Not only is she hugely popular in southern France, where voters prefer her socially conservative brand of politics to her aunt’s nationalist statism, she is also one of only two National Front members of the French parliament. [...]
Despite her youth, she has been active in politics for nearly a decade, urged to add her name to a National Front ticket by her grandfather in 2008. Four years later, she made a bid for a parliament seat while still in law school, becoming the chamber’s youngest member in modern history. Maréchal-Le Pen completed her degree but, unlike her aunt, never worked as a lawyer, choosing instead to launch herself headlong into a political career. [...]
Fêted as a political “rock star” by American alt-right news site Breitbart, the younger Le Pen is working to develop an international profile by speaking more to foreign media. And, unlike her aunt, a major TV talk show devotee, she is partial to print media and off-beat interview formats that let her wax at length on topics such as the idea of a “Great Replacement” of white French people by immigrants. [...]
If Marine Le Pen loses the presidential election, the 2018 National Front congress is almost guaranteed to see a showdown between those who backed Vice President Florian Philippot’s agenda for the party — a statist, anti-European Union approach that Marine has more or less made her own — and those who, like the younger Le Pen, favor a more traditionally right-wing approach focused on conservative social values and less on an all-powerful French state.
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