Far-right French candidate slammed for backing Putin: 'a full-time cast member of the Kremlin’s horror show'

On Thursday, writing for The Daily Beast, A. Craig Copetas criticized Front National leader and far-right French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen for her ongoing affinity for Vladimir Putin, as he lays waste to Ukraine and commits increasingly brutal war crimes.

"Le Pen styles herself a populist and bristles at being called a fascist. But all the perfume in France can’t marinate Le Pen’s stench," wrote Copetas. "Neither can the French justice system, which eight years ago ruled that it’s legal to describe her as a fascist. 'If the term ‘fascist’ can have insulting connotations when used outside of any political context or if accompanied by other demeaning terms, it has, on the other hand, no insulting character when employed between political opponents on a political subject,' the judge declared. The classical fascism of the 1930s nowadays arrives in many shapes, sizes, colors, and countries, all of which Le Pen continues to camouflage with worthless guarantees that her party of hobgoblins in designer suits are against racism and forcible suppression of the opposition."

Le Pen, who has previously been charged under French hate speech laws, has made clear she wants to pull France out of the European Union and NATO — and has made it clear she would rather the country be in Putin's orbit.

"Le Pen repeated her support for Putin’s assault on Crimea and her opposition to EU sanctions in response to the annexation. If elected, Le Pen pledged in 2017, 'I would envisage lifting the sanctions quite quickly,'" wrote Copetas. "She became a full-time cast member of the Kremlin’s horror show 38 days after Putin invaded Ukraine, telling a French primetime TV news broadcast on March 31 that Putin 'could become an ally of France again' if the war ends. 'Russia’s not going anywhere,' she explained to the French public broadcaster France 2. 'I’ve always said that a great power can be an ally in a number of situations.'"

"The central horror of the Putin-Le Pen combo is the risk of a toxic cascade effect on the world’s democracies and the future of Ukraine’s hard-fought battle to survive," Copetas concluded. "Had Hemingway been around to chronicle Putin’s fiesta of fascism, the book most certainly would have been titled The Scum Also Rises."

You can read more here.