Marine Le Pen in dispute with father over anti-Semitism allegations

A dispute over an apparent allusion to Nazi gas chambers has caused a public split between Marine Le Pen, leader of France's National Front (FN), and her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, shaking the far-right party just two weeks after its unprecedented victory in European elections.

The uproar threatened to undermine Ms Le Pen's efforts to shed the anti-immigration party's racist image as she is negotiating the construction of an FN-led group in the European parliament and working to consolidate its growing political influence at home.

In a rare move, Ms Le Pen publicly admonished her father at the weekend for making "a political mistake for which the FN is suffering the consequences" after he made remarks published on his online blog about a Jewish singer that appeared to invoke the gas chambers of Nazi concentration camps.

His comments drew immediate condemnation from mainstream politicians, Jewish leaders and anti-racist groups. They said the comments by Mr Le Pen, a member of the European parliament who remains honorary president of the party he founded in 1972, revealed the unchanged extremist nature of the FN.

Aware of the potential damage, other senior FN aides to Ms Le Pen, who took over the party leadership in 2011, also weighed in, calling her father's comments "stupid". Gilbert Collard, one of the FN's two members of parliament, called on Mr Le Pen to retire from politics.

But Mr Le Pen shot back at his daughter on Monday, saying "several leaders of the FN" had given credence to "the phantasmagoria evoked by our enemies".

Denying he had ever made any anti-Semitic statements, he added: "It is [other FN leaders] who have made a political mistake, not me."

Mr Le Pen triggered the split when he launched an attack in the video interview, now removed from his website, on French and foreign artists who had condemned the FN's European election success.

After being asked about Partick Bruel, a French singer who is Jewish, he said: "We'll make up a batch next time." He used the word "fournee" for batch, which literally means a baking lot that will fill an oven.

Ms Le Pen said her father had been misinterpreted but criticised him for not realising the political damage his words could cause. She has repeatedly insisted the party is not anti-Semitic or racist as she has tried to move the FN closer to the political mainstream, albeit sticking to hardline policies against immigration and crime and in favour of dismantling the EU and protectionism.

Ms Le Pen achieved the party's biggest victory since it was founded in 1972 when the FN came top in the European poll, its first win in a nationwide election. It won 25 per cent of the vote, well ahead of the centre-right UMP party of former president Nicolas Sarkozy and the ruling Socialist party of President Francois Hollande.

With Mr Hollande suffering record low approval ratings and the leaderless UMP floored by infighting and funding scandals, Ms Le Pen has her sights trained on the 2017 presidential election, portraying the FN as a credible party of government.

But opponents of the party insist it remains racist at its core, with remarks such as Mr Le Pen's sending signals that its supporters well understand. He was convicted in 1986 for saying the Nazi gas chambers were "merely a detail of history". Just before the European election, he said of overpopulation and immigration that "Ebola could take care of it in three months".

His latest outburst will reinforce the refusal of Nigel Farage, leader of the anti-EU UK Independence Party, to enter into any kind of formal alliance with the FN, a move that has angered Ms Le Pen.

It also drew condemnation from Geert Wilders, leader of the Dutch Freedom Party, which is allied to the FN. Ms Le Pen is currently working on forging an official group in the European parliament with the FP and other eurosceptic parties.

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