French far-right party hears speech by Bannon

Former White House senior strategist Steve Bannon addressed France’s far-right National Front on Saturday, heralding the global populist tide and attacking the “opposition party media.”

Bannon’s surprise visit to the party’s conference in Lille — announced via Twitter late Friday — marked the most recent stop on a European tour that has already included Switzerland, along with Italy, where earlier this month voters abandoned establishment parties and opted for a hung parliament dominated by right-wing, anti-immigrant populists.

“What I’ve learned is that you’re part of a worldwide movement, that is bigger than France, bigger than Italy, bigger than Hungary — bigger than all of it. And history is on our side,” he said. “The tide of history is with us, and it will compel us to victory after victory after victory.”

On some level, the speech presented another development in the trans-Atlantic relationship between far-right movements in the United States and Europe, particularly in France. Last month, Marion Marechal- Le Pen — the niece of the National Front’s leader, Marine Le Pen — spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington.

Her speech echoed many of the statements of President Donald Trump, the man Bannon helped get elected to the U.S. presidency. “I am not offended when I hear President Donald Trump say ‘America first,’” she said. “I want Britain first for the British people, and I want France first for the French people.”

Le Pen was a prominent contender for the French presidency in May 2017, but she lost to Emmanuel Macron in a landslide vote.

Le Pen has long sought to “de-demonize” her party by distancing it from its origins.

The National Front was co- founded in 1972 by her father, the convicted Holocaust denier Jean-Marie Le Pen, who continues to refer to Nazi gas chambers as a “detail” in the history of World War II.

Bannon had some advice for those who might be embarrassed by such a history. “Let them call you racists. Let them call you xenophobes. Let them call you nativists,” he said. “Wear it as a badge of honor. Because every day, we get stronger and they get weaker.”