The founder of the National Front party in France criticized Norway for its “naivety” in the face of immigration and terrorism and called government inaction more serious than the massacre of 77 people by an anti-Islam extremist.
Jean-Marie Le Pen said the July 22 gun and bomb attack by Anders Behring Breivik – once a member of Norway’s populist right-wing Progress Party – appeared to be the work of a “sick” man, but pointed a finger at Norwegian authorities and society.
“What strikes me as more serious … is the naivety and inaction of the Norwegian government,” said Le Pen, 82, the former party head in a weekly video blog published on the party’s website on Friday.
“The most serious responsibility, it seems to me, is that of the Norwegian government and society which has fallen asleep … which has not taken into account the global danger of massive immigration which is the main reason in this deadly crazy man’s thinking, but also terrorism, which is a global phenomenon.”
Following as it does the news that a Front National member hailed Breivik as a “defender of the west”, her father’s intervention shows that Marine Le Pen has her work cut out in rebranding the FN as a party that has renounced political extremism.