Almost every article about Marine Le Pen’s National Front (FN) makes some reference to her party’s supposed dédiabolisation. Generally translated as “detoxification,” this “de-demonization” strategy has more to do with neutralizing attacks on the party than with purifying the organization.

We’ve heard the media’s detoxification narrative over and over: a fringe group has cleaned up its act and joined the political mainstream, becoming a party like any other. The liberal press has been telling itself this story for years, uncritically relaying assertions that the FN has got rid of “the knee-jerk racists,” offering up fawning profiles of party figureheads, and imagining that Marine Le Pen took a principled stand against her father Jean-Marie’s antisemitism. A recent article described her niece, the profoundly homophobic and racist Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, as “a political star. Beautiful and fervently Catholic.”

Countless reports describe the rift between Marine and her father, but very few mention the fact that a €6 million loan from Jean-Marie bankrolled her presidential campaign.