le pen Nat Front
see alt rt eur
bannon manfort lacivita
see musk trump crimes
an tc 7 26
The European populist right has been at the top of the political agenda in recent days.
On July 7, everyone in France was waiting expectantly for a Paris appeal court to decide on whether Marine Le Pen, the leader of the Rassemblement National (RN), would be allowed to run in the 2027 presidential election after her conviction for embezzlement of European funds.
But just as the European media machine was gearing up for the verdict, across the Channel, Nigel Farage – the leader of Reform UK – announced on X that he would be making a “statement about his future”. This came after multiple allegations of undeclared gifts and an ongoing investigation into possible money laundering. Farage maintains that he has done nothing wrong.
The parallels were impossible to ignore. Here were two prominent European populist rightwing politicians whose political careers were being threatened by extensive and well-documented corruption claims. How would they respond?
We did not have to wait long to find out. Only hours after the verdict, Le Pen announced that she was now officially a candidate for the 2027 presidential election. Despite the fact that her initial conviction was upheld on appeal, she intends to contest the appeal court’s decision. This means she retains her presumption of innocence and is able to proceed with her election campaign as if nothing happened.
It is a remarkable sleight-of-hand; Le Pen has found the narrowest of legal loopholes through which to pass. In her announcement, she presented her decision as a democratic one: the French people should judge her, not the courts.
In the meantime, Farage told his supporters that he is stepping down from his parliamentary seat of Clacton after being made the subject of a parliamentary inquiry into his alleged improprieties. This will trigger a byelection – but, in an equally remarkable gambling act, he plans to run himself in the hope of winning back his seat. Again, he is suggesting that this means letting the voters decide whether he is guilty or not.
Le Pen and Farage are both reading from a well-thumbed playbook. The people v the courts; voters v judges; the “transparent” legitimacy of the ballot box v the “opacity” of lengthy legal and regulatory proceedings. All of these tropes will be familiar to observers of populist politics in the United States, Hungary or Turkey.
The bigger question is: do voters care whether populist politicians break the rules? Le Pen and Farage are hoping that, like Donald Trump, they can simply swat aside legal and regulatory processes on the road to their ultimate electoral triumph.
Question of standards
There are many reasons to take Le Pen and Farage’s arguments with a pinch of salt. A closer analysis of the relationship between the populist right and corruption reveals a more complicated picture, perhaps especially in France, which is gearing up for its most important electoral cycle in 2027.
At face value, Le Pen has little to worry about since French politics is famously corrupt. Every French president of the Fifth Republic, except Charles de Gaulle and Emmanuel Macron, has a major corruption scandal to their name. Both Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy have been found guilty of corruption by French courts. They have been joined by countless MPs and mayors over the years who have been convicted of similar crimes.
Until recently, this level of corruption was widely tolerated. French voters largely accepted that politicians would embezzle money, employ their family members on the public purse, or swing large public contracts for their benefit. They were more concerned with ideological faultlines than political integrity – and they displayed little of the hand-wringing that accompanied equivalent scandals like Watergate in the US in the 1970s or the “cash-for-questions” affair in the UK in the 1990s.
Yet this tolerance has begun to dissipate in recent years. Public anger towards politicians has reached unprecedented levels, most notably in recent protest movements such as the “gilets jaunes” (yellow vests), and the deep personal hostility many French voters feel towards Macron.
Le Pen and the RN have provided a highly effective electoral outlet for this anger, and they have made much of their commitment to probity in public office. Le Pen even said herself that she would not run for election while wearing an electronic tag, and for many years the party campaigned for politicians found guilty of corruption to be banned from public office for life.
Rocky road to the Elysée Palace
But Le Pen and the RN’s role as standard-bearers of the “ordinary” French person’s rage against a “rigged” and “corrupt” political system is now under threat. By effectively stamping her dynastic authority on the party that was previously run by her father, and by blocking the rise of her young protege Jordan Bardella, Le Pen has boxed herself into a corner.
Her only way out is by the ballot box. Yet the chances of her winning the presidential election remain slim. She – and her party – lack the necessary support to win in the second round of the elections where vote transfers from eliminated parties and candidates determine the overall result, and she still suffers from a credibility deficit in comparison to more mainstream politicians.
She may well have made matters worse by giving her opponents a powerful stick with which to beat her. Even in France, accusations of corruption can be hard to shake off. And, as Le Pen and Farage know from long experience, it is just as possible to lose at the ballot box as it is to win.
Emile Chabal, Professor of Contemporary History, University of Edinburgh
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
---
an 4 25
Trump criticized on Thursday a court ruling against Marine Le Pen, the leader of France's far-right, who was found guilty of embezzling millions of euros from the European Parliament.
“The Witch Hunt against Marine Le Pen is another example of European Leftists using Lawfare to silence Free Speech, and censor their Political Opponent, this time going to so far as to put that Opponent in prison,” Trump wrote in a late-night post on his social platform Truth Social.
“It is the same ‘playbook’ that was used against me by a group of Lunatics and Losers,” the president added.
READ MORE: The 'honeymoon might be over': Here’s why Trump 2.0 is flailing
Le Pen was sentenced to four years in prison, with two years suspended, and is also facing a five-year ban on holding office, which takes effect immediately. This restriction would bar her from running in the 2027 presidential election in France, an election she was expected to win, unless she succeeds in appealing her conviction.
Trump's statement about the French politician's case came the same day global stock markets plummeted in response to his decision to impose a series of sweeping global tariffs.
“I don’t know Marine Le Pen, but do appreciate how hard she worked for so many years,” Trump further said in his post, crediting the leader for suffering losses, but continuing her politics.
"And now, just before what would be a Big Victory, they get her on a minor charge that she probably knew nothing about—Sounds like a ‘bookkeeping’ error to me," he added.
The court determined that Le Pen and around twenty other co-defendants exploited the European Parliament as a source of income, misappropriating almost $5 million in parliamentary funds. This misuse allegedly took place over an 11-year span during a time when her party’s finances were critically low.
Tech billionaire and Department of Government Efficiency head Elon Musk endorsed the president's post about Le Pen's case on his own social platform X.
"Free Le Pen!" he wrote, along with a screenshot of Trump's Truth Social post.
---
4 22 gottseidanke but 6 pt spread is down from 5 yrs ago? she tried pseudo populist kitchen table yellow vest issues?
https://www.alternet.org/2022/04/president-emmanuel-macron-wins-reelection/
an 1 25
During Donald Trump's first term as president, Paul Manafort was among the many Trump allies who faced criminal charges. The veteran GOP operative was sentenced to 47 months in prison in 2019 after being found guilty on multiple charges of tax fraud and bank fraud, but in 2020, Trump granted him a presidential pardon.
Manafort has a long history of lobbying for extreme far-right figures in Europe, Latin America and other parts of the world. And in 2025, according to the **Daily Beast's Sean Craig, Manafort and "his team" have been offering their "services" to the far right in Ukraine and France (including a "billionaire backer of" National Front leader Marine Le Pen).
Craig, in an article published on January 13, reports, "A memo pitching the services of Manafort's team — including Trump's 2024 co-campaign manager Chris LaCivita and his 2024 pollster Tony Fabrizio — was circulated in Kyiv recently, the (New York) Times reported, to anxious reception….. Manafort told the Times that he has been contacted 'by numerous parties in Ukraine,' though said he 'never submitted a proposal on any matter to anyone in Ukraine.'"
READ MORE:['Fascist ideology': Veteran actor slams 'orange idiot' Trump for 'nonsense' claims about LA wildfires
Craig adds, "LaCivita said he and Fabrizio “are not currently under contract” with Manafort’s team, adding 'successful political consultants on both the right and left routinely do political consulting overseas.'"
Manafort served as one of Trump's campaign managers in 2016 before Kellyanne Conway joined the campaign. Craig notes that although Manafort's "connections to people with Russian intelligence ties" worried members of the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2020, his "prospects on the global consulting circuit have been revived by Trump's election victory in November."
"A pitch memo sent to French billionaire Pierre-Édouard Stérin, who plans to invest $150 million in the next decade in far-right parties in his country — including Le Pen’s —offered to 'develop a state-of-the-art and multidimensional campaign plan' that would target voters and use opposition research to discredit opponents," Craig explains. "Stérin’s associate Arnaud Rérolle told the (New York) Times that he held a call with Manafort, whose team agreed to provide the memo."
Craig adds, "They opted not to sign a contract with his team, however. Manafort may turn to Peru, where the Times said he spoke with a representative of Lima Mayor Rafael López Aliaga last month. Aliaga leads the conservative Popular Renewal and is a likely presidential candidate in 2026."
Ben Shapiro on France: Le Pen's “National Rally is not really a far-right party anymore”
12/05/24 mma
4 23 email
no lnx many vid?
Welcome back to HEATED! Emily here. Arielle and I are in Boise, Idaho today and tomorrow for the Society for Environmental Journalists annual conference, where we’ll be learning about things like how to better use the Freedom of Information Act; how to ethically cover tribal issues; and how to better understand next-gen “clean energy” technologies, among many other things.
This morning, I’m actually attending a panel about the subject of today’s newsletter: Eco-fascism. Unfortunately, it’s a subject that—as you’ll learn today—is only getting more relevant. But I’m eager to gain more perspective to inform my future reporting.
Arielle and I are only able to attend events like these because of our paid subscriber community, which funds 100 percent of everything we do. When you become part of it, you get the piece of mind of knowing you’re not only making our journalism possible, but actually helping us become better, more well-rounded reporters.
If you want to follow along and hear more about what we’re learning in Boise, give Arielle and I a follow over at Substack Notes.
Why U.S. conservatives are flirting with eco-fascism
As we approach Earth Day, it’s worth remembering that not everyone shares the same view of what "environmentalism" means.
EMILY ATKIN
APR 21
Thanos, noted eco-fascist. Source: Marvel Studios
For the last couple weeks, I’ve been trying to get back into a regular practice of monitoring conservative news sites for climate content. So far, I’ve mostly just come across your garden-variety climate denial and fossil fuel talking points.
I recently came across one article, however, that was both alarming and unlike anything I’d ever read. And though I don’t normally like to amplify batshit stuff like this, a prominent researcher on the topic convinced me it was worthy of discussion.
It was an op-ed considering the potential upsides of eco-fascism.
A screenshot of a PJ Media article headlined “‘Eco-Fascism’: Ideological Scourge or Salvation?”
Eco-fascism, for the uninitiated, is best known as the ideology embraced by the mass shooter who killed 10 people in a Buffalo supermarket last year. The shooter, as E&E News reported at the time, was motivated by “the racist conspiracy theory that the ruling class is using immigration to politically and culturally ‘replace’ white people.”
The Buffalo shooter called on others “to view immigration as ‘environmental warfare,’” and to “reclaim environmentalism in the name of white nationalism.” His calls echoed those of the mass shooter who killed 23 people in an El Paso, Texas Walmart in 2019, who was also a self-proclaimed eco-fascist.
In the aforementioned April 9 op-ed for PJ Media, conservative journalist Ben Bartee condemned these murders. But he also questioned whether the ideology that motivated them “might inject some new, much-needed perspective on the merits of ecological conservation into the zeitgeist.”
HEATED is accountability journalism for people who are pissed off about the climate crisis. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Bartee said conservatives need to embrace environmentalism—but not the climate-focused, social justice-motivated environmentalism of the Left. Liberal environmentalism, he argued, contains no “sincere environmental concern” and is merely a “pretext to shut down industrialized Western economies.”
Eco-fascists, on the other hand, “take their mandate to conserve the natural world from the ravages of humanity’s industrial machinations in a more militant and sincere, if misguided, direction,” Bartee wrote. And while eco-fascism does have some problems, he said, it’s a “smear” to label it racist or white supremacist.
“Some racist mass shooters might nominally be eco-fascists, but not all eco-fascists need necessarily be racist mass shooters,” he said. (Congratulations to anyone who had “Eco-fascists getting the #NotAllMen treatment” on their 2023 bingo card.)
Bartee ended his piece by lamenting that eco-fascism has become “tainted by association” with mass murderers and white supremacists. For that reason, he concluded, the ideology will “forever likely remain on the margins of politics, unembraced by any mainstream movement.”
But that couldn’t be further from the truth.
The rise of eco-fascist rhetoric at home
Tucker Carlson says his racism shows he really, truly cares about the environment.
Peter Staudenmaier, a professor of history at Marquette University, has written two books on the history of eco-fascism. He believes Bartee’s op-ed is more than just a fringe news site’s flirtation with eco-fascism, but emblematic of a broader struggle happening within conservative U.S. environmental politics.
“It read to me like a person who's sort of struggling within himself to define his environmental message,” he said. “He does not want to be directly associated with [eco-fascists], because they're terrorists and bombers. But he is drawn to some of those ideas, to some of those forms of environmental thinking.”
This struggle, Staudenmaier argues, is born from U.S. conservatives realizing they need to do more than simply deny and/or ignore climate change. To solve this problem, some U.S. conservatives are going the way of market-based solutions. But others are going the way of nationalist ones.
They’re not all just small op-ed writers like Bartee, either. Here are some examples from the last few months of prominent conservative individuals and organizations spouting fascist-inspired environmental thinking:
Fox News’ Tucker Carlson said the government and media don't care about the environmental disaster in East Palestine, Ohio because the residents are "overwhelmingly white and politically conservative.” He added: “In both cases, had it affected the rich or the favored poor, it would be the lead of every news channel in the world.” (February 2023).
Popular right-wing pundit Charlie Kirk said President Biden does not care about the environmental disaster in East Palestine, Ohio, because it happened primarily to white people. "It's because the war on white people continues,” he said. “Why would you care for the white working class voters in eastern Ohio?" (February 2023).
The House Judiciary Committee tweeted a clip from a hearing, claiming "Illegal immigration damages our ENVIRONMENT every single day." (February 2023).
The Federation for American Immigrant Reform (FAIR) published a blog claiming Biden’s family planning and immigration policies would harm the environment because they would lead to population growth in ecologically sensitive areas. (February 2023).
The conservative Center for Immigration Studies published an article claiming immigration harms the U.S. environment. "One of the problems with bringing in new people is that while their negative impact on the environment is minimal in their home countries, after they arrive they start acting like Americans, driving cars, using fossil fuels, and thus damaging the environment just like Americans do." (December 2022).
The rise of rhetoric like this is why Staudenmaier thinks Republicans may only be a few years behind other countries’ conservative parties that have more openly embraced eco-fascist ideals.
“I can't say for sure, but that's where I think things are trending right now,” he said. “And that's a big deal.”
The rise of eco-fascist rhetoric abroad
A primary example is Germany’s anti-immigrant far-right party, Alternative for Germany. For many years, its environmental politics were similar to the American right-wing: based mostly on climate denial and support for coal.
But after the 2019 elections saw the country’s Green Party surge, the youth wing of AfD recommended moving away from climate denial, noting that climate issues move “more people than we thought.” Instead, they recommended using concerns about the climate and environment to further promote their anti-immigrant rhetoric. This includes instilling more fear about non-white outsiders; linking the preservation of the environment to the preservation of “culture;” and building border walls around their country to keep their environment clean.
Since then, the AfD youth wing’s position “has slowly won out within the party as a whole,” Staudenmaier said. “I think for the next set of elections, it may become the official stance.”
Germany isn’t the only country greenwashing its racist and xenophobic rhetoric in a bid to sway voters. Writing for Dissent, Kate Aronoff noted it happening in France’s far-right National Rally, under Marine Le Pen’s leadership. “Le Pen herself has argued that concern for the climate is inherently nationalist. Those who are ‘nomadic,’ she said, ‘do not care about the environment; they have no homeland.’”
While this global rise in eco-fascist rhetoric is deeply concerning, it’s not inevitable. But the only way to prevent it is to understand its potential power.
“For those of us who are committed environmentalists, we can't get complacent. We can’t simply assume that environmental ideals automatically go hand in hand with a commitment to social justice or equality,” Staudenmaier said. “If we want to see those things go together, then we need to work to make them go together, because it's never going to happen naturally.”
Arielle Samuelson contributed reporting.
as in Fr Macron le pen hack then mix fake emails in tranche? 6 GRU indicted
https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/hunter-biden-e-mail-story-has-all-the-marks-of-russian-involvement-intel-experts/
Supporters of President Donald Trump are hoping that e-mails found on a laptop allegedly belonging to former Vice President Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, will be the "October surprise" that derails the older Biden's presidential campaign. The New York Post, owned by Fox News' Rupert Murdoch, published that story after receiving an alleged copy of Hunter Biden's hard drive from former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani — and more than 50 intelligence officials, according to Politico's Natasha Bertrand, have signed a letter saying that the story has the markings of a Kremlin propaganda operation.
Bertrand explains, "While the letter's signatories presented no new evidence, they said their national security experience had made them 'deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case' and cited several elements of the story that suggested the Kremlin's hand at work.'"
Intel experts who signed the letter range from Russ Travers, who served as acting director for the National Counterterrorism Center, to Rick Ledgett, former deputy director of the National Security Agency. Former Central Intelligence Agency directors or acting directors who signed the letter include John O. Brennan, Leon Panetta, Gen. Michael Hayden, John McLaughlin and Michael Morell.
The letter reads, "If we are right, this is Russia trying to influence how Americans vote in this election — and we believe strongly that Americans need to be aware of this."
The intel experts also said, "We want to emphasize that we do not know if the e-mails, provided to the New York Post by President Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, are genuine or not — and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement… (But) there are a number of factors that make us suspicious of Russian involvement…. Such an operation would be consistent with Russian objectives, as outlined publicly and recently by the intelligence community, to create political chaos in the United States and to deepen political divisions here — but also, to undermine the candidacy of former Vice President Biden and thereby help the candidacy of President Trump."
https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/how-to-not-be-a-useful-idiot-for-the-rights-smear-machine/
Trump is trying hard to recreate the perfect storm that landed him in the White House in 2016 despite being the most unpopular candidate in the modern polling era. That year, the Clinton campaign's hacked emails were dribbled out over the final six weeks of the race. There wasn't much to them, but internal campaign communications tend to be frank and are easily mined for scandalettes. Having established the storyline that Clinton was as corrupt as Trump, they provided a steady stream of stories with "emails reveal" in the headlines which served to reinforce the right's narrative.
We can expect a similar stream of stories of ostensible "smoking guns" stemming from Hunter Biden's emails (whether hacked or fabricated) to come our way in the final weeks of this race.And some people who want to see themselves as fair will inadvertently amplify the right's preferred narratives by assuming that there must be something there.
So it's very important to keep in mind that the "scandal" is supposed to be that then-Vice President Joe Biden pushed for the removal of Ukraine's top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, to stave off an investigation into Burisma Holdings--the Ukrainian gas company whose Board Hunter sat on--in order to protect his son. It is supposed to be a story about conflict of interest--of the elder Biden using the office of the Vice Presidency to help his son.
There is not a shred of truth to those claims. The effort to get Shokin fired "was prompted by a push for anti-corruption reforms developed at the State Department and coordinated with the European Union and the International Monetary Fund," *The Washington Post*reported. Andaccording to CNN, a bipartisan "letter from 2016 shows that Republican senators pushed for reforms to Ukraine's prosecutor general's office and judiciary, echoing calls then-Vice President Joe Biden made at the time."
Shokin was corrupt, and that was a problem. Vitaliy Kasko, a former deputy of Shokin's who resigned over his boss's habit of stymieing corruption probes, told*Bloombergthat Shokin was not investigating Burisma during the period in question. "There was no pressure from anyone from the U.S. to close cases against" the firm or its owner. "It was shelved by Ukrainian prosecutors in 2014 and through 2015," Kasko said. And Daria Kaleniuk, a prominent Ukrainian anti-corruption crusader, told *The Washington Post that"Shokin was fired not because he wanted to do that investigation, but quite to the contrary, because he failed that investigation."
Without some impropriety on Joe Biden's part, Hunter Biden's business ventures aren't a story. He isn't running for office. Like many, if not most children of the powerful, the younger Biden leveraged both his family name and the connections he'd made at Yale to land various business deal and secure a cushy, high-paying position on a corporate board. Both Hunter and Joe Biden have acknowledged that associating himself with a shady Ukrainian gas company--as opposed to, say, a reputable American or Western European firm--was an error of judgment, but it was neither illegal nor unethical. This isn't a meritocracy, and this is one way that wealth and power are reproduced from one generation to the next. It's distasteful and unfair, but that's a class issue, not a scandal. Hunter isn't running for office and his judgment, or lack thereof, isn't a matter of public concern.
Joe Biden spent years in the Senate, and year after year he ranked among the least wealthy members of that body. We know how he came into his wealth--mostly through a multi-million dollar book advance and speaking gigs after leaving office. Biden may not be everyone's cup of tea, but there's no evidence that he's corrupt.
==
https://aldianews.com/articles/politics/jack-posobiec-link-connecting-france-trump-and-russia/48031
the internal documents of the electoral campaign of Emmanuel Macron, president-elect of France, were the subject of a cyber attack during the last electoral week, and its dissemination was carried out on May 5, through an anglophone forum, before being immediately spread on Twitter by an "American militant, near the far right," according to the Huffington Post France:{:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px 12px 0px 0px;background-image:url("):}:.
Belgian social media analyst Nicolas Vanderbiest said that after the publication of the documents in the 4Chan forum, frequented by surfers close to the American alt-right, Jack Posobiec:{:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px 12px 0px 0px;background-image:url("):}: was the first to share the data to his 100,000 followers on Twitter, inaugurating the hashtag "#MacronLeaks".
Flashpoint of New York and Trend Micro based in Tokyo have shared intelligence suggesting that the group of hackers known as Advanced Persistent Threat 28, Fancy Bear and Pawn Storm was responsible for filtering Emmanuel Macron’s documents. The group has been linked to the GRU, the Russian Military Intelligence Directorate, according to The Guardian:{:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px 12px 0px 0px;background:url("):}:.[guk]
Days before the publication of the documents, Jack Posobiec had been active in social media against the candidate Macron, pressing the rumors about an alleged tax evasion and assuring that the now president attacked the journalists to evade his responsibility, according to the newspaper Le Monde.:{:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px 12px 0px 0px;background:url("):}:
One day before the election, Posobiec requested on Twitter to speak in front of the French parliament in an open session on #MacronLeaks.
According to the French media, Posobiec represents a digital site (The Rebel:{:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px 12px 0px 0px;background-image:url("):}:) openly supportive of Trump and Le Pen, which often disseminates inaccurate data.
"The militant appears as part of the 'Slavright', a far-right movement mainly located in Eastern Europe, considered racist and white supremacist”, according to the French media.
In Trump’s forefront
Hours before disseminating the hacked information of Emmanuel Macron's campaign, Posobiec had been tagged in a photo along with former editor Breitbart and one of the main right-wing figures who supported Donald Trump, Milo Yinanopoulos, on a Caption that read "Happy #CincoDeMilo".
[pix]
posobiec has been part of the spread of false information, such as the "pizzagate" issue - conspiracy theory involving the Clinton team with pedophilia -as well as the call for a boycott of the latest Star Wars film, "Rogue One," for allegedly broadcasting an anti-Trump message, according to L'Obs:{:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px 12px 0px 0px;background:url("):}: newspaper in France.
[pix]
for its part, Reuters:{:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px 12px 0px 0px;width:10px;height:10px;background-image:url("):}: published yesterday that Posobiec has received access to the White House, from the Trump Administration.
Posobiec, " attended the daily press briefing on Tuesday and later broadcast video from the White House grounds with positive commentary on President Donald Trump's abrupt firing of FBI Director James Comey”, explains the media.[vid rebel news]
posobiec would have requested temporary credentials in April, but he is currently in the process of requesting a permanent pass.
The cyber attack of the French president-elect has worried the international security community since it could imply a connection between Russian digital intelligence organizations and public figures of the American extreme right.
Through social networks, Posobiec and William Craddick, for example, founder and editor-in-chief of Disobedient Media:{:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px 12px 0px 0px;background-image:url("):}: have been perceived as close to each other. Craddick would have warned that French documents had been leaked minutes before it was made public.
According to Reuters:{:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px 12px 0px 0px;background:url("):}:, "two US intelligence officials said that they are increasingly confident that hackers with connections to the Russian government played a role in the French election.” Similarly, US intelligence agencies have also concluded “hacking attacks on the Democratic Party and 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's campaign were part of a Russian-backed effort to help Republican Trump win the presidency”.
==
==
ref belgian res
forged docs macron le pen
https://twitter.com/Nico_VanderB/status/859892235005022209?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fmashable.com%2F2017%2F05%2F04%2Fpro-trump-fake-news-emmanuel-macron-marine-le-pen%2F
https://twitter.com/Nico_VanderB
Nicolas Vanderbiest Verified account
@ Nico_VanderB
Director of Operations @ SaperVedereEU - Blogger / Chronicler on Crises, Influences and Social Media
Brussels - Paris
reputatiolab.com
Joined September 2011
Born January 04
==
https://mashable.com/2017/05/04/pro-trump-fake-news-emmanuel-macron-marine-le-pen/
Fake news was very much a part of U.S. elections last year and now it's trickled into the French elections as well.
SEE ALSO: [John Oliver says the French elections are looking Trump-esque
During the presidential debate Wednesday night, Front National candidate Marine Le Pen, who runs on an anti-EU, far-right agenda, raised the allegation that the election's frontrunner, the centrist Emmanuel Macron, was engaging in tax evasion with an offshore account in the Cayman Islands.
"I hope that we will not find out that you have an offshore account in the Bahamas," Le Pen said during the heated debate.
Le Pen later backed down on her accusations, saying she doesn't have any proof. Macron filed a defamation complaint. "We will not hesitate to prosecute for defamation anyone who repeats this false information," a member of his team said, adding that the candidate was victim of a "cyber information campaign."
As pointed out by the Macron campaign in a press release to the French media, the "fake news" claims originated on4chan /pol/ just ahead of the debate:
An anonymous user alleged that two leaked documents, posted in the thread, were proof that Macron, a former investment banker, had a professional relationship with a bank involved in tax evasion in the Cayman Islands.
"People have known for a while that Macron underreported his income and assets to the government, but nobody knew where it was stored," the user said, "Here's where his money is stored. See what you can do with this, anon. Let's get grinding. If we can get #MacronCacheCash trending in France for the debates tonight, it might discourage French voters from voting Macron."
The attempt to spread the story by getting a hashtag, #MacronCacheCash, to trend is a tactic seen in the U.S. election.
The hashtag was tweeted by apparently U.S.-based, right-wing accounts in an attempt to make the story viral:
According to Nicolas Vanderbiest, a Belgian commentator for Radio France Culture, the Twitter accounts were linked, in France, to Sputnik and Russia Today.
He tweeted: “So the fake news story on Macron’s account in the Bahamas, we can say without being misleading, that it was by the Russians.”
Disobedient Media, a U.S. right-wing media organisation, published an article accusing Macron of setting up a tax evasion mechanism:
The two leaked documents allegedly show the "incorporation of a shell company in Nevis, a country that doesn't keep ownership records of corporation" and the proof "of a banking relationship with a bank involved in tax evasion in the Cayman Islands."
However, the Macron campaign in their press release was quick to debunk those claims. First of all, his signature looks counterfeited:
[pix sigs]
Also, the documents have two different names for Macron's company — "La Providence LLC" and "La Providence LTD"; there's no co-signer in the first document; the second document has only one page; the use of a fax machine; and the date of signature of the first document, 4 May 2012.
Macron has denied having bank accounts in the Bahamas.
"I've never had an account in any tax havens because it's not my temperament and also because I've always wanted to return to the public affairs," he said.
"It's typical of fake news. Marine Le Pen is behind this and she's backed by troops on the internet that plant them. All of this is factually false," he added.
==
https://www.opensourceinvestigations.com/elections/france-presidential-election-aftermath/
now that the Presidential Elections are finally over and the new President of the Fifth Republic of France is confirmed to be Emmanuel Macron, the centrist candidate that ran the „En Marche!” platform, let’s take a closer look at some of the most serious aspects of the campaign and how it might affect the outcome of the elections in the short and long term.
With a few days before the second round of the Presidential Elections in France, documents emerged that supposedly showed how Emmanuel Macron has underreported his income and assets to the government ever since 2012, by using a shell company in the Caribbean island of Nevis, a country that doesn’t keep any ownership records of corporations. Moreover, the documents leaked also show the supposed ties between Macron and a bank involved in tax evasion in the Cayman Islands.
These leaks came after the furious debate between Front National’s Marine Le Pen and centrist En Marche’s Emmanuel Macron, in which the far-right candidate alluded at Macron of having ties with a Caribbean-based bank (located in the Cayman Islands) mainly used for tax evasion purposes. The original source for these claims remains uncertain – while the mainstream media has quickly judged the leaks to be the artwork of the Russian intelligence agencies (Nicolas Vanderbiest, a commentator for Radio France Culture, tweeted: “So the fake news story on Macron’s account in the Bahamas, we can say without being misleading, that it was by the Russians”), a more reasonable approach would be that the leaks emerged from the right-wing online page „Disobedient Media”, which was founded in California by journalist William Craddick.
The first document is an operating agreement signed on the 4th of May, 2012 to form „La Providence LLC” under the 1995 Nevis Limited Liability Company Ordinance bearing Mr Macron’s name and signature. Surprisingly, La Providence is the name of the high school Macron attended in Amiens, where he first met his wife. While many may disregard this document because of Macron’s past as a banker, the decision to form a company in Nevis is highly suspicious, as the Nevis Confidential Relationship Act prohibits the disclosure of information and guarantees the secrecy and privacy of offshore LLCs in Nevis. What does this mean? Information about company owners will never be published nor disclosed to the public by any Nevis authorities, which is why Bloomberg describes Nevis as one of the most popular tax havens in the Caribbean. Read the document here.
The second document is a letter sent to „La Providence Ltd.” from the First Caribbean International Bank, indicating a business relationship with Macron’s LLC. The First Caribbean International Bank is no stranger to intricate ties – it was named by Reuters as a player in fraud relating to the 2015 FIFA scandals, when documents emerged showing a representative for First Caribbean personally collecting a check from a FIFA official, a check that was later on deposited in an account in the Bahamas. Forbes has also reported that First Caribbean International Bank was implicated as a facilitator of tax evasion in 2013. Read the document here.
When asked in April if he was hiding offshore accounts or inheritances from French authorities, Macron denied the allegations completely. More so, the former investment banker has issued a statement regarding these leaks, citing that he was a victim of a “cyber misinformation campaign”, adding that he would take legal action against Marine Le Pen and Disobedient Media (Mr. Macron filed a legal complaint on the 4th of May, prompting the Paris prosecutor’s office to open a formal investigation into whether falsified documents or fake news were being used to influence voting ahead of the second round ballot). French newspaper Le Monde has debunked 19 things that Marine Le Pen said during the debate that were untrue – thus making these allegations regarding the tax evasion even harder to prove in the long run. Asked on BFM TV on Thursday morning if she had any proof to corroborate the claims, Le Pen admitted she did not – “Not at all” she said, “If I wanted to do so I would have done it yesterday. I’ve just asked him the question…”
If the abovementioned documents are confirmed as authentic, it would prove that not only did Macron lie to the authorities and the French electorate, but also that he has amassed massive funds in tax havens whilst working as a banker for the Rothschild Bank. These allegations are very serious for the centrist candidate that has tried to appeal to an electorate that feels disenfranchised by the current political establishment – if proven authentic, it would confirm the fact that Macron’s candidacy has been built on a foundation of lies and that he represents nothing more but the same establishment he claims he want to bring down. However, one must ponder the fact that these accusations might only be intricate lies used in a dirty election that has already seen the downfall of Republican candidate Fillon by similar means.
Whatever might be the truth, this whole situation shows how brutal and vicious this Presidential election has been in France – similar to the Hillary-Trump confrontation, Macron and Le Pen have gone on an all-out war against each other, while a big chunk of the French electorate seems more and more alienated by these two candidates and their proposed platforms. In a country that has been hit by countless terrorist attacks in the past 2 years and still faces a nationwide state of emergency, the political establishment has failed to push forward experienced candidates for the Presidential election and now the situation looks direr than ever.
Emmanuel Macron’s victory over the Eurosceptic Marine Le Pen is not a product of the “En Marche” candidate appeal to the French electorate whatsoever. As seen in the days after the election, anti-capitalistic and anti-establishment riots have been organised in some of the biggest cities in France, proving that a large segment of the French electorate was completely against both of the candidates. With a record number of over 3 million votes cancelled – people handing in empty ballots – and one million votes spoiled, this situation sets a record in France, a record that simply shows how millions of people felt that neither of the candidates represented them. 11.4 million people out of the 47 million that were eligible to vote chose not to – a number higher than the amount of votes that came in for Ms. Le Pen. The turnout – 75.3% according to the French Interior Ministry – is the lowest percentage since the 1969 elections.
What do the numbers tell us? Out of 47 million registered voters, circa 20.7 million voted for Macron – less than half of the French population. Marine Le Pen received 10.6 million votes, the highest amount of votes any far-right candidate ever received in France, proving that the National Front is set up to become the main opposition party in the next Parliamentary elections (up 10% compared to her father). 11.4 million people decided to boycott the elections, 3 million people voted in blank ballots , 1 million people ruined their ballots – this all adds up to a phenomenon that is truly historic for the Republic of France – 15.4 million people felt like neither of the candidates represented them, triggering a massive signal that the establishment should take notice of. This proves not only that the electorate feels disenfranchised by the current political establishment, but also that a lot of French citizens will be looking extremely closely at Emmanuel Macron’s next decisions as acting president of the French Republic. Albeit a pro-European candidate, a self-proclaimed defender of the EU ideals, Macron will have to pander to the needs and changes that most French citizens want – changes that revolve around border control, freedom of movement and immigration reforms. The alternative not to make changes along these lines could mean a short Presidency for Macron.
One way or the other, the French people have already lost. Between a centrist candidate that has no political experience whatsoever and a far-right candidate that ran her entire platform on the basis of anti-immigration reforms, the French electorate was forced to choose the lesser evil yet again – Holland 2.0 or French Trump.
==
How we debunked rumours that Macron has an offshore account
https://observers.france24.com › 20170505-france-elections-macron-lepen...
1.
How pro-Trump trolls spread fake news from 4chan to ...
https://mashable.com › 2017/05/04 › pro-trump-fake-news-emmanuel-mac...
1.
Macron campaign says its emails have been subjected to ...
https://www.washingtonpost.com › world › 2017/05/06
May 6, 2017 - Emmanuel Macron, the French presidential candidate from the centrist En Marche! ... In March, Le Pen met personally with Putin on a visit to Moscow. ... of offshore accounts and tax evasion — was retweeted by William Craddick, ... Nicolas Vanderbiest, an expert on social-media information dissemination ...
French election debate: Official probe launched as Marine Le ...
https://www.independent.co.uk › News › World › Europe
1.
On "Macron Leaks" in France, Hacking Is Not Whistleblowing.
https://theintercept.com › 2017/05/06 › no-macron-leaks-politically-motiv...
1.
Websites pump out fake news minutes after offshore claims ...
https://www.thetimes.co.uk › article › websites-pump-out-fake-news-minutes...
May 5, 2017 - The tale of Emmanuel Macron's supposed stash of offshore cash was ... prompted Marine Le Pen to suggest that he was evading taxes “in the Bahamas”. ... Nicolas Vanderbiest, an expert at Louvain university in Belgium, said ...
Fake news takes centre stage in French election - EUobserver
https://euobserver.com › eu-election
1.
French presidential candidate confirms 'massive' hack days ...
https://www.politico.com › story › 2017/05/05 › emmanuel-macron-frenc...
1.
:{:(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}:
:{[PDF]:(style="font-weight:bold;cursor:auto;margin:0px 3px 0px 0px;float:left"):}:
The “Macron Leaks” Operation: A Post-Mortem - Atlantic Council
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org › wp-content › uploads › 2019/06 › The_...
1.
France Presidential Election: the aftermath - Open source ...
https://www.opensourceinvestigations.com › Elections
France Presidential Election: the aftermath. Elections. Macron. It's only fair to share. ... ties between Macron and a bank involved in tax evasion in the Cayman Islands. ... Front National's Marine Le Pen and centrist En Marche's Emmanuel Macron, ... to be the artwork of the Russian intelligence agencies (Nicolas Vanderbiest, ...
https://www.mediamatters.org/maga-trolls/fake-news-and-alt-right-are-pushing-forged-documents-aid-marine-le-pen-frances-election
Forged documents originating on 4chan alleging that French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron was evading taxes spread online thanks to an ecosystem that includes social media, “alt-right” outlets, and fake news purveyors. The campaign was seemingly aided by Russian-linked entities, and it subsequently reached Macron’s opponent, who aired the claim in a public debate.
Macron is competing in a May 7 runoff against far-right candidate Marine Le Pen. On May 3, hours before a scheduled debate between Macron and Le Pen, an anonymous user on 4chan posted documents purporting to show that Macron used a shell company to dodge taxes. Users on the forum responded that the documents should be sent to “independent journalists” and “the alternative media” like “Cernovic (sic), Breitbart, and so on,” and encouraged each other to “spam” the documents “on social media” such as Twitter to get “it trending.” They also said to “send it to Le Pen.” The documents soon spread on Twitter, with many of the Twitter accounts promoting them appearing to have connections to Russia, according to a Belgian researcher. The claim was promoted by “alt-right” media figures such as Mike Cernovich and Jack Posobiec.
That these figures would attempt to smear Le Pen’s opponent is not surprising given that Le Pen is widely admired by much of the “alt-right” and closely tied with Russia.
Along with Twitter, 4chan’s campaign was picked up by forums on 8chan and Reddit; “alt-right” fringe outlets The Gateway Pundit, Got News, Zero Hedge, and Daily Stormer; and fake news purveyor Before It’s News.
The 4chan-based documents eventually reached Le Pen herself. During her debate with Macron, she said, “I hope that we will not find out that you have an offshore account in the Bahamas.”Le Pen later backed down on her claim, and Macron filed a legal complaint against her for the statement.Multiple outlets have reported that the documents were fake, with The Telegraph noting that they were “widely denounced ascrudeforgeries.” Additionally, following Le Pen's accusation, the French prosecutor's office has opened an investigation regarding “suspicions of fake news being spread to influence Sunday's presidential vote.”
The case is yet another example of the way the misinformation ecosystem involving the “alt-right” and fake news purveyor:{s:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}: amplifiesfringe falsities and lies (and even Kremlin-connected conspiracy theories). The network has often succeeded in pushing those false claims into more traditional conservative and mainstream outlets and, thus, the public realm.
==
Marine Le Pen Has a Plan to Make France Great Again—and Steve Bannon Helped
no lnx
Marine Le Pen Has a Plan to Make France Great Again—and Steve Bannon Helped
By Adele M. Stan | May 31, 2019 1:45 pm
Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right Rassemblement National party, greets supporters after a rally on May 25, 2019, days before the election for the European Union parliamentary elections. (Photo by A.M. Stan for Right Wing Watch)]
Two days before the European Union parliamentary elections, an auditorium in a scruffy coal town in the north of France filled with admirers of Marine Le Pen, friend of Vladimir Putin and Steve Bannon, and leader of France’s far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party.Her fortunes appeared to be running just about even with those of President Emmanuel Macron’s La République en Marche party. At least half of the crowd of 500 or so at the rally in Hénin-Beaumont, Le Pen’s home constituency, appeared to be well over the age of 50. A very loud band playing covers of American classic-rock songs rather poorly (their version of “Purple Rain” was particularly painful, if not flat-out ironic) signaled the baby-boomer character of Le Pen’s base, as did the massive coal pile visible from nearly every point in town. Hénin-Beaumont looks a bit like those hurting Pennsylvania towns that Trumplandia is said to comprise.
A coal pile in Pas de Calais, France, visible from Marine Le Pen’s home constituency in Hénin-Beaumont. (Photo by A.M. Stan for Right Wing Watch)]
The band notwithstanding, the RN’s presentation was polished and forward-looking in terms of party-building. The two speakers who preceded Le Pen at the podium were young men; one of them, the 23-year-old Jordan Bardella, was tapped by Le Pen to top the list of candidates RN was putting forward for seats in the European Union parliament, from which she had favored France’s departure until the Brexit mess refused to end.
But now Le Pen had the opportunity to use her party’s long-standing fear-mongering tactics over the changing ethnic make-up of France to not only wound the neo-liberal Macron, but the whole of the multi-lateral European project and the reputation of regular, old liberal values themselves.
To the right of the stage, playing during the warm-up to the main event, was a large, high-definition screen displaying a seemingly endless loop of pictures of the photogenic Le Pen in various settings—with children and with local RN leaders. But then the loop stopped, along with the band, and the video panel filled with a series of animated text-and-graphics messages, accompanied by its own booming score.
As white and red text dropped onto the blue background, a graphic of the globe, turned so as to make Africa dominate and bring South America into the field of vision, appeared. The globe was marked with red arrows, meant to imply a horde of black and brown people breaching the cultural fortress of Europe.
“We believe that home for these migrants is in their home countries,” the text read.
From a slide presentation shown at Marine Le Pen’s final rally before the 2019 European Union parliamentary elections in northern France. It is part of a series that reads: “We believe that home for these migrants is in their home countries.” (Photo by A.M. Stan for Right Wing Watch)]
There was no mistaking the relentless anti-migrant messaging of RN, or of the way in which Le Pen, with some success, painted Macron as the very symbol of an impending cultural death of all things French. Several days earlier, she told the audience at a rally in Burgundy that Macron “mustn’t come in first or he will abuse it to methodically deconstruct France,” as translated and reported by the Irish Times.
Moving from wine- to coal-country, Le Pen told her fans in Hénin-Beaumont that they were part of something big—an international uprising of the little people against the global elites. There, to the cheers of those assembled, Le Pen defined the May 26 vote as an existential battle for France, Europe, and civilization as a whole, and that the way to save the nation, the continent and civilization itself was to vote for RN candidates as a way of “saying ‘no’ to Macron’s destructive vision for Europe.” There were more cheers, as rally-goers waved French flags.“ Speaking of the far-right parties of other EU member states, Le Pen invoked a catch-phrase frequently heard on the right: that of “a Europe of nations,” which is defined in opposition to the very notion of an EU with the power to issue regulations on all the member states. “With our European allies who also embody the awakening of peoples, for the first time in 60 years, we have the opportunity to initiate … the construction of a Europe of nations, and to end this European Union.” In other words, start dismantling the bureaucracy from within or, at the very least, seat enough far-right members of the European parliament to gum up the works.
That part about the “awakening of peoples”? That’s Le Pen’s reference to the rise of far-right parties in countries throughout Europe, from Italy to the U.K., and from Hungary to Spain. And if that phrase “a Europe of nations” is beginning to sound familiar to you, it’s because none other than Steve Bannon, the self-appointed guru to, and gatherer of, far-right figures across the globe, has taken it up. As the election campaign entered its last week, Bannon stories flooded the media as the banished one-time White House operative received a steady stream of reporters at a suite in the Hotel Bristol, a five-star property in Paris where Bannon was said to have paid $6,000 a night for his digs.
As election results began to come in on Sunday night, it was clear that Le Pen’s party bested Macron’s by a couple of seats—winning nearly 24 percent of France’s total vote. Although those results are not much different than what Le Pen’s party (then called the Front National) gleaned in the 2014 EU elections, the symbolic defeat of Macron was huge, cast as a clash of worldviews.
Supporters of France’s far-right Rassemblement National party wave flags at a party rally on May 24, 2019, during the campaign for European Union parliamentary seats. (Photo by A.M. Stan for Right Wing Watch)]
Nonetheless, the road to that victory was a bit bumpy. Le Pen’s ties to Putin returned to the spotlight, especially a mysterious loan her party received in 2014 from a Russian bank that then went under. Then there was that irksome selfie she posed for with Ruuben Kaalep, a member of Estonia’s parliament who has links to neo-Nazis. Kaalep photographed the two making a “white power” sign with their hands—a gesture that mimics an “OK” sign that was once used as a way to troll liberals, but after enough repetition was adopted at face value by some far-right types as a kind of not-so-secret handshake.
The selfie, posted by Kaalep to his Facebook page, caused enough of a stir that even The New York Times ran a story about the photo and the blowback the French leader received for it. Le Pen pleaded ignorance of the gesture’s meaning, saying that Kaalep asked her to make it, and she complied. However, there has been ample news coverage of Kaalep’s white supremacist leanings, and there she was, hanging out with him.
A Facebook post by Ruuben Kaalep of Estonia’s far-right Conservative People’s Party of Estonia (EKRE) showing him in a selfie with Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s far-right Rassemblement National party, making a gesture that’s come to be known as the “white power” sign. (Screenshot via Twitter from @VahurKoorits)]
It seems that a lot of far-right types in Europe are hanging out with each other these days. It was Bannon’s dream to bring them all together so that they might form a voting bloc within the EU Parliament that could gum up the works. And while Bannon’s scheme, dubbed The Movement, never really got off the ground as a Bannon-branded project, Italy’s Matteo Salvini, that country’s interior minister and leader of the far-right La Liga party, stepped in to convene a multi-national, multi-party far-right rally in Milan. That placed some of the most bigoted and reactionary political figures in all of Europe on one stage—and drew thousands of supporters to the plaza where the event took place.
Salvini, however, wasn’t able to wrangle all of Europe’s far-right authoritarians. Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, whose far-right Fidesz party ultimately won a landslide in the EU elections, apparently couldn’t see fit to hang with the small-fry whose parties have yet to rise to ruling status. Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who leads Poland’s ruling far-right Law and Justice Party, has issues with the many Russia-facing right-wing leaders in Salvini’s coalition and was not present. And Nigel Farage was too busy selling his insta-party (just add money and stir up the populace), simply called the Brexit party, to the electorate to show up. Since the elections, Salvini has so far failed to woo Orbán, who just declined the Italian leader’s invitation to join the bloc of far-right parties he is building within the European Union.
The photos from Salvini’s May 19 Milan gathering show a cheerful Le Pen, who was about to confront another problem. Her pal, Steve Bannon, air-dropped himself onto her turf just days ahead of the election to promote himself as the Man with the Plan at just the moment when it was not to a nationalist leader’s advantage to have an American materialize presenting himself in a way that suggested he’d had something to do with her success—which he very may well have had.
One thing’s for certain, Europe’s far right seems to have a lot of money to spend, and nobody seems to be able to say where it’s coming from. Le Pen herself has said she turns to Bannon for fundraising advice. When she rebranded her party a year ago under its new name (in order to distance it, at least in public view, from the anti-Semitism and Holocaust denialism that its earlier Front National was known for), Bannon was on hand for the roll-out at the party’s national convention, where he told party members to wear the term “racist” like “a badge of honor.” But when the guru of the dark forces turned up in the City of Lights as the EU election campaign was reaching its peak, Le Pen insisted Bannon had “no role” in her party’s campaign, even though two of her deputies made a pilgrimage to the Bristol to pay a call on the big guy.
The Bristol Hotel in Paris, where Steve Bannon set up shop during the 2019 campaign for the European Union parliamentary elections, receiving reporters and officials of Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National party. (Photo by A.M. Stan for Right Wing Watch)]
Pro-democracy observers of the EU’s parliamentary elections found bright spots to tout: Turnout overall is up significantly, and even as the right grabbed its biggest slice of the multinational legislative body yet, so did the Greens. But that sort of analysis ignores the fact that the right is on the rise, and that in three major EU countries—U.K., France, and Italy—far-right parties are emerging as their nation’s largest parties, at least in terms of their presence in the EU, an organization they would love to kill.
As Cas Mudde wrote at The Guardian:
Rather than a victory for democracy, the European elections, and the responses to the results, show how much populism in general, and the populist radical right in particular, has become mainstreamed and normalised. We find it normal that a neo-Nazi party is the third biggest party in a member state, that a populist radical right wins more than half of the vote in non-democratic elections, and that the populist radical right is the biggest party in several EU member states. We celebrate that “the majority has voted for pro-European parties”. We ignore that turnout in one in five member states was (well) below one-third of eligible voters.
Indeed, one of the most troubling aspects of Le Pen’s rally in Hénin-Beaumont was just how perfectly normal it all seemed. Nowhere did one feel the kind of ready-to-explode energy of a Trump rally, or a gathering of Germany’s far-right Alternatives für Deutschland party. Just nice, middle-class people expressing their contempt for people who don’t look like them—and then charmingly singing the Marseillaise in unison before calling the event to a close.
After the rally concluded, a white-haired attendee in a pink skirt-suit was seen walking to her car. Emblazoned on the back of her jacket in black letters were the words, “LOVE ROCKS.”
A fan of Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s far-right Rassemblement National party, exits a party rally for the 2019 European Union parliamentary elections. (Photo by A.M. Stan for Right Wing Watch)
Adele M. Stan explored the European Union parliamentary elections as a guest of the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, an independent foundation affiliated with Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SPD).
Tags: Marine Le Pen Steve Bannon Europe Immigration
desmog uk
...Aross Europe, right-wing populist parties are picking up votes. In some countries, once-fringe parties have gained enough support to propel them into the halls of national power. But, for most, an easier target has been the European Parliament. And that could matter for climate change.
The UK Independence Party is a case in point. The group, once led by Nigel Farage, has seven MEPs, in contrast to zero MPs in the UK parliament. But it is not alone in eyeing Brussels as a potential foothold on the path to power.
In the 2014 elections, right-wing populist parties took almost 15 percent of the European parliament’s 751 seats. This is predicted to increase in the 2019 elections, scheduled for the end of May. Guy Verhofstadt, leader of the parliament’s liberal alliance, recently warned that the shake-up could usher in a five-year populist “nightmare”.
This means that parties such as France’s National Rally (known as Front National until 2018, when its leader Marine Le Pen decided on a rebrand), the Netherlands’ Party For Freedom, and the Danish People’s Party are suddenly a force to be reckoned with.
“As unprecedented popular discontent obstructs governments in shaping climate policy, the question is whether the EU will be able to maintain its progressive role after the next elections,” write Stella Schaller and Alexander Carius, from the Berlin think-tank Adelphi, in a recent report on rightwing populism and its impact on climate policies.
Over the last two decades, the EU has been a fairly consistent voice in calling for climate action, even if its targets haven’t always matched the urgency of the task. Its goal of cutting emissions by 40 percent by 2030 is deemed “insufficient” by Climate Action Tracker, meaning that if all governments adopted similarly ambitious targets, the planet would warm by up to 3C.
The EU’s climate chief, Miguel Arias Cañete, has already said that the EU is in a position to raise its target and increase its ambition, a move that would have to be approved by the European Council.
But observers are worried that an uptick in populist MEPs could hinder progress, given that their parties regularly adopt positions denying the science of climate change and opposing renewable energy.
The populists
“Populism” is a somewhat difficult term to define; even harder is describing its relationship to attitudes on climate change.
Both left- and right-wing parties can be populist in nature, yet right-wing parties are more likely to adopt climate sceptic positions. And while they tend to be antagonistic towards attempts to implement climate change policies, many take a decidedly pro-environment attitude to other issues. There are even a smattering of populist parties that support climate action in some form.
“I don't think populism in itself is a bad thing, if it means you're in tune with what citizens want. In actual fact, sometimes it's just about social justice and representing ordinary individuals. [It’s right-wing populism that] is a growing concern, certainly within the EU,” says Lynn Boylan, Sinn Féin MEP for Dublin, Ireland.
Yet when parties do adopt anti-climate positions, they tend to do so based on four common reasons, according to the recent Adelphi report: Reducing emissions is seen among these populist factions as expensive, unjust, harmful to the environment, or simply not worthwhile.
Rather than forming a united front, populist parties are split between the various parliamentary groupings. Fidesz, Hungary’s governing party, is the only right-wing populist party to sit in the more centrist European People’s Party (of which Angela Merkel’s CDU party is also a member). Greece’s Golden Dawn is not affiliated to a parliamentary grouping, and the remainder of the major parties are split between the European Conservatives and Reformists, Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy, and the Europe of Nations and Freedom Group.
The groups are also divided by their varied approaches to climate change. While the authoritarian attitude of Hungary’s Fidesz has raised concerns – Viktor Orban, the party’s leader, was famously greeted by European commision head Jean-Claude Juncker with the phrase “Hello, dictator” – it has, at least, publicly supported international climate action. Similarly, Latvia’s National Alliance has argued for multilateral climate action and for investing in clean energy.
Both Fidesz and the National Alliance have been in government for a fairly long time. According to the Adelphi report, this could be one reason for their moderate stances on climate change. Another is the fact that both countries emit less than the EU average, already relying on hydro and nuclear in their energy mixes, and therefore have less to lose by the bloc turning its back on coal.
These pro-climate positions are far from the norm, however, among Europe’s populists. The majority of the parties either outright deny the science on climate change, or else ignore the issue. The Alternative for Germany party and the UKIndependence Party are both openly sceptical about the proven connection between carbon dioxide emissions and rising temperatures.
Some parties have a more mixed approach, combining anti-climate sentiment with support for renewable energy. Rather than arguing for these technologies on the grounds that they’ll reduce emissions, they highlight other benefits, including the potential for job opportunities and energy independence. France’s National Rally is a prime example, rejecting the UN’s climate body as a “communist project” while also supporting the development of domestic renewables.
Despite the hostility towards climate change, many right-wing populist parties strongly support environmental policies more generally, which more easily tie into far-right narratives on nationalism, says Bernhard Forchtner, a lecturer in media and communication at the University of Leicester, who specialises in environmental communication by far-right populists.
...
==
Facebook has removed the page of violent fascist organisation Britain First -- which had posted videos comparing immigrants to animals and describes its leaders as “islamophobic and proud”.
Two of Britain First’s leaders are currently in jail for racist hate crimes. Yet, Mastercard, Visa and American Express continue to process donations for the hate group.
Racist groups can't operate without money.
SumOfUs members have already pushed Paypal to stop processing funding for the violent French white supremacist group Génération Identitaire. Now, let’s make the credit card giants take responsibility and cut all ties with Britain First.
==
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/is-frances-national-fronts-supposed-break-with-its-anti-semitic-past-more-pr-than-reality/
France’s far-right National Front party, admired by White House strategist Steve Bannon and aligned with the Putin admirers of the Religious Right, may not have jettisoned its anti-Semitic past as much as the party’s leaders would like people to believe, according to a story published this week by Foreign Policy magazine. It notes that National Front leader Marine Le Pen has shifted the party’s focus away from small-government economics to a populist “economic patriotism” that is packaged with the demonization of Muslim immigrants. Sound familiar?
Donald Trump has been compared to Le Pen since the start of his campaign. Le Pen, according to the Washington Post, was the first foreign politician to congratulate Trump on his victory. She initially touted his victory as “a sign of hope” for her own campaign, and she was seen in Trump Tower in January, though she has since backed away given how unpopular Trump is in France.
Le Pen, who took over the National Front from her father in 2011, has made a great show of distancing the party from its anti-Semitic and fascist-sympathizing past. At one point she even criticized Trump’s call to ban Muslims from entering the U.S. But the Foreign Policy story, written by Emma-Kate Symons, suggests that Le Pen’s campaign of dédiabolisation or “de-demonization” may be more public relations than reality:
Marine Le Pen made headlines Sunday for claiming that France was not responsible for deporting Jews to Nazi concentration camps — a comment that gave the country flashbacks to her Holocaust-denying father. But the remark came amid a new spate of reporting and scholarship in France that has cast doubts on whether the new National Front is really any different from the old National Front.
Foreign Policy reviews a “wave of investigative journalism and research” that “has painted a picture of an organization that, at its highest levels, is awash with Hitler admirers and Holocaust-denying far-right nationalists, including within Marine Le Pen’s inner circle, who could well be poised to work at the Élysée Palace should she win on May 7.”
The story reports on Le Pen advisers who were members of an ultra-nationalist right-wing youth group and who have “visited the late Belgian Waffen-SS Nazi collabortationist politician Léon Degrelle in order to pay their respects.” Much of the focus has been on longtime Le Pen adviser Frédéric Chatillon. Chatillon was legally barred from working for the National Front after being charged with campaign finance violations in the 2012 elections, says Foreign Policy, but a Le Canard Enchainé article titled ‘The Little Nazi at Marine Le Pen’s Door’ reported that he is still a paid member of Le Pen’s campaign team. “When Le Pen congratulated Russia and China for opposing intervention against Assad in Syria,” says Foreign Policy, “she was allegedly parroting talking points from Chatillon, who joined a group of hard-right French political figureswho were visiting the dictator in Damascus in March 2016.”
Symons reviews the steps Le Pen has taken to rehabilitate the party’s image, most dramatically in 2015 when she expelled her own father from the party after he repeated comments minimizing the Holocaust. She has also tried to court gay and Jewish voters. The PR campaign has worked to some extent:
Le Pen may have succeeded in reshaping the National Front image outside of France. In the United States, she is feted by Republicans such as Steve King. In the Netherlands, she has formed a European alliance with anti-Islam immigrant-bashing politician Geert Wilders, who once made a point of keeping his distance from the National Front.
King is not the only fan of the National Front on the American Right. In 2014, radio host Alex Jones said he’d not only vote for Le Pen, “I’d get down and kiss her feet.” While writing in Breitbart, Sarah Palin praised Le Pen and her niece, Marion Maréchal Le Pen, who is also a National Front politician.
Under Steve Bannon’s leadership, Breitbart gave “glowing coverage” to far-right European parties. Back in July, before he officially joined the Trump campaign, Bannon talked about Breitbart wanting to expand to France, which he said was “the place to be,” citing “women from the Le Pen family.” After the election in November, the Daily Beast called Bannon “the direct line between the European far-right and Donald J. Trump, leader of the free world.” Indeed, Wilders was a featured speaker at a Breitbart-supported anti-Muslim “Gays for Trump” party in Cleveland during the Republican National Convention.
The admiration is mutual: Europe’s far-right leaders, including Jean-Marie Le Pen, were big fans of Trump’s candidacy. During the campaign, Trump supported the U.K.’s departure from the European Union, something Marine Le Pen wants to replicate in France. And of course, back then, Trump shared Le Pen’s enthusiasm for Russian leader Vladimir Putin, and in those happier days of their mutual admiration society, Putin returned the favor.
The U.S. Religious Right is also connected to the National Front through its increasingly global activism, much of which is coordinated through the World Congress of Families, now headed by National Organization for Marriage President Brian Brown. Brown joined a delegation of French anti-gay activists on a 2013 trip to Moscow to meet with Russian legislators; the French delegation was led by a former National Front candidate. Among those attending last year’s WCF summit in Tbilisi, Georgia, was Marion Maréchal Le Pen. World Congress of Families funder Konstantin Malofeev, a Putin ally known as “God’s Oligarch,” hosted a 2014 meeting about ridding Europe of the “satanic gay lobby,” which was attended by the National Front’s Aymeric Chauprade.
Tags: Brian BrownDonald TrumpJean-Marie Le PenMarine Le PenMarion Maréchal Le PenSteve BannonAnti-SemitismEuropeFranceInternationalNational FrontNational Organization for MarriageWorld Congress of Families
How To Get Away With White Supremacy In Trump's White House
Stephen Bannon: White Supremacist Or Just #1 Fan Of White Supremacists?
Blog ››› February 3, 2017 2:19 PM EST ››› JOHN WHITEHOUSE
With the appointment of former Breitbart chief Stephen Bannon as a permanent member of President Donald Trump’s National Security Council, white nationalist forces in America have achieved what Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson could only dream of: a revanchist, retrograde ethno-nationalist at the highest levels of the United States government.
You might think this would be a major news story, but instead the focus has been more parochial, largely focused on the extremism of Breitbart.com under Bannon. And indeed, the website was extreme.
But the driver of Breitbart is not its focus on or use of verboten topics or words. Breitbart is driven by the horde of white supremacists and misogynists who frequent the site. Don’t take my word for it. Take it from Stephen Bannon himself. In late December, Bannon told Breitbart radio, “The best thing we ever had was both the comments section at Breitbart and the callers, the great audience we’ve got here at SiriusXM, to call and share every day what their feelings were.” He reiterated the importance of the “intensity in the comments” later in the interview.
There is no ambiguity about which commenters Brannon was referencing. He bragged to Mother Jones at the Republican National Convention in August that Breitbart was “the platform for the alt-right.” And the “alt-right” loves Bannon back. Former Breitbart editor Ben Shapiro said that “Breitbart has become the alt-right go-to website, with [editor Milo] Yiannopoulos pushing white ethno-nationalism as a legitimate response to political correctness, and the comment section turning into a cesspool for white supremacist mememakers” (emphasis added). Beyond Yiannopoulos, Breitbart has also hired white nationalists as reporters. Shapiro said the “alt-right” is “shot through with racism and anti-Semitism” and explained the connection with Breitbart at length:
I’d heard, of course, that the some (sic) of Breitbart’s comment sections had been occupied over previous months by a motley collection of white supremacists and anti-Semites (I generally never check the comments). I’d certainly felt their online wrath, accused by alt-righters of being an anti-Trump “cuck” — accusations that came with memes of gas chambers and “shekelmeister” cartoons that could have come directly from Der Stürmer. Such material flowed into my inbox and Twitter feed. That flow escalated dramatically after I declared that I would not support Trump, and it escalated again after I left Breitbart over its attempts to smear its own reporter, Michelle Fields, in order to shield then-Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski against charges that he’d yanked her by the arm at a campaign event.
But it wasn’t until March 29 that Breitbart’s full embrace of the alt-right became clear. That’s the day the site featured Yiannopoulos’s lengthy piece glorifying the alt-right. Yiannopoulos had already given interviews in which he stated that “Jews run the banks” and “Jews run the media,” dismissing anti-Semitic memes as merely “mischievous, dissident, trolly.” He wrote, along with co-author Allum Bokhari, this insane sentence: “There are many things that separate the alternative right from old-school racist skinheads (to whom they are often idiotically compared), but one thing stands out above all else: intelligence.”
And this is the cast of characters, and their enablers, to whom Trump has turned.
White nationalists and white supremacists were overjoyed when Trump appointed Bannon as his chief strategist. Former KKK grand wizard David Duke told CNN, "You have an individual, Mr. Bannon, who's basically creating the ideological aspects of where we're going." Duke added on his radio show that Bannon had “been right on about a lot of the issues facing European Americans.” A neo-Nazi website described Bannon’s White House position as “pure awesomeness.” Richard Spencer, the Nazi who was punched during inauguration weekend, lauded Bannon’s ability to chart Trump’s “macro trajectory.” Andrew Breitbart himself reportedly called Bannon “the Leni Riefenstahl of the Tea Party movement,” referring to the German filmmaker who made propaganda films for the Nazis.
And yet the mainstream media is still insistent upon protecting Stephen Bannon’s reputation. NPR’s deferential interview with Breitbart editor Joel Pollak was a signal of what was to come. After House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) twice called Bannon a “white supremacist,” mainstream figures rushed to his defense.
Speaking to MSNBC’s Greta Van Susteren, The New York Times’ Nick Confessore literally scoffed at the idea of Bannon as a white supremacist:
Scott Pelley on CBS Evening News described Bannon as “controversial” and said that CBS Evening News could not find “any quotes from Bannon himself advocating white supremacy.”
Stephen Bannon spent years empowering white supremacists and publishing a white nationalist website, and his ex-wife even swore in court that “he said he doesn’t like Jews” and didn’t want his children to go to “school with Jews.” And yet, mainstream media give him a pass because he has enough sense to not say anything in public that explicitly reveals white supremacist views. This is narrowing the definition of white supremacy to just the cartoonish, David Duke version. Bannon’s longest description of his own worldview described an apocalyptic clash of civilizations, even invoking the siege of Vienna in 1529.
From a perspective — this may be a little more militant than others. I think definitely you’re going to need an aspect that is [unintelligible]. I believe you should take a very, very, very aggressive stance against radical Islam. And I realize there are other aspects that are not as militant and not as aggressive and that’s fine.
If you look back at the long history of the Judeo-Christian West struggle against Islam, I believe that our forefathers kept their stance, and I think they did the right thing. I think they kept it out of the world, whether it was at Vienna, or Tours, or other places… It bequeathed to use the great institution that is the church of the West.
…
Because it is a crisis, and it’s not going away. You don’t have to take my word for it. All you have to do is read the news every day, see what’s coming up, see what they’re putting on Twitter, what they’re putting on Facebook, see what’s on CNN, what’s on BBC. See what’s happening, and you will see we’re in a war of immense proportions. It’s very easy to play to our baser instincts, and we can’t do that. But our forefathers didn’t do it either. And they were able to stave this off, and they were able to defeat it, and they were able to bequeath to us a church and a civilization that really is the flower of mankind, so I think it’s incumbent on all of us to do what I call a gut check, to really think about what our role is in this battle that’s before us.
The “alt-right” is counting on the media using only the cartoonish definition of white supremacy and white nationalism. Its adherents take advantage of the hesitancy of mainstream media and establishment figures to call out connections between Bannon and white supremacy. The “alt-right” is self-organizing and aims to protect the reputation of their allies.
BuzzFeed gained access to secret chat rooms in France and documented Trump supporter’ efforts to manipulate the conversation to favor the “alt-right” by making far-right Marine Le Pen supporters appear to be the most reasonable political group. Trump supporters in America are undeniably using the same tactics.
It’s more than fine if news outlets want to fact-check statements made about the chief strategist to the president of the United States. But it would be nice if they also gave a little more scrutiny to what, exactly, he is planning for America’s future.
ref
https://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/inside-the-private-chat-rooms-trump-supporters-are-using-to
Trump Supporters Online Are Pretending To Be French To Manipulate France’s Election
Welcome to “The Great Liberation Of France.”
Originally posted on Jan. 24, 2017, at 12:00 a.m.
Updated on Jan. 24, 2017, at 4:29 a.m.
Ryan Broderick
Ryan Broderick
BuzzFeed News Reporter
TweetTumblr
BuzzFeed News was recently given access to a chatroom called The Great Liberation of France, which is hosted on a Slack-like messaging platform called Discord.
BuzzFeed News was recently given access to a chatroom called The Great Liberation of France, which is hosted on a Slack-like messaging platform called Discord.
Discord
The head of this particular Discord group is a user that goes by @trumpwin2016. BuzzFeed News has reached out to them for comment.
The head of this particular Discord group is a user that goes by @trumpwin2016. BuzzFeed News has reached out to them for comment.
Discord
The large majority of the work being done in The Great Liberation of France is based around creating fake Facebook and Twitter accounts to manipulate French social media users.
The large majority of the work being done in The Great Liberation of France is based around creating fake Facebook and Twitter accounts to manipulate French social media users.
Discord
Users in the Liberation chatroom want to create as much chaos on social media as possible to make right-wing candidate Marine Le Pen and her supporters in the National Front (FN) seem like the most legitimate voice in French politics.
Discord
In screenshots provided to BuzzFeed News, as well as conversations BuzzFeed News observed in the chatroom, users are creating fake accounts for two reasons.
The chatroom’s admins have instructed users to make fake Facebook accounts that are “ideally young, cute girl, gay, Jew, basically anyone who isn’t supposed to be pro-[FN].” Users are then instructed to lock down these dummy accounts so no one can tell they’re fake. Once they have their fake Facebook profiles, they’re told to infiltrate the comment sections of large French Facebook pages and post pro-FN memes and jokes about François Fillon, France’s current frontrunner for the presidency.
And they’re doing something similar on Twitter, creating dozens of French-appearing sock puppet accounts. They then collect all of them on lists and organize campaigns to make things trend in French.
They have a subsection of the chatroom just for listing their Twitter accounts so they know what all the fake accounts are doing.
They have a subsection of the chatroom just for listing their Twitter accounts so they know what all the fake accounts are doing.
Discord
The group has made it extremely easy for English-speakers to participate as well. They have a Google Doc labeled “MEGA GENERAL” — “Make Europe Great Again” — that they use for planning out social media campaigns.
The group has made it extremely easy for English-speakers to participate as well. They have a Google Doc labeled "MEGA GENERAL" — "Make Europe Great Again" — that they use for planning out social media campaigns.
Google Docs
The doc includes instructions for how users can help teach fellow right-wing trolls how to make memes that would be believable in their country. “You have to provide reconnaissance for us. WE DON’T KNOW SHIT about your internet segment,” one section reads.
The doc includes instructions for how users can help teach fellow right-wing trolls how to make memes that would be believable in their country. "You have to provide reconnaissance for us. WE DON'T KNOW SHIT about your internet segment," one section reads.
Google Docs
Another section reads, “Brief info on your country — does the South hate the North? Are those on the coast richer than those in the mountains?” It also mentions Pepe the Frog and other memes that Trump supporters latched on to, acknowledging each country might have different memes that take off.
Another section reads, "Brief info on your country — does the South hate the North? Are those on the coast richer than those in the mountains?" It also mentions Pepe the Frog and other memes that Trump supporters latched on to, acknowledging each country might have different memes that take off.
Google Docs
The last section reads, “DO NOT launch a meme shell in a foreign language without checking with a national operative.”
The last section reads, "DO NOT launch a meme shell in a foreign language without checking with a national operative."
Google Docs
“Meme shells” are essentially just blank templates that anyone can load up with text. Members of the Discord group have centralized all of their memes in an easy-to-download database hosted on a site called Dropmark.
"Meme shells" are essentially just blank templates that anyone can load up with text. Members of the Discord group have centralized all of their memes in an easy-to-download database hosted on a site called Dropmark.
Dropmark
This allows trolls to appear French without actually needing to speak French.
This allows trolls to appear French without actually needing to speak French.
Dropmark
Recently, in a sub-room called #Materials, a user started posting transparent cutouts of Fillon, a former prime minister who is the leading mainstream candidate to take on Marine Le Pen.
Recently, in a sub-room called #Materials, a user started posting transparent cutouts of Fillon, a former prime minister who is the leading mainstream candidate to take on Marine Le Pen.
The document ends by directing users to 4chan’s politics message board, 8chan’s The Bureau of Memetic Warfare, and Reddit’s /r/The_Europe.
The document ends by directing users to 4chan's politics message board, 8chan's The Bureau of Memetic Warfare, and Reddit's /r/The_Europe.
Google Docs
The group’s swarms are fairly simple. Several times a week, someone will drop a link in the Discord chat, and people click over and attack the comments section....
==
Marine Le Pen, President of the National Front Marine Le Pen, was sighted inside Trump Tower at the cafe meeting with George Lombardi, the co-founder of the group Citizens for Trump. When asked by the Trump press pool she declined to say whether she was there to see President-elect Donald Trump but the Trump team has said there would be "no meetings".
Marine Le Pen, who is the leading presidential candidate in France according to recent polls, has previously called Trump's election "an additional stone in the building of a new world".
==