t have to be. Trump’s tariffs represent a significant change to a bipartisan consensus that goes back decades. Not so much in the EU or anywhere else. Nearly every nation on the planet has much more protectionism and greater trade barriers than the US. India has high protectionist tariffs. China has a closed market that the government decides who gets to enter. Saudi Arabia’s royal family runs their entire economy and has involved itself directly in many western corporations and business ventures. The EU has mountains of red tape and regulations on things like health, safety, worker standards, and they’ve even tried to get foreign suppliers to pay taxes or fees for not adhering to environmental rules. The European economy is managed enough and protected enough and already has a great deal of state support. The nationalists don’t need to fix what isn’t broken, just make changes at the margins.
Ultimately this is why I suggested the nationalists assault on globalism would be political in nature. There would be less acknowledgement of or adherence to international ‘rules’ economic, political, or otherwise, and more France’s government defending the interests of the French people, and only the French people. France first in France just as America First in America. They would presumably also crack down on the multiculturalism woke rot that the US has exported which is the philosophical arm of globalism. They also are much more skeptical of multinational political efforts like NetZero.
How does one explain the insanity of the climate change scare and the destruction caused by “net zero” policy.
It’s all about votes in metro jurisdictions over votes in commodity producing jurisdictions. Globalists don’t need commodities produced locally. They can get them cheaper with free trade and dumping from jurisdictions with slack standards.
Nationalism (that is often but not always regarded as far right *) is of its nature opposed to international or cosmopolitan religions and ideologies. In prewar-Germany the cosmopolitanism of Jews became the internal enemy. Today Jews have their own nationalist state and are not seen as an internal threat to any nationalist movement the way they were prewar. Instead the international religion/ideology of Islam is seen as a threat to nationalism in the west today, so it is natural that nationalist parties will oppose militant Islam and support nationalist Israel.
Interestingly Scottish Nationalism is not normally regarded as far right despite the fact that it blends a specific English centred xenophobia with socialist elements. The German National Socialist Workers Party was not without its socialist elements.
I would like to see Marine LePen promise to move the French embassy in Israel to Jerusalem if elected President.