Protesters to gather at Oxford University ahead of Marine Le Pen appearance | World news | The Guardian
▻http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/05/marine-le-pen-front-national-appearance-oxford-university-protest
More than 200 demonstrators have pledged to protest outside the Oxford Union on Thursday ahead of a planned evening appearance at the university’s prestigious debating society by Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s far-right Front National.
“The union must reverse the decision to invite this notorious Islamophobe,” Weyman Bennett, joint national secretary of Unite Against Fascism, said on the group’s Facebook page. Referring to le Pen’s father, he added: “Jean-Marie le Pen once called the Holocaust a ‘detail of history’. We will demonstrate to argue that fascists should never be allowed a platform.”
Le Pen, who was greeted by similar protests when she addressed the Cambridge Union in 2013, took over from her father as head of the nationalist, anti-immigrant Front National in 2011 and has since spearheaded a campaign to detoxify the party, which finished last year’s European elections as France’s largest with more than 25% of the vote.
More than 300 Oxford professors, students, councillors and residents have also signed an open letter urging the union to rescind its invitation to Le Pen, saying Oxford was a multicultural city and that by inviting her, the union was “contributing to a climate of Islamophobia which only encourages racists and fascists.”
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LIVE: Protests against Marine Le Pen at Oxford University Union
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MV_BMeyHZRE