Opinion Plagiarising speeches: Marine Le Pen is in august company
Politicians speak a lot and raise many issues -- but what happens when these words and themes are taken from somebody else's speeches.
Marine Le Pen, French National Front (FN) political party leader and candidate for French 2017 presidential election, arrives at her campaign headquarters in Paris, France, April 28, 2017. REUTERS/Charles Platiau 
Marine Le Pen, French National Front (FN) political party leader made news for plagiarising parts of a speech she made on Monday at Villepinte, north of Paris, from that of eliminated center-right candidate Francois Fillon. REUTERS/Charles Platiau
With only five days to go to the final run off elections between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen in the French elections, the latter has made news for plagiarising parts of a speech she made on Monday at Villepinte, north of Paris, from that of eliminated center-right candidate Francois Fillon. Yet, her spokespersons have insisted that the verbatim parts were meant as a “wink” to him and his voters she hopes to peel away in the runoff with Macron.
Fillon had delivered a speech in French on France’s role in Europe and the world on April 15, barely two weeks before Le Pen’s “wink” to him on Monday, May 1. The speech’s subject has been rather close to Le Pen’s campaign, wherein she has promised to pull France out of the EU, if elected. The similarities were pointed out by the Youtube channel Ridicule TV, set up by Fillon supporters to attack Macron before the first round elections that saw Fillon get defeated. The channel has alleged a “word for word” lift and posted the speeches made by Le Pen and Fillon side by side.
Politicians speak a lot and raise many issues — but what happens when these words and themes are taken from somebody else’s speeches. Lifting words from speeches of other political figures, including those from half a globe away has quite a few precedents. Here are five noteworthy examples:
Nana Akufo-Addo, Ghana’s current president, was found to have copied from two American presidents — Bill Clinton and his successor George W. Bush in his 2017 inaugural speech.
During his presidential inauguration on January 7, he said:
“Though our challenges are fearsome, so are our strengths. Ghanaians have been a restless, questing, hopeful people. And we must bring to our task today the vision and will of those who came before us.”
During his 1993 inauguration, former US President Bill Clinton said:
“Though our challenges are fearsome, so are our strengths. And Americans have ever been a restless, questing, hopeful people. We must bring to our task today the vision and will of those who come before us.”
Watch the video of Akufo-Addo lifting words verbatim from George W. Bush during his speech:
Melania Trump, the first lady of the United States and wife of President Donald Trump, had made more than a passing reference during the July 2016 Republican Convention speech to Michelle Obama’s speech from the 2008 Democratic Convention.
Journalist Jarrett Hill had been among the first to point out the striking familiarity of Melania’s themes of necessity for hard work and family values.
CORRECTION: Melania stole a whole graph from Michelle’s speech. #GOPConvention
WATCH: https://t.co/8BCOwXAHSy pic.twitter.com/zudpDznGng— Jarrett Hill (@JarrettHill) July 19, 2016
Hery Rajaonarimampianina, the president of Madagascar was accused of lifting words from a speech of former French president Nicolas Sarkozy during his inauguration speech in January 2014.
Madagascar’s President Hery Rajaonarimampianina. REUTERS/Thomas Mukoya
During his inauguration speech, Rajaonarimampianina said:
“I asked my friends who have accompanied me to let me be free, free to move towards others, those who were never my friends, who never belonged to our camp, our political family, who sometimes fought us. Because when it comes to Madagascar, there are no more camps.”
During his presidential campaign in 2007, Sarkozy had said:
“I asked my friends who have accompanied me to let me be free, free to move towards others, those who were never my friends, who never belonged to our camp, our political family, who sometimes fought us. Because when it comes to France, there are no more camps.”
Rajaonarimampianina faced no consequences as his spokesperson asserted that taking a “quote” from elsewhere was not wrong.
Barack Obama, the former US President, during his first Presidential campaign in 2008, frequently featured rhetoric in his speeches that were remarkably identical to Massachusetts senator Deval Patrick.
Obama had cited quotes from Martin Luther King, JFK and the US Declaration of Independence, stating that those were “just words”. Patrick had used many of the same quotes to the same effect in 2006. Rhetorical skills had been a large part of Obama’s appeal during his campaigns. And so, the campaign staff of Hillary Clinton, then Obama’s competitor in the Democratic primaries, had called him out for the same. Clinton spokesperson Howard Wolfson had made a statement to the media, “It raises questions about the premise of his candidacy. If your whole candidacy is about words, those words should be your own. That’s what I think.”
Obama subsequently acknowledged that he should have credited Patrick, which he said he frequently did but not that particular time. He said that Patrick and he were friends and the former had suggested the lines himself. Patrick concurred.
Joe Biden, the former American Vice-President in the Obama government, has once run for the Democratic nomination for the upcoming US Presidential elections of 1988. In the summer of 1987, Biden was the contender competing with then Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis. His closing address during a Democratic debate bore a strong resemblance to a speech made by Neil Kinnock of Welsh Labour Party in the UK.
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd had been the one to point out the following plagiarized lines:
In the August 1987 debate at the Iowa state fair, Biden said:
Why is it that Joe Biden is the first in his family ever to go a university? Why is it that my wife … is the first in her family to ever go to college? Is it because our fathers and mothers were not bright? … Is it because they didn’t work hard? My ancestors who worked in the coal mines of north-east Pennsylvania and would come up after 12 hours and play football for four hours? It’s because they didn’t have a platform on which to stand.”
In May 1987, Kinnock said during the Welsh Labour party conference:
“Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? Was it because our predecessors were thick? Does anybody really think that they didn’t get what we had because they didn’t have the talent or the strength or the endurance or the commitment? Of course not. It was because there was no platform upon which they could stand.”
Following this revelation, other damaging plagiarism charges came in from the press. According to the Washington Post, these included “a serious plagiarism incident involving Biden during his law school years; the senator’s boastful exaggerations of his academic record at a New Hampshire campaign event; and the discovery of other quotations in Biden’s speeches pilfered from past Democratic politicians” like Hubert Humphrey, Robert Kennedy, and JFK. Biden’s competitor Governor Dukakis also released a secret “attack video” to the press that played the Biden and Kinnock speeches side by side. Biden’s campaign effectively disintegrated after that and he was forced to withdraw.
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