this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2025
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From Europe or about Europe

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Some organisms mutate radically in order to survive. The current National Rally (RN), for example, a political entity founded 56 years ago as the National Front by former members of the SS, a handful of anti-Semitic collaborators and former OAS terrorists — the organization opposed to the French exit from Algeria that tried to assassinate President Charles de Gaulle — is today a mainstream political party. But the road to so-called normalization has been plagued by resignations and in-fighting. After denying its origins, expelling its founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen, and rebranding itself as pro-Israel, the party could now complete its transformation by eliminating the Le Pen name from its ranks.

The far-right party suffered its biggest blow to date on March 31 when its leader, Marine Le Pen, was sentenced to four years in prison — with two of those years suspended and two to be served outside jail with an electronic bracelet — and a five-year ban on running for election. Should the appeals she will file fail or be resolved too late, Le Pen will be out of the 2027 electoral race, just when she was closest to achieving the long-held family dream of moving into the Élysée Palace.

In the event, the figure of Jordan Bardella, 29, her protégé and president of the RN, will be propelled to the fore, a radical change for a party based largely on family ties, whether blood or sentimental. “We are a political party and to nominate a candidate there has to be a congress. But if Marine has chosen him, he can’t be left in the gutter in case he has to run,” Louis Aliot, vice president of the party and ex-partner of Le Pen, told EL PAÍS after being convicted along with Le Pen.

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