France’s National Front Party

Note: Essay originally submitted for History credit at Queens College in the Fall 2016 semester. It has not been updated.

In recent years, a growing number of issues have threatened the continued existence and viability of the European Union. While external pressures have not been without their effects, it is the internal strife within the member states that has presented the most fundamental danger to the 28-member union. While many observers trace a widespread swell of populist-infused nationalism across the entirety of the continent, perhaps the most notable and disconcerting example has been the alarming rise of France’s National Front (FN) party.
Formerly a marginalized group garnering more headshakes than votes, the party’s head, Marine Le Pen, is now considered a lock to advance to the final round of the country’s presidential election this coming May. Le Pen and her party—its platform staunchly nationalist, anti-immigrant, and anti-EU—have witnessed a surge in popularity with the FN most recently winning 27.7% of votes in the first round of 2015’s regional elections. Their success has not gone unnoticed, and many have linked Le Pen alongside Brexit and Donald Trump to form the potential trifecta of anger-driven, anti-globalist, political upheavals of 2016-17.

Whether Le Pen wins or not—her prospects presently look unlikely in 2017—she has succeeded in mobilizing a large segment of France’s population, giving voice to their discontentment, and injecting far-right thought into the nation’s mainstream political discourse. In doing so, she has already achieved what was unthinkable not long ago. This paper will survey the far right in France over the past century or so, and document the unexpected rise of a once ostracized political party, and question whether it deserves the “fascist” label detractors so often apply to it.

The Far Right in France

Throughout the 20th century, France has proved itself fertile ground for the development of far right political thought, having witnessed the rise and fall of numerous movements to which the National Front might trace their larger history. In fact, the nation has had to contend with such groups since its Revolution in 1789, itself the source of the anti-Revolutionary ire which would come to characterize the country’s far right in the 20th century. For a country so intrinsically linked to liberalism, oppositional ideologies may seem out of place, but as Stanley Payne notes others have “demonstrated that nearly all the ideas found in fascism first appeared in France.”[1]

Peter Davies, who traces France’s far right history to Joseph de Maistre and fellow counter-revolutionaries in the 18th century, locates France’s “proto-fascist” elements to the nation’s turn into the 20th century and the coalescence of “patriotic and populist strains” in thew political right.[2] In particular, the period was branded by a broad, coalition based movement called Boulangism. Led by the eponymous General, the group, for a time, posed a threat to the existence of France’s Third Republic thanks to its makeup which boasted “two novel, almost revolutionary, characteristics – a cult of personality and a desire to engage in mass politics,” both portending attributes of fascism yet to come.[3] While Payne, notably, discounts this as a “genuine ‘prefascist crisis’,” he does place significance on the outcome of the Dreyfus Affair, occurring shortly thereafter, and the victory of the Dreyfusard liberal in the following decade in quelling the threat of the right.[4] Finally of note during this period was the work of Maurice Barrés whose ideas including, most notably, a “blood and soil” type nationalism would continue to influence the rhetoric of parties such as the FN to this day.

By the end of World War I, Barres’ ideas combined with France’s experience in the preceding decades saw to the rise of numerous new nationalist groups, broadly identified as ligues. Emerging during the interwar period, these organizations, though generally unconnected, shared a commitment to direct political action, and were all “characterized by their anti-Semitism, paramilitarism, and powerful anti-communism.”[5] One such group, the radically intellectual Action Francaise, combined political violence in pursuit of a platform consisting of monarchism, traditional Catholicism, patriotism, and avowed anti-Semitism. Believing the monarchy to be the only “true” French form of rule, the group—which still exists today—called for the overthrow of the republic, and was formally condemned by the pope in 1926. Other notable groups included the Croix de Feu (1927), a formidably sized organization of military veterans, and the Parti Populaire Francais (1936) whose leader Jacques Doriot “posed as the ‘French Fuhrer’ and aped many aspects of Nazism.”[6] On February 6, 1934, a collection of these ligues rioted outside the French parliament in a poorly conceived and executed effort that opponents branded a coup d’etat. Their efforts did force the prime minister’s resignation, however it also led to a concerted crackdown on far right in the years that immediately followed.

Needless to say, none of these groups came anywhere close to legitimate power. During World War II, however, Marshal Pétain, a national hero with a far right ideology, found himself at the head of France’s government following German advancement on the country in 1940. The final head of the Third Republic and first leader of the Vichy regime, Pétain proved willing collaborator with Hitler who in turn allowed the aging Frenchman reasonable autonomy until 1942. In that time, Pétain implemented counter-Revolutionary measures, banning the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and enacting “a wholehearted effort to return France ‘to her roots’.”[7] His “National Revolution” replaced the French slogan of “liberty, equality, brotherhood” with “work, family, country.”  The shift marked a (temporary) redefinition of what it meant to be French, replacing once lofty ideals with far more traditional and concrete terms not unlike those used by the Nazis. Despite additionally troubling measures—including suppressing oppositional parties, centralizing courts and law enforcement, and aiding the Germans in the “Final Solution”—both Davies and Payne agree that the Vichy government was not a fascist regime, with the latter characterizing Pétain’s acquiescence to the Nazis strictly a matter of pragmatism.[8],[9]

It was Paris, rather, not Vichy, that was home to many of France’s rabidly pro-Nazi sympathizers. There, both the Jacques Doriot, and Marcel Déat, lay in wait until both were appointed to Vichy office in 1943. Far more ideologically driven than the others previously in Vichy, the pair represented two different, though truly fascist ideals for France, albeit ideals that would not come to pass.

In the years following the war, the French far right reemerged out of the circumstances surrounding the Algerian War. The conflict, which lasted from 1954-1962, rallied military, colonizers, and activists within the Algérie Française movement. Employing a radical nationalist rhetoric, the movement argued for the continued possession of Algeria on staunchly nationalistic grounds, contending it an integral part of France’s destiny. While the government rejected their claims by granting the country independence, the period was nonetheless one of “an astonishing upsurge in political agitation,” that allowed the extreme right “to reclaim nationalism following the de facto forfeiture via the Vichy experience.”[10] The situation in Algeria also ushered in the return of Charles de Gaulle and the establishment of the Fifth Republic. Despite overlap on issues such as national sovereignty with those on the far right, the president inspired a forceful anti-Gaullist contingent during his tenure that encompassed those both on the right and left.

Simultaneous to this movement was the rise of Poujadism in the late 1950s, a separate collective originating from a lowly shopkeeper’s refusal to permit his business’ inspection by the tax board. The resulting crusade was an amalgam of right wing rallying cries; the movement pit itself as an underdog in a struggle against the political elite in distinctly populist fashion. None of these mentioned groups met with much success in their times, however by 1972, they would all find a welcoming home in Jean-Marie Le Pen’s National Front.

The National Front’s Origins

            The fact that the FN has been dogged by accusations of fascism throughout its history is attributable to the fact that the party directly traces its creation not just to those groups listed above but to the short-lived, unapologetically neo-fascist Ordre Nouveau formed in 1968. Defined by “an incongruous blend of violent activism and electioneering,” the Ordre Nouveau featured a uniformed paramilitary unit that pursued an agenda defined by “anti-liberalism, anti-capitalism and anti-Marxism,” a platform that would come to later embody the early FN. By June 1972, the neo-fascist group claimed a membership size of 3,200, the majority of whom were male, under 30, and students.[11] Yet the prospect of progress for them was largely stymied by their unorthodox tactics which limited their outside appeal. The group’s leadership, to their credit, recognized both the limitations of their methods and the need to expand their base.
As a result, in October 1972, the group’s leadership voted overwhelmingly to form a new “national front” to unify the nation’s many scattered right-wing groups. Hoping even to possibly attract the mainstream right’s sympathies, the resulting party, the National Front, quickly assumed the mantle of a “receptacle for all the discontentment” in France.[12] Early party membership then consisted not only of these neo-fascists, but traditionalist Catholics, those “nostalgi[c] for Vichy, anti-Gaullists, Poujadists, former colonizers and right-wing intellectuals,” a mix of groups whose ultimate objectives were often at odds with one another and connected only by those ideas they were against.,[13] Still, the Ordre Nouveau understood the need for expanding their support in order to participate, legally this time, in the democratic process, and they were content to work with whoever they could to achieve legitimacy. Despite this seeming maturation into the FN, the Ordre Nouveau’s primary objective remained the same (albeit practiced with a bit more patience): “to bring about a ‘popular nationalist revolution’” by any means.[14]
At the time of the FN’s inception, a piece of Ordre Nouveau literature declared that the new party “will be our opportunity to emerge from the ghetto.”[15] Such hopes were quickly dashed, however, following poor showings in the ’73 and ’74 elections. Factions shortly thereafter formed within the party in disagreement over its direction; and by ’74 those elements originally from the Ordre Nouveau, no longer willing to wait out the democratic process as demanded by FN head Jean-Marie Le Pen, left the party to resume their prior “hands on” approach to politics. And so, within two years the party had rid itself, perhaps unintentionally, of its most noxious component. It would not be enough though to shake the (neo-)fascist label that has been consistently applied ever since.
Admittedly, Le Pen never quite concerned himself with the party’s image. The face of the FN for its first 40 years, Le Pen’s legacy—one of unabashed anti-Semitism and racism—has been the scourge of the party’s present day efforts for advancement. Nevertheless, Le Pen saw the party through its formative and most difficult years, maintaining its relevancy even in the face of poor poll showings. His primary message of anti-immigration always remained consistent and at the forefront of the party’s message with its oft-used slogan “France d’abord!’ or “France first!” With this consistent approach and a simple, frequently incendiary, rhetoric, Le Pen was able to largely keep together the many fractious elements of his party throughout his tenure. (Two key moments for the FN during his reign will be highlighted in the following section.)

Yet, it has only been under his daughter Marine that the party has enjoyed its present popularity. Assuming her father’s position in 2011, Marine Le Pen immediately implemented a process of de-diabolisation designed to undo many components of the party’s hardline image. This has occurred at the most superficial level, such as the banning of leather jackets and the requiring of more dignified and professional blazers. But it also has included unambiguous denunciations of her father, both of whom have disowned the other in years’ past. Though more tolerant than her Jean-Marie, Marine’s FN remains fundamentally committed to the same principles that defined her father’s party, though current events have allowed her to couch these messages in simpler terms.

Aided by economic downturn, mass migration from refugees, and terrorism, the FN today has needed only to point to the news to bolster their argument. The European Union has served as its boogeyman, a suppressive force robbing the country of its sovereignty and stripping it of its economic potential. Immigration and migration into the nation has been framed as a fundamental threat to the French way of life, threatening its language, food, customs, and traditions. And acts of terrors, in Paris and Nice, have seen the party pivot its anti-Semitism into unabashed Islamophobia. In fact, Marine has postured herself as a defender of Jews from the Islamic threat. More notably even, by cutting through political correctness, she has claimed herself and the party to be the only true defense of the nation’s secular legacy.

In addition to her detoxification efforts, Marine’s most notable contribution has been the addition of an economic pillar to the party’s almost exclusively anti-immigration focus. In embracing the country’s welfare system, speaking to the immediate needs of the common man, and disavowing global economic forces, the FN today has become a party of the working class. Poaching voters formerly of the left, “45 percent of blue-collar workers and 38 percent of unemployed people or youngsters looking for their first job” plan to vote for Le Pen in 2017’s election.[16] The party, which has focused on small and medium sized towns victim to deindustrialization, has tapped into the fears and sorrows of a French people longing for decades gone by. A campaign poster from 2012 reads: “The Forgotten of France Vote Marine Le Pen,” listing professions from across society over an image of a huddled mass of people.[17] The message has landed with more and more over the last decade as unemployment has hovered around 10% since 2010. And it has only emboldened voters, as Daniel Stockemer has found, that so much of what the FN had “predicted”—“Europeanization, immigration and Islamization”—has come to bear enormous difficulties for the nation’s political establishment.[18]

Key Moments

For the majority of its 44-year history, the FN has existed at the margins of the French political arena. This status can be largely attributed to limited voter support (particularly in the party’s earliest days) and France’s two-round electoral system (more recently). To this latter point, opposition parties in France have typically united in formation of a “Republican front” created solely to keep the FN out of power. This process, which has joined political parties otherwise in conflict with one another, explains how the FN can attract nearly 30% of first round ballots yet hold less than .3% of the seats in the French Assembly.
For many years, however, the party’s leadership remained content with their “protest party” status. But as Marine Le Pen declared in a 2014 interview, “The National Front used to be a party of opposition, a party that would question and criticize the system, it is now a party that is ready to rule.”[19] Whether the FN ever will “rule” remains to be seen. Yet the very possibility owes much to the party’s profound evolution from political pariah to potential power player. We can understand this evolution by considering several key election years in the party’s history.

1981    In 1981, the Socialist Francois Mitterrand won the country’s presidency in a victory over centrist incumbent Valery Giscard d’Estaing. Jean-Marie Le Pen, unable to gather the 500 signatures needed to qualify for a presidential bid, was absent from the ballot, leaving the FN without a candidate and Le Pen fuming cries of unfair media treatment (i.e. lack of coverage). Mitterrand, recognizing in the FN a tool with which he could disrupt his moderate right adversaries, decided to engage Le Pen’s complaints.

Mitterrand quickly acknowledged Le Pen’s cries of media bias and “facilitated his appearance on prime-time television,” an appearance that was quickly followed by invitations to other even more high profile programs.[20] In providing Le Pen with a platform, Mitterrand had intended to release a demagogue for the right to confront in upcoming local elections, instead, he effectively introduced Le Pen and the FN to the spotlight and provided a single voice to unite the country’s far-right. The Socialist’s strategy was a decidedly shortsighted one that proved more beneficial to the FN than any failed candidacy that year could have. Following ’82, the party would consistently receive 10-15% of votes in subsequent elections. Additional short-lived changes made by Mitterrand to the nation’s voting system in ’85, designed to further split the right’s vote, only solidified the FN’s status as a national party.

2002    Despite the newfound attention, Le Pen and the party spent the eighties and nineties largely at the political periphery, as they proved unable to break their consistent 10-15% vote tallies. Yet in 2002, a slight bump to 16.85% proved sufficient for Le Pen to move to the second round of the presidential election, to the shock of onlookers the world over. As several scholars have noted, the surprise was perhaps unwarranted as Le Pen added only 300,000 more votes to his total from the previous election.[21] Nevertheless, the media described his achievement as an “earthquake.” In the runoff, however, voters united to resoundingly reject Le Pen, delivering the election to incumbent Jacques Chirac by a margin of 65%. The loss though was secondary to the fact that the FN had gotten further than ever thought possible.

2012    Having assumed her father’s role within the party just the prior year, Marine Le Pen entered the 2012 election cycle with the intent of rebranding the FN and broadening its base. Despite her failure to reach the second round of voting, Le Pen succeeded in both counts as she won 6.4 million votes, nearly 2 million more than the party’s high, 4.8 million, that was set a decade prior. (For comparison, the two frontrunners, Francois Hollande and Nicholas Sarkozy, each received 10.2m and 9.8m votes respectively.)
Yet, the FN’s true gains in 2012 were not measurable in changes to nation’s ballots but rather its discourse. The popularity of Le Pen and the FN forced the center-right incumbent Sarkozy to adopt much of the party’s nationalistic and anti-immigrant stances. Aurelian Mondon writes, “Sarkozy owed much to the FN’s success and strategy, and in return the FN owed him much for popularizing and mainstreaming its ideas.”[22]

2014 & 2015   In 2014, the FN took advantage of the nation’s high abstention rate during the European elections to win 24 seats in the EU parliament, becoming France’s largest representative party in Brussels. The following year, the party finished first in the first round of regional elections in France. Yet, the FN was shut out in the second round following bloc-voting from oppositional groups. Still, the FN’s status as the most popular individual party has not gone ignored as the party sets its sights on future elections.

Are They Fascist?

In the present age, few groups would welcome the moniker. The FN and Marine Le Pen are no exception. Twice now, in fact, Le Pen has sued critics that have branded her with the fascist label. In both cases—in 2014 against a far left rival politician, and in 2015 against a comedian—the French courts ruled against her, with the earlier one declaring the term fundamentally political, which despite its connotations, meant it could validly be used in a political context.[23] Yet, when the court ruled the term fair game, they made no judgement as to whether Le Pen actually deserved the distinction. We shall briefly explore that here.

Should we utilize the more traditional models of fascism as suggested by Payne or Passmore, it quite quickly becomes evident that the National Front, in its present incarnation, lacks many of the political ideology’s hallmarks. The party is ultra-nationalist, to be sure; racially motivated even, yet they do not propose a revolutionary plan for the future. Their hopes, instead, are entirely retrogressive: a return to the halcyon days of France’s past where the country took care of its own and acted foremost in its own self-interest. Further, their plan to achieve this vision is entirely through the democratic process and there is no proposed new “political elite.” Even for their most radical goals—exit from the EU and Eurozone—the party proposes to do so only after public referendum. They depend on rhetorical persuasion, not any paramilitary force, to win their support. And just the same, they profess no desire for a single-party state even if the present multi-party system has been the single greatest hurdle for them in elections.

For these deficiencies alone, the party falls short of traditional fascism. We can, however, consider whether they engage in a “fascist style” of politics, which is defined by an assortment of characteristics that will be given greater consideration.

Crisis Narrative

The party’s penchant for crisis is profound and permeates through near all official FN rhetoric. It is not enough, for instance, to argue for national sovereignty on the merits of increased self-autonomy, Le Pen and others instead resort to presenting the EU as an “anti-democratic monster” in primitive and hostile terms.[24] Similarly, the party’s recent posturing as the only true “defender” of French secular values and traditions (from an ongoing Islamic assault) is the natural culmination of a long running, exaggerated crisis narrative they have kindled around the issue of immigration.

When the party was first formed in 1972, Jean-Marie and his associates employed the slogan, “With us, before it is too late!” More than forty years have passed, and the fundamental message remains unchanged. Take for instance the design of a 2012 campaign poster (pictured pg. 18): a park bench is placed in the foreground of a split screen photograph showing, on one side, a smiling couple outside a stereotypical French village, and on the other, a vagrant seated in front of a riotous scene outside an apartment typical to the nation’s immigrant-heavy banlieues. Beneath the image, the bold text: “CHOOSE YOUR FRANCE.”[25] Like so many of the party’s ads, the poster offers viewers a dichotomous choice, this time between the idyllic and the horrific. Its message is simple, pick us or get what’s coming. What’s coming, according to the FN, is a nightmarish vision of the future designed to prey on people’s prejudices, and stoke their fears.

For the majority of its history, the FN’s constant warnings of looming disaster and peril have largely been manufactured for the sake of the party’s expansion. Yet, recent events in France have provided real world support, and credence even, to the party’s consistently dire outlook. Look in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo massacre or the Nice attack and one is apt to find Marine Le Pen straining herself not to outright say I told you so. Ever the tactician, though, she bites her tongue and instead seamlessly pivots from the manufacture of imaginary crisis to the exploitation of the real thing.

Great Leader

In a 2014 interview with the Washington Post, Le Pen declared, “in a healthy political system, a political party should resemble its leader.”[26] The National Front, in her estimation, fit the bill. Throughout its history, the FN has always been characterized by the two Le Pens at the top, and as one supporter proclaimed at a 2016 rally, Marine “is the National Front.”[27] A lawyer by trade, Le Pen is a shrewd, articulate and calculated politician that understands how to adjust to her audience and how to most effectively present her message. The fact that the FN’s platform, which was derided under Jean-Marie, is now popularly embraced under Marine is testament to her rhetorical prowess. Her speeches are punctuated by forceful displays of energy, and she once even appeared at a party conference with an eagle perched on her arm.

Still, she lacks the machismo of a true fascist. Her prime contribution to the FN has been its de-masculinization and the softening of its image. In an interview with Der Spiegel she stated, “If I didn’t believe that we had a chance of coming to power, then I would have focused on taking care of my three children or gardening.”[28]

Populism

In a 2011 interview with the French magazine VSD, Marine Le Pen asserted, “Populist? The word does not bother me.”[29] Like Le Pen, the party has openly embraced its populist elements, inviting to its folds the disenfranchised of the country (as seen in the previously cited “Forgotten of France” ad). Le Pen has declared war on the nation’s establishment, avowing “It is not the French people that are weak, but rather it is the elites that are weakening them.” In the same speech, she similarly attributed elites to be the source of the nation’s despair.[30] The party’s political inexperience has therefore been its badge of honor. What says it all, however, is Le Pen’s new campaign slogan: Au Nom Du Peuple, or In the Name of the People.

Demonization of Minorities

A 2015 FN poster reading “Choose Your Suburbs” depicts on one side an assimilated patriotic immigrant, and on the other one in a burka.[31] For a party that has dwelt so long on issues of immigration, the poster’s greater meaning is clear: choose a “secular” France or an Islamized one. As a nationalist party, immigrants have long played the antagonists in the FN’s intricately woven crisis narrative, perhaps the most consistent element of the 44-year old party.

Complex Problems – Simple Solutions

For as profound the challenges France presently faces, or so claims the party, their fixes are incredibly simple: leave the EU and Eurozone, implement economic protectionist measures, and effectively halt immigration. The FN’s argument largely relies on emotion and people’s memories of France as it once was, and it ignores the realities that accompany a globalized 21st century economy and world.

Legitimized Violence

When asked by a New York Times journalist to name a formative aspect of her youth, Le Pen replied, “20 kilos of dynamite.”[32] The line is reference to the 1976 bombing of her childhood apartment by a political dissident. The perpetrator was never caught. Yet the anecdote appears, almost without fail, in any extended feature piece on Le Pen. Victimized, Le Pen asserts, it was political violence against that her shaped her early view of politics. Perhaps a consequence, absent from the FN is even the slightest hint of legitimized violence. The party instead engages strictly in a war of words and ideas, not the physical combat necessarily characteristic of fascist movements throughout history.

Conclusion

The fact that Le Pen and the FN do not meet the criteria of fascism does not absolve the party of the criticism it rightly deserves. Given power, it could well spell disaster for France and the European Union. Current French Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, recently stated that with a Le Pen presidency, “L’Europe peut mourir,” succinctly put, “Europe may die.”[33] As dramatic as it may seem, his statement reflects a genuine, and widespread, fear many share at the thought of a Le Pen in the Élysée Palace. This thought, once an impossibility, is now a potential reality in 2017 or 2022.
Fourteen years ago, Marine’s father, Jean-Marie, stumbled his way into final round of the 2002 presidential election to the shock of everybody, himself included. When Marine reaches the second round early next year—she is currently the most popular individual candidate—it will be to the surprise of absolutely no one. She will likely lose in 2017 but in so doing will have further legitimized the party, continuing the normalization of its ideas which—thanks to the nation’s mainstream politicians—has been rapidly ongoing in recent years. True, Marine has worked to soften the party’s image, tone down its rhetoric; yet for all her work, its message has fundamentally remained unchanged. For many, though, it is ringing truer than ever, and that’s what is most concerning.

Works Cited

“Marine Le Pen Speech (with English subtitles) – 2013 Party Summer Conference in Marseilles.” Filmed 2013. Youtube video, 1:15:52. Posted Dec. 2015. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBRgR0cIQj0>.

Chassany, Anne-Sylvaine. “How France’s National Front is winning working-class voters.” Financial Times, Oct. 21, 2016, <https://www.ft.com/content/ad9502f4-8099-11e6-bc52-0c7211ef3198>.

Davies, Peter. The Extreme Right in France, 1789 to the Present. London: Routledge, 2002.

Davies, Peter. The Extreme Right in France, 1789 to the Present: From De Maistre to Le Pen. London: Routledge, 2002.

Faiola, Anthony. “Question and Answer with Marine Le Pen.” Washington Post, April 14, 2014, <https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/question-and-answer-with-marine-le-pen/2014/04/14/4664435a-432b-4778-9557-573f31f6e4b1_story.html>.

FN Jeunesse. Choisis Ta France. Campaign Poster. 2011. <http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/politique/election-presidentielle-2012/20111114.OBS4495/choisis-ta-france-le-front-national-pris-au-jeu-de-la-caricature.html>

France24 English. “Marine Le Pen’s presidential campaign: One step closer?” Filmed September 2016.  Youtube video, 11:05. Posted September 2016. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_idCSvpAiiA>.

Front National. Choisissez Votre Banlieue. Campaign poster. 2015. < http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/en-direct/a-chaud/11759-fn-choisissez-votre-banlieue-nouvelle-affiche-prouve.html>.

Front National. La France des Oublies Vote Marine Le Pen. Campaign poster. 2011. <http://www.frontnational.com/affiche_oublies/>.

Madelin, Thibaut. “A Berlin, Valls redoute ‘la mort de l’Europe’.” 17 November 2016, <http://www.lesechos.fr/monde/europe/0211504662184-a-berlin-valls-redoute-la-mort-de-leurope-2043630.php>.

Mondon, Aurelien. “The Front National in the Twenty-First Century: From Pariah to Republican Democratic Contender?” Modern & Contemporary France 22, no. 3 (July 2014): 301-320.

Mondon, Aurelien. “The Irresistible Rise of the National Front? Populism and the Mainstreaming of the Extreme Right.” The European Far Right: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. Edited by Giorgos Charalambous. Oslo: Peace Research Institute, 2016.

Mondon, Aurelien. The Mainstreaming of the Extreme Right in France and Australia. London: Routledge, 2013.

Payne, Stanley, G. A History of Fascism, 1914-1945. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995.

Shields, James. The Extreme Right in France: From Petain to Le Pen. London: Routledge, 2007.

Shields, James. The Extreme Right in France: From Pétain to Le Pen. London: Routledge, 2007.

Shorto, Russell. “The Kinder, Gentler Extremist.” New York Times Magazine, May 1, 2011, <http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/magazine/mag-01LePen-t.html>.

Stockemer, Daniel. “Who Are the Members of the French National Front? Evidence from Interview Research.” French Politics 12, no. 1 (2014): 36-58.

Taylor, Adam. “French courts: Yes, it’s okay to call Marine le Pen a fascist — or worse.” Washington Post, 20 March 2015, < https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/03/20/french-courts-yes-its-okay-to-call-marine-le-pen-a-fascist-or-worse/>.

Von Rohnr, Mathieu. “Interview with Marine Le Pen: ‘I Don’t Want this European Soviet Union.’” Der Spiegel, June 4, 2014.

[1] Stanley G. Payne, A History of Fascism, 1914-1945 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995), 290.

[2] Peter Davies, The Extreme Right in France, 1789 to the Present (London: Routledge, 2002), 59.

[3] Davies, 64.

[4] Payne, 44-45.

[5] Davies, 88.

[6] Davies, 90.

[7] Davies, 102.

[8] Payne, 399.

[9] Davies, 110.

[10] Davies, 128.

[11] James Shields, The Extreme Right in France: From Petain to Le Pen (London: Routledge, 2007), 161-3.

[12] Aurelien Mondon, ‘The Irresistible Rise of the Front National? Populism and the Mainstreaming of the Extreme Right,” in Giorgos Charalambous, ed., The European Far Right: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (Oslo: Peace Research Institute, 2016), 35.

[13] Daniel Stockemer, “Who are the members of the French National Front? Evidence from interview research,” French Politics 12, no. 1 (2014): 38.

[14] Shields, 163.

[15] Shields, 169.

[16] Anne-Sylvaine Chassany, “How France’s National Front is winning working-class voters,” Financial Times, 21 October 2016, <https://www.ft.com/content/ad9502f4-8099-11e6-bc52-0c7211ef3198>.

[17] Front National, “La France des Oublies Vote Marine Le Pen,” 2012, <http://www.frontnational.com/affiche_oublies/>. (See pg. 18)

[18] Stockemer, 48-9.

 [19] Anthony Faiola, “Question and Answer with Marine Le Pen,” Washington Post, 14 April 2014, < https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/question-and-answer-with-marine-le-pen/2014/04/14/4664435a-432b-4778-9557-573f31f6e4b1_story.html>.

 [20] Aurelien Mondon, The Mainstreaming of the Extreme Right in France and Australia (London: Routledge, 2013), 52.

 [21] Mondon, “Irresistible Rise?” 37.

[22] Mondon, 37.

[23] Adam Taylor, “French courts: Yes, it’s okay to call Marine le Pen a fascist — or worse,” Washington Post, 20 March 2015, < https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/03/20/french-courts-yes-its-okay-to-call-marine-le-pen-a-fascist-or-worse/>.

[24] Mathieu von Rohnr, “Interview with Marine Le Pen: ‘I Don’t Want this European Soviet Union,” Der Spiegel, 4 June 2014, < http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/interview-with-french-front-national-leader-marine-le-pen-a-972925.html>.

[25] Les Jeunes avec Marine, “Choisis Ta France” (Campaign Poster), 2011.

[26] Failoa.

[27] France24 English, “Marine Le Pen’s presidential campaign: One step closer?,” 21 September 2016, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_idCSvpAiiA>.

[28] Von Rohnr.

[29] “Marine Le Pen: ‘Populiste? Le Mot ne me Gene Pas’” <http://www.vsd.fr/les-indiscrets/marine-le-pen-populiste-le-mot-ne-me-gene-pas-4582>.

[30] “Marine Le Pen Speech (with English subtitles) – 2013 Party Summer Conference in Marseilles,” <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBRgR0cIQj0>.

[31] Front National, “Choisissez votre Banlieue,” 2015.

[32] Russell Shorto, “The Kinder, Gentler Extremist,” New York Times Magazine, 1 May 2011, < http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/magazine/mag-01LePen-t.html>.

[33] Thibaut Madelin, “A Berlin, Valls redoute ‘la mort de l’Europe’,” 17 November 2016, <http://www.lesechos.fr/monde/europe/0211504662184-a-berlin-valls-redoute-la-mort-de-leurope-2043630.php>.

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