Family feud may threaten France’s far-right party

It’s a tale of dynastic melodrama — long-simmering tensions between the father and daughter who lead France’s far-right political movement threaten to escalate into a full-blown schism, endangering their party’s ascendency.

Marine Le Pen, the current leader of France’s National Front party has sometimes found herself at odds with her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, the 86-year-old firebrand who founded the party in 1972. Earlier this month, the tensions surfaced and have dominated the French news cycle following recent comments made by the elder Le Pen.

On April 2, he repeated a past statement that Nazi gas chambers were a mere “detail of history.” Four days later, he said that he didn’t view Marshal Philippe Petain, the Vichy leader who collaborated with Nazi occupiers during World War II, as a traitor and pejoratively referred to France’s Spanish-born prime minister, Manuel Valls, as an “immigrant,” saying he’d only been in France for 30 years.

Marine Le Pen responded quickly to her father’s comments, saying in a statement that he “seems to have descended into a strategy somewhere between scorched earth and political suicide,” according to a New York Times translation.

Le Pen also called on her father to leave politics and said she would block his candidacy to run the region of Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, instead supporting her niece Marion Maréchal-Le Pen in the December elections.

Jean-Marie Le Pen responded the next day. He told French radio that “It’s possible that Marine Le Pen wants me dead and gone – but she shouldn’t bank on me going along with that,” according to Reuters, adding that the National Front would “implode” if he was forced out.

The elder Le Pen’s statements come at an unfortunate moment for his daughter. She has tried to transform the National Front from a fringe group into a credible mainstream party capable of governing, and has made significant progress.

But by discrediting her father, Marine Le Pen risks alienating the National Front’s base, many of whom still identify with him.

“He has real power to cause harm both in the press and politically, and above all financially,” Joël Gombin, a National Front expert, told France 24.

The National Front made major gains in recent local elections, running on an anti-European Union, protectionist and anti-immigration platform popular with the French working class. Marine Le Pen is seen as a contender in the 2017 presidential election.