IS THE FRONT NATIONAL STILL ASSOCIATING ITSELF WITH DIEUDONNE M'BALA?

Marine le Pen, the daughter of the awful Jean-Marie le Pen, has taken over as leader of the Front National this past week. She may have said that she intends to change the party's image, and perhaps make it more friendly to Jews, for example, and even oppose Islamofascism. But there's still some very disquieting questions left unanswered. Commentary's Benjamin Weinthal has written about the Front National's associating with the repugnant "comedian" Dieudonne M'Bala, who just 2 years ago formed an anti-Zionist party. So far, there's no telling if they've actually distanced themselves from him yet.

I think it can be very easily said that, if Sarkozy and the UMP don't make a more serious effort to deal with the problems of Islamofascism, for example, they do risk allowing Marine le Pen to accomplish what her terrible father never could. And that wouldn't be good at all.

According to this post on GalliaWatch, some conservative sites are wary of the possibilities she'll let the mask slip. And this one tells even more alarming news, translated from Novopress and Infos Bordeaux:

Even though several journalists from publications, such as Minute, that advocate the same political positions as the Front National were not authorized to cover the convention in Tours, and other journalists were banned entry and even molested, the right hand man of the imam of Bordeaux received an accreditation in good and due form! Camel Bechikh (above) was in fact covering this weekend's convention of the Front National in Tours for the bimonthly journal Flash, a journal described by Jean-Yves Camus as the "organ of anti-globalization of the extreme Right", and in which essayist Alain Soral, who as we all know is very concerned about the "Zionist" question", writes a column. The international political news is supervised by Christian Bouchet, a radical supporter of Marine Le Pen within the Front National, and another adversary of "Zionism".

But Camel Bechikh is not a "journalist" like the others. He's not a journalist at all. A close associate of Tareq Oubrou, imam of the Bordeaux mosque and author of Profession Imam (published by Albin Michel), Camel Bechikh is in charge of public relations for the CBSP (Center for Aid to the Palestinians), an association connected to the UOIF (Union of Islamic Organizations of France) and high on the official list of terrorist organizations in Canada and the United States (both countries blame the CBSP for financing Hamas).

Camel Bechikh, who is head of the Muslim Scouts of France in the Aquitaine region, was the key figure in the April 2009 conference in Bordeaux that brought together Alain Soral and imam Tareq Oubrou.

Good god. So has the leopard changed its spots? Not by a longshot. There may be lawsuits being filed because of the assaults, and if the FN's allowing that kind of obnoxious behavior to go around in their headquarters, they deserve to be sued. The FN will definitely have to be monitored closely.

Update: John Rosenthal does some work on Pajamas Media, and discovers that not only is the Front National drawing a lot more support on the left, their hostility to free trade is really no different from the older le Pen's rhetoric from years before.