FRANCE: Neo-Nazi National Front Party Sees Opportunities In Wake Of Attack

France's neo-Nazi National Front Party is already working to capitalize on nationalistic and racist sentiment in the wake of yesterday's terror attack by Islamic extremists. Via Slate:

For the first seven hours after the attack on the Paris office of Charlie Hebdo, the National Front, France’s far right political party, kept an old feature about the influx of Roma and “gypsies” into French cities on its website. Then, shortly after noon, Marine Le Pen, the leader of the increasingly popular party with the slogan “The French Come First,” appeared in front of three French flags and hammered out her demands—and a selfless offer. It is time for “frank and clear responses” against “inaction and denial,” she declared. In other words: The country’s two main political parties have failed to stem the Islamist tide, and you the voters now have all the evidence you need that France requires new leadership. “I intend to assume this vital responsibility so France can defend itself in the war that has been declared upon her,” she continued. Marine Le Pen told a talk show host on Thursday morning she was “still waiting for her phone to ring” with an invitation from the prime minister to participate in Sunday’s national unity march. But Le Pen’s phone has remained silent. Government leaders are gambling that they don’t need her and can keep the National Front at a safe distance from its street-level display of strength and solidarity. For now, she will continue to taunt them from the other side of the barricades.

PREVIOUSLY ON JMG: Last month the Kremlin lent the National Front €9M in the first installment of a reported €40M payment presumably meant to help tilt France's government to the far right. The National Front is a backer of the anti-gay Manif Pour Tous and has supported its numerous, vicious and often violent rallies, as have hate group leaders Brian Brown and Tony Perkins.  Founder Jean-Marie Le Pen has been convicted six times for inciting racial hatred, including for denying that the Holocaust took place. Last year he "joked" that his critics, who include Madonna, will be in the next "batch" headed for the gas chambers.  He has also "joked" that ebola is the "solution" to Europe's immigration problems. In 2013 Le Pen's daughter, Marine Le Pen, herself a failed candidate for France's presidency, praised the man who committed suicide at Notre Dame Cathedral in protest of same-sex marriage. In February of last year Le Pen's granddaughter, 24 year-old Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, led a massive anti-gay march through the streets of Paris. In January of last year the youth leader for the National Front called for France to institute anti-gay laws similar to those in Russia.

FRANCE: Neo-Nazi National Front Leader To Sue Magazine For Outing Him

Via Radio France:

The deputy leader of France’s Front National is to take Closer magazine to court for printing photos it implies prove he is gay. Florian Philippot is to lodge a complaint against Closer for invasion of privacy, the party leader, Marine Le Pen, announced on Friday. The case comes amid dissent in the far-right party's ranks over recruiting openly gay members. Philippot does not want to give “this rag” any publicity, Le Pen told a press conference, but he will take Closer to court. Claiming that she and her children had also been victims of invasions of privacy, the far-right leader said she hoped that Philippot’s case would lead to a sentence severe enough to prevent the paper from continuing such practises. Le Pen is a trained lawyer and she and her party have a penchant for taking critics, including US-born singer Madonna, to court.

For a recap of the National Front's history of anti-gay actions, go here.

FRANCE: Kremlin Bank Lends Millions To Neo-Nazi National Front Party

Via TIME Magazine:

Is Russian President Vladimir Putin meddling in the internal politics of countries in the European Union? That seemed a strong possibility to some Europeans this week, after French political leader Marine Le Pen confirmed she had secured a €9-million ($11.1 million) loan from a Moscow-based bank, in order to run her right-wing National Front party. “At this stage, Russia is trying to influence French domestic policy,” says Jean-Yves Camus, a political researcher at France’s Institute of International and Strategic Relations (IRIS). If so, Putin’s strategy resembles the Soviet Union before its collapse in 1991, when Moscow funded trade unions and political groups in western Europe in an attempt to buy influence and destabilize foes. “In this respect Putin is pretty much in line with the former USSR. It is the same policy all over again,” says Camus.

According to the Independent, the €9M loan is only the first installment in loans that will total €40M.  But that's not all the Kremlin is doing: 

There have been unconfirmed allegations in the United States that Moscow is funding the virulently xenophobic Hungarian party Jobbik and the avowedly neo-Nazi Greek party, Golden Dawn. A discussion paper from a Putin-supporting Moscow think-tank, leaked to the German press this week, urged the Kremlin to find ways of funding other Europhobic parties such as the emerging Alternative for Germany (AfD). The admiration of hard-line nationalist parties for Mr Putin is not only based on money. The Kremlin has gone out of its way to establish friendly ties with European political parties that share its view of the European Union as a meddlesome, US-controlled enemy of national sovereignty and destroyer of traditional religious and family values.

PREVIOUSLY ON JMG: The National Front is a backer of the anti-gay Manif Pour Tous and has supported its numerous, vicious and often violent rallies, as have hate group leaders Brian Brown and Tony Perkins.  Founder Jean-Marie Le Pen has been convicted six times for inciting racial hatred, including for denying that the Holocaust took place. Earlier this year he "joked" that his critics, who include Madonna, will be in the next "batch" headed for the gas chambers.  He has also "joked" that ebola is the "solution" to Europe's immigration problems. Last year Le Pen's daughter, Marine Le Pen, herself a failed candidate for France's presidency, praised the man who committed suicide at Notre Dame Cathedral in protest of same-sex marriage. In February of this year Le Pen's granddaughter, 24 year-old Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, led a massive anti-gay march through the streets of Paris. (What a family.) In January of this year the youth leader for the National Front called for France to institute anti-gay laws similar to those in Russia.

FRANCE: Paris Student Activist Left Brain-Dead After Attack By Neo-Nazis

France has been rocked by a vicious attack by neo-Nazi skinheads which has left a well-known leftist student activist brain-dead.  Former Manif Pour Tous leader Frigide Barjot has vowed to sue a prominent gay marriage activist for implicating her movement in the attack. Via The Local:

French Interior Minister Manuel Valls announced on Thursday that four arrests had been made, including that of the individual suspected of delivering the final blow to Clément Méric in an attack on Wednesday evening. Méric, an 18-year-old student at Sciences Po in Paris, was “violently attacked” by a group of three skinheads, including one woman, near Saint-Lazare train station on Wednesday evening, it emerged on Thursday.

Méric, known for his radical left-wing activism, was left brain dead by the beating, which has provoked a flood of horrified and angry reactions from many different quarters in France. French President François Hollande, speaking on an official visit to Japan, said he "condemned the attack in the strongest possible terms." "I have given the most rigorous possible instructions so that the authors of the odious act can be arrested at the earliest possible juncture," he said in a statement.

The skinheads, who reportedly wore brass knuckles, are said to be members of the extreme-right Young Nationalist Revolutionaries. Accusations and denials are flying on all sides.

Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Front, made sure to distance her party from the violence. She called the attack on the young student repulsive and detestable but said far-right groups such as the JNR had no ties with her party. Le Pen reacted angrily when it was put to her that one of the three aggressors was seen wearing a t-shirt with her party's logo.

"Making this kind of association is scandalous, I'd like very much to know who this witness is," Le Pen told RTL radio. "You have no proof at all." French industrialist and pro-gay marriage activist Pierre Bergé has caused a stir by implicating the anti-gay marriage movement, known as 'Manif Pour Tous' (Demo for all) in the attack on Méric. "Despite everyone who's insulting me, I say again: the Manif pour tous accepted into their ranks these fascists who killed Clément. For them to reflect on."

The International Business Times has more:

Interior Minister Manuel Valls said a dispute between left-wingers and skinheads erupted at a clothes sale in Paris 9th district. Meric and three of his friends were attending a Fred Perry private sale in the central Rue de Caumartin when a group of four neo-Nazis, including a woman, arrived at the premises. Eyewitnesses told Le Monde the four sported shaved heads and swastika tattoos; one wore a sweatshirt of British neo-Nazi group Blood and Honour.

Meric, a member of campaigning group Action Anti-fasciste, and his friends reportedly started mocking the skinheads' over their outfit and the subsequent verbal dispute eventually became violent as the two groups moved outside in the street. Meric was reportedly punched with a knuckle-duster and hit his head on the pavement.

RELATED: Below is a photo of the Young Nationalist Revolutionaries attending last month's Manif Pour Tour rally in the streets of Paris.

FRANCE: Far-Right Party Leader Applauds Suicide At Notre Dame Cathedral

Far-right National Front party leader Marine Le Pen today applauded the actions of the anti-gay marriage activist who committed suicide this afternoon at the altar of Notre Dame Cathedral.

The suicide was hailed as a political gesture by Marine Le Pen, leader of France's far-right National Front. "All respect to Dominique Venner whose final, eminently political act was to try to wake up the people of France," Le Pen said on Twitter, signing her initials to indicate that she had written the entry personally. Le Pen's far-right party, running primarily on an anti-immigration platform but which also opposes French government efforts to legalize gay marriage, is the third-most popular in the country.

Le Pen finished third in last year's presidential election, taking 18% of the vote. One wonders how many followers of Manif Pour Tous belong to the National Front. (Tipped by JMG reader Nicholas)

RELATED: Marine Le Pen's father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who headed the National Front from 1972-2011, has been convicted of anti-Semitic and racist hate speech crimes multiple times. In 1987 he was fined 1.2M francs for denying that the Nazis used gas chambers. The elder Le Pen has run for the French presidency five times and finished fourth in 2007.