Economic analysis

In my economic analysis, I seek to answer questions as to how the immigration crisis and the rising numbers of immigrants is portrayed in Marine Le Pen‟s speeches in relation to its economic impact on the French sociaty. I will analyze a few of Le Pen‟s speeches within a six-year timeframe and with the help of extracts; I will analyze how immigration has so far influenced her economic rhetoric. In my analysis of Marine Le Pen‟s rhetoric as shown in her speeches, I also point out changes (if any) in rhetoric in her different speehces from different years together.

I begin my analysis of Marine Le Pen‟s economic rhetoric from her very first public address as president of the FN in 2011. While keeping in mind that rhetorical analysis is about probing particular messages designed to influence human thought, actions and probably emotions, Marine Le Pen speaks on one of the core populist theme, Euroscepticim. First, she condemns the loss of economic sovereignty to Brussels and directly correlates this to the high rates of unemployment in France. As earlier mentioned, such messages are greatly received by the middle-class who face stiff competition with cheap foreign labor. She asserts that:

Restoring national sovereignty means first of all getting out of the stifling and destructive straitjacket of Brussels in which we have been locked up in spite of ourselves and which deprives us of any margin of maneuver in whole fields of political action: money, legislation , controlling our borders, managing immigration ... Let's not deceive ourselves indeed.

At the rate things are going, our fiscal policy and our diplomacy will soon be fully submitted to Brussels.

The Europe of Brussels was built by denying or bypassing the will of the people.

Brussels Europe has everywhere imposed the destructive principles of ultra-liberalism and free trade, to the detriment of public services, employment, social equity and even our economic growth which, in twenty years, has become the weakest in the world.

62 This Brussels-based Europe has forced us to abolish state administrations and services in all areas of public life.

(Marine Le Pen, 2011)

Marine Le Pen equally advocates for economic protectionism in the face of „wild‟ globalization.

Goodliffe (2015) explains that the leadership of the FN exploited growing anti-EU discontent within the French community and further argues that the economic quagmire at the time provided an ideal atmosphere for the FN to bolster its Eurosceptic credentials – which inter alia see the EU project as a scheme that outsources manual labor jobs in France and undermines national sovereignty and promotes unregulated immigration from within and without Europe.

These rising wave of immigrants are outsourcing manual labour jobs. With these solid arguments at just the right time, The FN presents itself as the sole party that represents the interest of the Eurosceptic electorate.

Their euro, which was to bring us happiness, has undermined our economies, destroyed our purchasing power and even forbids us to preserve French jobs; it is currently in the terminal phase under the infusion of the IMF and is maintained only at the cost of an unprecedented social regression.

Identicidal globalization has turned into economic horror, social tsunami, moral Chernobyl… In order to do this, we will commit ourselves, as soon as we come to power, to a vast package of reforms designed to eliminate privileges and set up an effective and fair tax and social policy.

We will restore dignity to our institutions and restore to the heart of community life the passion for solidarity, fairness, beauty and high values that underpin our civilization.

(Marine Le Pen, 2011)

63 This rhetoric is anti-globalization which she argues is part of the evil force that is undermining the sovereignty of the French nation.

Our leaders choose globalization, which they wanted to be a happy thing. It turned out to be a horrible thing. They made an ideology out of it: economic globalization, which refuses any regulation… It sets the conditions for another form of globalization: Islamist fundamentalism.

Marine Le Pen (2013)

The rhetoric asserts that it is only by rolling back from the EU and the exploits of globalization that France can forcefully reassert its values and authority which is in a slow but steady decline, in other words, “get the country back on track.” To Marine Le Pen, “what is at stake in this election [2017] … is whether France can still be a free nation.” This can be reaffirmed in one of her many speeches where she stipulates that:

France must first regain its freedom, its freedom as a state, and its freedom as a nation. A free France is a sovereign and independent France… It is to regain our budgetary freedom: the last of the prerogatives that remained to the parliamentarians, that they themselves transferred to the European Commission, to make mine today to fight between them on a budget of which they did not more mastery.

It is to regain our monetary freedom so that finally France has a currency adapted to its economy, and that it finds the possibility of financing its debt today left to predatory financial markets;

It is to find borders – at last! Economic borders to implement intelligent protectionism, as do the vast majority of the countries of the globe, migratory borders to control human flows and fight against trafficking and criminal networks All that my friends, supposes the questioning without delay of the European Union.

(Marine Le Pen, 2013).

64 Le Pen attacks the whole concept of the European project in terms of both integration and immigration. One would commonly have the understanding that the whole discourse of the European Union is about integration and not immigration. However, the FN has traditionally been very concerned with the virtual disappearance of national borders with the accession of the Schengen Agreement which enables the citizens of poorer countries to stream into the country either seeking for employment and equal pay, or welfare benefits. These trends according to the FN diminish national sovereignty and identity in favor of a homogenous Europe. This argument may have far-reaching implications in relation to Emmanuel Macron‟s recent proposal on the reassessment by the EU of posted workers.

The French state has put itself at the service of the Brussels bureaucracy, which is mishandling the fine idea of European entente and substituting for it a technocratic, totalitarian project harmful to our liberties. Sovereignty is not an old moon for nostalgic spirit, it is fundamental; it is to the nation what freedom is to the individual. Our monetary sovereignty, that is to say, our ability to defend our jobs, has been sacrificed to dogmas.

(Marine Le Pen, 2011).