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Of course, the racism of the FN doesn't really lie on the level of their outwardly stated policies, but even there it's visible – take, for instance, their proposal to ban dual nationality, but only for non-Europeans: white French people can have as many allegiances as they like, but the loyalties of people from the Maghreb or sub-Saharan Africa are suspect.Then there's her own racism – her suggestion in 2012, for instance, that refugees would "steal your wallet and brutalise your wife". Marr doesn't mention this. He asks how the National Front would approach French Muslims – can they "be good French citizens and be welcome in Marine Le Pen's France?" Le Pen doesn't really answer the question; she says that migration into France must end and that she only cares about whether people comply with "our codes, our values, our French lifestyles". Whose lifestyles specifically? It doesn't matter – the question has already vanished; it was just an opportunity for Marine Le Pen to talk about herself.The Marr interview was a travesty, but what it demonstrates is even more terrifying. An office full of BBC executives came together to create something so craven and so spineless: a shameful display of cringe in the face of a hateful ideology.They did try to challenge her, a little, but there was something structural that prevented them from doing it properly. It's not, as some on the left have argued, that Le Pen's opinions put her so far outside the mainstream that she shouldn't be allowed on TV; it's far worse than that. Her politics are just an intensification of what's there already. There was nothing in what she said about Muslims or migrants that hadn't been circulating through the British media for years; she just draws together and systematises the hatred, pettiness and suspicion of a political mainstream that's already profoundly reactionary and violent.READ: Calling Bullshit On the Anti-Refugee Memes Flooding the Internet
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