That's also not true of the French NF

Submitted by R. Craigen (Canada), Jan 19, 2015 at 22:16

It's nice of you to defend UKIP like this, Ian, but you paint a whole lot of groups with a nasty brush with no evidence. I don't know many of them well, but I've followed with interest the rise of Marine Le Pen in her NF party in France. She follows in the footsteps of her father, whose policies were, indeed, tinged with racism. But that past has been explicitly repudiated by Marine and her followers and do not represent any official position of the party. It would be nice to have options that don't come with coloured backgrounds, but that water under the bridge ought to weigh less significantly than real harmful policies of existing institutions.

It is simply unfair to hang that particular millstone around Marine Le Pen, who represents a hopeful change of pace in French politics. Take a page from Pipes here and don't just believe slanders gleefully dumped on "right wingers" by a politically zealous press: check facts and judge by actions and character, not by pejorative labels.

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