Paris Terrorist Attacks: Right-Wing Marine Le Pen Reacts, Has Been Riding Anti-Immigrant Rhetoric As Election Approaches

Marie Le Pen, the face of the French right-wing anti-immigrant party National Front quickly commented on the Parisian terrorist attacks Friday, writing on Twitter that Islamic fundamentalists need to be annihilated and mosques need to be closed. The politician, who could play an important role in the country’s upcoming elections, urged France to revoke the citizenship of French individuals who are, or who are suspected of becoming, terrorists.

“For the sixth time in 2015, Islamic terrorism has hit our country,” Le Pen wrote Saturday in a series of tweets. "French people are crying for the dead, and I cry with them," she continued.

Le Pen proceeded to call on France to secure its borders from a perceived influx of Syrian refugees who may have ties to Islamic terror groups. She said that France has become vulnerable, and that it is necessary to rearm the country to fight back against the threat posed by those groups and those Muslims entering the country from war zones in the Middle East.

“France has become vulnerable,” Le Pen wrote Saturday. The country “has undergone a collapse of its defense capabilities. It is necessary to rearm.”

The right wing of the country’s nationalist party has been pushing closer to electoral power in France, and, amid an increasingly hostile environment across Europe toward immigrants, the country has seen some of the strongest opposition to immigrants on the continent. Voters will decide in December whether to elect Le Pen in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie region in northern France. Even before the attacks, she was favored to win, the Economist reported.

Her rise to prominence in the region, which includes cities like Lille and Picardy, has been built in part on rhetoric that stokes fears that waves of immigrants coming into the country are dangerous. While the region she is running to represent does not have the dramatic visuals of immigrant encampments with which other areas of Europe are struggling, her message has nonetheless been effective.

Le Pen’s comments came after attacks in several locations around Paris on Friday night that killed at least 127 people and hospitalized 300, with 80 in critical condition.