Marion Maréchal, the niece of Rassemblement National (National Rally) leader Marine Le Pen, revealed she attended the Paris Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vest) protests on Saturday and claimed to witness violence coming from left-wing extremists.
While the former MP bowed out of electoral politics last year to start her political management school in Lyon, the Institut de Sciences Sociales Economiques et Politiques (ISSEP), and normally withholds comment on current political affairs, Ms Maréchal said felt she had to speak up for the Yellow Vests.
“In front of the attitude of those in power, their class contempt for the ‘Yellow Vests’ and their surrealist response to their demands, I could not help it,” she said, according to Le Figaro.
Ms Maréchal, who dropped the ‘Le Pen’ from her name, also said that by the time violence erupted at the iconic Champs-Élysées, the real members of the movement had already left.
Saying she arrived shortly after 2 pm, she said, “When I arrived on the Champs-Élysées, the real ‘Yellow Vests’ were long gone. The movement was totally absorbed by left-wing activists. We heard: ‘death to capitalism!’ If this is the far-right, it has changed.”
“It is a popular movement and completely apolitical. If that had not been the case, I would not have acted in the same way and not have provided the same support,” she added.
The statement is not the first political comment made by Maréchal since stepping down as a member of parliament. In February, and to the consternation of the mainstream media, she delivered a speech at the American Conservative Union’s CPAC conference describing her beliefs and the state of France to an American audience in Washington D.C.
Her support of the Yellow Vest movement coincides with that of her aunt, Marine Le Pen, who has been a vocal supporter and slammed President Emmanuel Macron Tuesday following his speech to the movement saying, “The total confusion of the presidential speech and the absolute emptiness in terms of solutions are striking.”