Marion Marechal-Le Pen set to open school for future right-wing leaders

Marion Marechal-Le Pen, the niece of controversial French politician Marine Le Pen, plans to open a far-right management and political science school which she says will “train tomorrow’s leaders”.

Marechal-Le Pen, 28, was one of far-right populist party National Front’s two MPs between 2012 and 2017, but “withdrew from electoral politics following her aunt’s heavy defeat to Emmanuel Macron in last year’s presidential elections”, The Guardian writes.

The site describes her as “far more socially conservative than her aunt and close to the party’s founder, her grandfather Jean-Marie”, who was ousted from the party by his daughter in 2015 as she attempted to clean up the party’s past image as anti-Semitic rabblerousers. 

Le Pen mentioned her plans for a “free and independent” school for aspiring leaders earlier this year in an article for right-wing publication Valeurs Actuelles. The institute would “detect and train the leaders of tomorrow who will have the courage, intelligence, discernment and competence to act effectively… in the service of society”, she wrote.

The school, set to open this September in Lyon, will be known as an “academy of political sciences” regional councillor Thibaut Monnier told LyonMag.

It will reportedly be open to “all the political currents of the right” and will provide “the intellectual, cultural, legal, technical and media skills to our young people that will allow them to perform as well as possible in both the business and political arena”.

The Guardian suggests the school may have been inspired by the Institute for Political Training, a right-wing private college in Paris that offers courses including “How the euro is destroying Europe”, “Islam and Islamism” and “How to translate your values into action”.