France far-right candidate compares justice minister to monkey

[Savonarola]

We finally find one honest politician, and she's immediately kicked out of the party.   

France far-right candidate compares justice minister to monkey

France's far-right party told Al Jazeera Friday that it suspended a candidate in the upcoming municipal elections who came under fire in French media for what many called a racist Facebook post.

Anne-Sophie Leclere, the National Front's candidate for the northern municipality of Rethel in March's elections, posted a photo of Justice Minister Christiane Taubira — originally from French Guiana, a French overseas department in northern South America — next to a photo of a monkey.

"I prefer to see her swinging in a tree than to see her in government," Leclere told TV channel France-2 in an interview, echoed across French media.

Leclere "is no longer the National Front candidate in the elections," National Front spokesman Nicolas Bay told Al Jazeera.

It appears Leclere has since removed the offending photo from her Facebook page, which includes photos of Leclere with party president Marine Le Pen and her firebrand father Jean-Marie, the National Front's founding leader, who was charged with racism and multiple occasions and denied the Holocaust had ever occured.

Remaining shares on Leclere's Facebook as of Friday, 5:00 a.m. EDT includes an image reading, "Homo, don't forget: you have one father AND one mother. NO! to gay marriage."

Leclere's party membership is currently under review, Bay said.

Yassir Kazar, a French-Moroccan dual citizen and immigrant rights advocate, told Al Jazeera Leclere's suspension is a sign of a shift in the National Front's politics.

"What can we learn from this?" Kazar said, "You can see a contrast between what the leaders of the FN are really thinking and what they show us."

"This is actually the strength of the National Front: They understand that if they want to win, they have to choose their words. But you see here what the members are really thinking."

Karim Emile Bitar, director of Paris-based international relations think tank the Institut de Relations Internationales et Strategiques (IRIS), told Al Jazeera that "Marine Le Pen has been trying for the past few years to completely rebrand the National Front to make it more like a mainstream party, rather than an extreme party of agitators."

And polls show it may be working, as austerity measures and an ever-faltering economy have disenfranchised many from the ruling Socialist Party, Kazar said.

"People see the leftist government hasn't dealt well with the crisis, so more and more people are moving toward the National Front," he said.

A survey conducted by news channel BFM TV and pollster CSA revealed Wednesday that one in two French nationals see Marine Le Pen, president of the far-right National Front, as "the strongest opposition" to sitting French President Francois Hollande and his Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault.

"Not all FN voters are racists. Many are underprivileged people who want to register a protest vote," Bitar said.

Regardless of her party's shift in tone, Le Pen has made some of her stances on immigrants clear.

Le Pen told Le Monde newspaper late last year that she "would kick out all the foreign fundamentalists. All of them! We know who they are."

They're the ones with the swarthy complexion, right? 

Anyhow here is Christian Tubira:


As you can tell by all the books behind me of equal size, I am an attorney.

[Grey Fox]

That last e is important.

ChristianE

[The Brain]

It's "from".

[Valmy]

Ooooh.  See I thought she meant she wanted Taubira lynched when I heard that quote.  See that is a cultural difference, when somebody in America says they want to see dark-skinned people swinging in trees we make totally different associations.

[The Brain]

I cane the monkey every night.

[DGuller]

As you can tell by all the books behind me of equal size, I am an attorney.

I was always curious, do lawyers really have those bookcases, or do you just rent a wallpaper with the books painted on them whenever you need to take an impromptu contemplative shot?

[Viking]

We are all monkeys.

All Humans are Apes, all Apes are Monkeys, all Monkeys are Primates and all Primates are Mammals.

[Richard Hakluyt]

No doubt she will receive support from the order of capuchin friars, her fellow victims.

[Eddie Teach]

As you can tell by all the books behind me of equal size, I am an attorney.

I was always curious, do lawyers really have those bookcases, or do you just rent a wallpaper with the books painted on them whenever you need to take an impromptu contemplative shot?

My dad has several hundred volumes on theology, but he's got them organized by subject. That breaks up the sets and makes his shelves not near as tidy as the ones in the picture.

[Grey Fox]

As you can tell by all the books behind me of equal size, I am an attorney.

I was always curious, do lawyers really have those bookcases, or do you just rent a wallpaper with the books painted on them whenever you need to take an impromptu contemplative shot?

What I wonder is are they real books or just empty shells?

[The Brain]

As you can tell by all the books behind me of equal size, I am an attorney.

I was always curious, do lawyers really have those bookcases, or do you just rent a wallpaper with the books painted on them whenever you need to take an impromptu contemplative shot?

What I wonder is are they real books or just empty shells?

Books: A
Lawyers: B

[sbr]

[DGuller]

 

[Malthus]

As you can tell by all the books behind me of equal size, I am an attorney.

I was always curious, do lawyers really have those bookcases, or do you just rent a wallpaper with the books painted on them whenever you need to take an impromptu contemplative shot?

They are supposed to be law reporters, which come in huge matched sets. Our firm library has many of those, but stored on roller shelving.

These days, I assume sole pratitioners having them is a bit of an affectation; I imagine most would not bother, and just look up cases online.

[Capetan Mihali]

We use the various statute books pretty frequently in public defender offices.  But the relevant ones (family/children, driving, criminal, procedure/evidence, appeal) only take up a single shelf in each attorney's room. 

Even with computer-semiliterate older people at poorly funded offices, the reporters are hardly ever used.