Submission statement: The RN is preparing its party platform for next year's presidential election. Muslims are obviously gonna be a big target, but some members of the party (and not small ones) think this may be going too far for the median voter. Bardella had long avoided to handle the issue himself, but now that Marine is back in the race for the top job, she wants her favored policies to be top priority.
Themes of the sub: freedom of religion, far-right
IMO I hope that the party's hardline base stays home if they remove it, or vice-versa that their soft-right wing stays home if they keep it (or that they switch to another party). It'd make getting sane candidates on 2nd round slightly easier. But the median RN voter is too much into conspiracies and brainslop to really move away from the party.
Posted by WAGRAMWAGRAM
1 Comment
!ping FRANCE
The leadership of the National Rally (RN), which gathered on Thursday and Friday, July 17, to decide on the policy agenda for Marine Le Pen’s upcoming presidential campaign, held its meeting strictly behind closed doors. **The goal was to discreetly gloss over any potential disagreements, particularly the one regarding hijab, which the leader of the National Rally had advocated banning in public spaces—that is, on the streets—in 2022.**
**Ever since he was tapped to become prime minister, Jordan Bardella has never shown much enthusiasm for defending this measure.** As early as June 2024, the RN president ruled it out of his legislative agenda should he become prime minister. “It remains a goal,” but not until after 2027, he revealed at the time to *Le Parisien-Aujourd’hui en France*.
# “Jordan Bardella Had a Falling-Out with Marine Le Pen”
**A decision that has since been repeatedly postponed indefinitely. “It remains a goal, but it’s complex,” Jordan Bardella remarked, for example, without much enthusiasm, on the sidelines of a trip to Israel in March 2025.**
**That same month, speaking on RMC, he prioritized a ban limited “to public buildings (…), not only at universities but also at city halls and schools.” Enforcing a ban on the veil in public “is complicated.” “I think we need to take it step by step,” he said at the time.**
He reiterated this point during another party conference in Bièvres (Essonne) on June 12. “Jordan Bardella said it was an untenable position; **he got into a heated argument with Marine Le Pen**,” a party official noted a few days after the meeting. **“We need to limit this ban to minors only. It prevents people from voting for us because it’s not realistic,” an influential party lawmaker had already remarked back in February.**
# “The vehicle for Islamic fundamentalism”
“We absolutely must uphold this proposal, which is part of the bill against Islamist ideologies (introduced in 2021 in the National Assembly by Marine Le Pen; Article 10 of which prohibits in public spaces ‘symbols or attire that in and of themselves constitute an unequivocal and ostentatious affirmation of Islamist ideologies’). “It sends a message to Muslims that they can practice their religion without being subject to Islamists,” argues a close associate of Marine Le Pen.
Still, the legal definition of an outfit that would assert an Islamist ideology is far from clear: would all headscarves be affected? **In Mayotte** (*little island full of African muslims, please go look for pictures of Marine Le Pen in Mayotte*) for example, **Marine Le Pen repeatedly asserts that hijab there is “not a vehicle for Islamic fundamentalism,” unlike what it supposedly is, according to her, in mainland France… Between the two rounds of the last presidential election, Marine Le Pen acknowledged the “complex issues” raised by her proposal and said she was not “narrow-minded” on the subject.**
In *Le Monde*, Renaud Labaye, secretary-general of the RN group in the National Assembly, floated the idea of putting this issue to a referendum. “Absolutely nothing has been decided; some people would do better to keep quiet,” says a close associate of Jordan Bardella, exasperated. “Things are perfectly clear. Veiling is not desirable in French society. But the priority is to protect schools, public services, and the sports world, which are the primary targets of the Muslim Brotherhood,” said an RN official who, reflecting the sensitivity of the subject, requested anonymity. **“In any case, it will be up to Marine to present her timeline…”**