Le Pen’s niece reportedly joins far-right rival
Zemmour
Marion Maréchal, a former MP popular with
identitarians, has long been rumored to consider the move.
BY JULES
DARMANIN
March 3,
2022 12:42 pm
Marion
Maréchal, an influential voice in the French far right and the niece of
presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, is reportedly joining her aunt’s nemesis
Eric Zemmour to support his own bid for the country’s highest office.
The
32-year-old former MP took a slight step back from politics in 2017, and has
long been rumored to consider the move. “Consistency, his vision and strategy
mean that I lean toward Eric Zemmour,” she told Le Figaro back in January. “But
there’s a family matter.”
The matter
has been solved, it appears. According to Le Figaro, Maréchal is planning to
get up on stage with Zemmour on Sunday, a month before the first round of
France’s presidential election.
During her
political hiatus, Marechal directed a small political science school she
founded for “conservative” students, and has taken many steps to distance
herself from her aunt. She notably cut “Le Pen” from her then-hyphenated family
name in 2018.
The
granddaughter of far-right patriarch Jean-Marie Le Pen is closer to the
identitarian faction of the National Rally, which has had the biggest share of
defections to the Zemmour camp. The former pundit, who has been twice convicted
of hate speech, is obsessively running on a radical anti-immigration platform.
Even if Marine Le Pen is still defending hard-line anti-immigration
propositions, she has been attempting to distance herself from her party’s
identitarian and xenophobic reputation.
“Personally,
it saddens me, and politically, it plunges me into abysmal confusion, [because]
I’m the only one who can win against Emmanuel Macron,” Le Pen said on Tuesday,
as rumors about her niece’s move were growing.
Maréchal’s
upcoming announcement could give Zemmour a boost while past outspoken
admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin is coming back to haunt him.
Since Russia has launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Zemmour has lost
one percent in POLITICO’s Poll of Polls, moving down to 14 percent. Marine
Le Pen has remained around 17 percent.
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