The French Front National (FN) was founded in 1972 as a coalition of fascist tendencies. It grouped together Vichy collaborators, young thugs and a handful of non-party fascists, like Jean-Marie Le Pen, who had played minor roles in the post-war history of the French far-right. By 1980 the FN had only 270 members, of whom scarcely 100 were fully paid-up.1 Three years later the FN won 2.2 million votes in the European elections and Le Pen\u2019s face was on the front page of every newspaper. Over the next 10 years, the FN was able to put down deep roots and is now a fundamental feature of the political landscape. Its impact on every other political party has been enormous.<\/p>\n
To decide on the exact nature and seriousness of the threat it poses to the workers\u2019 movement and to immigrant communities in France it is vital to understand the trajectory of the FN. Is it towards the creation of a fully and openly fascist mass party or is it evolving in the direction of a virulently racist but fundamentally electoral party, a component of some future right-wing parliamentary majority? To answer these questions it is necessary to evaluate what Jean-Marie Le Pen has called, \u201cadapting our thinking and our actions to the realities of the modern world\u201d.2<\/p>\n
An overview of FN\u2019s development<\/p>\n
The history of the FN can be divided into four overlapping phases. The first began with the foundation of the organisation in 1972. The FN never attempted to conceal either its fascist ideological origins or its political objectives during this phase and it was tiny.<\/p>\n
A new phase began when it attempted to transform itself into a demagogic racist electoral front, an organisation in which the leadership\u2019s fascist politics and past were hidden in order to win wider support. It was in 1983, during this second phase, having become what we call a fascist front, that the FN made its first big electoral breakthrough. It did so by riding the high tide of the prevailing racism and economic liberalism which hit France at that time. Le Pen shrewdly played the part of a racist and populist demagogue but carefully avoided being cast as an out-and-out fascist. In the mid-1980s this turn encouraged non-fascist currents and individuals, especially those associated with the Club de l\u2019Horloge, to fuse with Le Pen\u2019s front.<\/p>\n
From 1989, attempts were made to execute another turn, to transform the FN into a fascist organisation or, at the very least, to test the willingness of its electorate and membership to support more nakedly fascist policies. Le Pen made some notorious anti-semitic \u201cslips of the tongue\u201d. There was a turn to more street-fighting. To cap it all, following its leader\u2019s anti-semitic instincts, the party came out in opposition the Gulf War. This stance clashed with the mainly anti-Arab racism of its electoral base and led to the loss of a good deal of its support.<\/p>\n
The latest phase might be termed the \u201cpost-Le Pen phase\u201d. Its focus is the April 1995 presidential elections (the last in which the current leader will stand). Already, a major rift is opening up between those who want to hold fast to the populist racist line of the 1980s, never fully abandoned, and those who want to push further the 1989 turn and bring the FN\u2019s fascist politics to the fore.<\/p>\n
This is only the latest expression of the contradiction at work throughout the four phases of the FN\u2019s history. A largely fascist leadership and cadre has to hide its politics from a non-fascist electoral base. Some elements of the leadership, pleased with the electoral successes that the party\u2019s endorsement of anti-immigrant racism and free market reaction brought it in the 1980s, are resisting moves to turn the FN into an openly fascist organisation.<\/p>\n
The FN does not claim to be a fascist party, and its basic political methods are certainly not those of Mussolini\u2019s Fascist Party and Hitler\u2019s NSDAP. It espouses no pseudo-socialist or \u201crevolutionary\u201d ideology, nor does it organise the mass of its followers into disciplined street gangs to attack Arabs, Jews, trade unionists and the Left. Despite its racism, its anti-semitism and its anti-working-class politics, the FN is not yet a fully fledged fascist party. However, this is no excuse for the slightest complacency.<\/p>\n
The journalist Ren\u00e9 Monzat put the matter very well:<\/p>\n
\u201cIt isn\u2019t a question of applying the label \u2018fascist\u2019 to the FN at all costs but of recognising that the FN and the New Right are attempting to create social, political and cultural conditions comparable to those which enabled the birth of fascist and Nazi parties in pre-war Italy and Germany. Their success or failure depends partly on us.\u201d3<\/p>\n
The origins of the FN<\/p>\n
The FN was founded in October 1972 as a common front uniting various fascist groups. Each of these was committed to forming a federation comprising fascists and the nationalist far right. But if its choice of leaders in 1972 is anything to go by, it was far from being a broad church.<\/p>\n
Its principal leader was Le Pen who, although he had never belonged to any openly fascist organisation, had been a fellow-traveller of all the post-war fascist and far-right organisations. In 1958 his organisation, the \u201cFront National des Combattants\u201d signed a joint manifesto with the openly fascist Algerian-based \u201cFront National Fran\u00e7ais\u201d that described the two groups as \u201cnationalists\u201d, \u201csocialists\u201d, \u201cEuropeans\u201d, \u201canti-capitalists\u201d, \u201canti-communists\u201d and \u201canti-parliamentarists\u201d.4<\/p>\n
The other leaders of the FN all had impeccable open fascist credentials.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Victor Barth\u00e9l\u00e9my, elected Secretary General, had been Administrative Secretary in Jacques Doriot\u2019s pre-war PPF, an openly fascist party.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Fran\u00e7ois Brigneau, the Vice-President, had been in the Militia (the Vichy Gestapo) in Vichy\u2019s openly fascist period. He was a close friend of Le Pen.<\/p>\n
\u2022 The Treasurer, Pierre Bousquet, had volunteered for the Charlemagne Division (the French Division of the SS) and had fought on the Eastern Front against the USSR.<\/p>\n
Among the various tendencies in this coalition were Ordre Nouveau (a hardened fascist organisation), Militant (set up in 1967 by former SS men)5, members of the Neo-Nazi FANE, the \u201cNational Revolutionary Groups\u201d which published denials that the Holocaust ever took place. The coalition never numbered more than a few hundred.<\/p>\n
The FN soon drew the disparate strands of the far right into its orbit. In 1974, the main fascist organisation, Ordre Nouveau was disbanded. The FN rapidly became the clearing-house for all fascists. \u201cNational revolutionaries belong in the Front National. Dual membership is allowed and the FN will respect members\u2019 ideological choices.\u201d6 The hope was that this \u201cbroad church\u201d would also facilitate a break-through to the masses.<\/p>\n
But by 1977, they were still wallowing around in the dregs of fascism. New forces arrived in the shape of Jean-Pierre Stirbois and other \u201cSolidarist\u201d cadres. The Solidarists began life in 1966 as the Young Revolution Movement but changed their name in 1971 to the French Solidarist Movement.7 They were founded by two former OAS men and were distinguished by the virulence of their national-revolutionary anti-communism. \u201cForce is the only way to deal with reds and reaction\u201d, they declared.8<\/p>\n
Stirbois was not the only Solidarist to rush to Le Pen\u2019s aid. Bernard Antony, closely linked to the OAS in the early 1960s, joined, as did Pierre Sergent, also of the OAS, who presented himself as the voice of the army inside the FN.<\/p>\n
But these fascists enabled the FN to make its first attempt to build a genuine fascist front. They supported Le Pen\u2019s turn away from fascist \u201csectarianism\u201d towards a united front with non-fascist racists and rightists. J-F Touz\u00e9, a former adviser to Stirbois, put the matter succinctly:<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the late 1970s, Le Pen became aware that his movement had reached a dead end. Had he stuck with the survivors of the Second World War or with their political heirs, his party would have remained a tiny sect.\u201d9<\/p>\n
The big break<\/p>\n
In 1981, Fran\u00e7ois Mitterrand came to power as the first Socialist President of the Fifth republic. Following 15 months of Keynesian policies the Socialist-Communist government was pulled up by an IMF austerity package. It rapidly turned to imposing savage cuts in public spending and attacks on workers\u2019 living standards. Disillusion and demoralisation grew rapidly amongst the working class as unemployment soared.<\/p>\n
Defeats were inflicted without any decisive response from the unions, tied as they were to supporting \u201ctheir\u201d government. The FN\u2019s growth was the direct consequence of the anti-working class policies of the Socialists and Communists, both in government and at the head of the unions.10 This was just the situation for the FN to grow amongst the unorganised and less class conscious workers as well as amongst the lower middle class and the unemployed. They used the old racist lie: immigration equals unemployment.<\/p>\n
The FN was not alone in utilising racist demagogy over unemployment. In late 1980, the Communist mayor of Vitry took the controls of a bulldozer to close down an immigrant hostel. Around the same time, Robert Hue, currently the leader of the French Communist Party, led an \u201canti-drugs\u201d campaign in his town which \u201cjust happened\u201d to target immigrant families. Of course, the CP explained that its actions were all in the cause of anti-racism.<\/p>\n
The FN\u2019s major breakthrough came in the September 1983 local elections. Stirbois headed a list of FN candidates that got 16.7% of the vote in the recession-hit town of Dreux, where he had been building a base over a long period. The FN\u2019s campaign was racist, playing on fears about crime and demanding repatriation. But it limited itself carefully to this law and order approach, calling for strong measures of state racism. In this sense it set the agenda for the \u201crespectable racism\u201d of the main bourgeois parties and gained admittance to the club.<\/p>\n
In the second round of the elections, the Gaullist RPR party and Giscard\u2019s UDF stood jointly with the FN on a single ticket. The right won 55.5% of the votes and Stirbois, along with other FN members, got in. Not only did the FN succeed in winning council seats, it also won the recognition of the other right-wing parties as a respectable partner.<\/p>\n
Almost overnight, Le Pen gained access to the mass media. Now at last he was free to spew his racial hatred into every living room on prime time television. Only a few months earlier he had written to Mitterrand to protest against media \u201ccensorship\u201d of the FN! 11<\/p>\n
Despite his links with fascism in the past, despite his anti-semitism, none of which he renounced, Le Pen now aspired to be the outspoken voice of \u201crespectable racism\u201c. Large sections of the petit bourgeoisie and even some sections of the working class were drawn to this monster. In the Euro elections of June 1984, the FN won nearly 11% with over 2,200,000 votes, taking it neck and neck with the Communist Party. No sooner had they arrived in the European Parliament than they formed a parliamentary group with the Italian neo-fascists of the MSI.12<\/p>\n
Labour movement leaders actually pandered to this rise of organised racism. In June 1983, Andr\u00e9 Bergeron, leader of the Force Ouvri\u00e8re trade union, declared that \u201cimmigration levels have reached saturation point\u201d.13 In early 1984, when immigrant workers at the Talbot-Poissy car plant dared to take on the bosses and their racist scab union, Socialist Party Prime Minister Pierre Mauroy called them \u201cstriking ayatollahs\u201d. Shortly afterwards he introduced a cynical policy that paid immigrants if they would return permanently to their country of origin.<\/p>\n
Pursuing its new orientation, the FN did everything in its power to conceal the political aims of some of its leaders and members. In May 1985 an internal circular decreed that \u201cactivists who are too extreme in their views are forbidden from speaking out\u201d.14 At the same time, Mitterrand brought in proportional representation for the 1986 general election with the aim of securing more seats for the FN, thus embarrassing the traditional right.<\/p>\n
The FN got 10% of the vote and 35 seats. In fact Mitterrand\u2019s wretched tactic blew up in his face. Far from splitting under pressure from the FN, the right (along with the left), took up the open racism Le Pen had dared to pioneer. Henceforth, racism was good political coin across the political spectrum.<\/p>\n
Composition of the FN<\/p>\n
During this phase of rapid growth, the FN had to build itself in a more professional way. Stirbois, by now Le Pen\u2019s right-hand man and the Front\u2019s Secretary General, sharpened up the party\u2019s electoral machine and oversaw the setting-up of a network of front organisations to carry the FN\u2019s message to new sectors of the population.<\/p>\n
The \u201cCercle Entreprise Moderne et Libert\u00e9\u201d was one such organisation. Led by Andr\u00e9 Dufraisse, a former staff-member in Doriot\u2019s PPF who was until his death in March 1994 a member of the FN\u2019s National Executive,15 its purpose was to obtain funds from the business community. Other circles targeted FN sympathisers in the health service, among small farmers, the arts and public transport. The FN even attempted to set up union cells among seamen in FO and inside the CGT on the Paris m\u00e9tro.16<\/p>\n
The FN\u2019s growth soon attracted the attention of other far-right organisations. The Parti des Forces Nouvelles (PFN), a fascist sect propped up by former members of Ordre Nouveau, joined just before the 1984 Euro-elections, strengthening the party\u2019s fascist hard-core.<\/p>\n
Le Pen\u2019s espousal of ultra-Reaganite free-market economics meanwhile served to woo other reactionary non-fascist currents.17 Bruno M\u00e9gret\u2019s Committee for Republican Action, linked to the Club de l\u2019Horloge, was arguably the most important of these. It fused with the FN in 1985. M\u00e9gret had been a secretary in the cabinet of a Gaullist minister. The influx of Club de l\u2019Horloge members and various other apostles of the free market with no previous fascist links conferred a veneer of \u201crespectability\u201d on the FN.<\/p>\n
Throughout this phase, the FN\u2019s unequivocal advocacy of the free market consistently gave it a head start over the traditional right. For a while it was able to pose as the main exponent of the \u201cThatcherite\/Reaganite\u201d economic ideas in France, opposed to traditional economic \u00e9tatisme (state interventionism). In its 1985 programme the FN\u2019s slogans included, \u201cSet business and the economy free\u201d and \u201cProperty is freedom\u201d.18<\/p>\n
Such policies clashed sharply with the traditional fascist emphasis on the state and corporatism. They also flew in the face of Le Pen\u2019s statement that \u201cif there is a human impulse toward harmony it must be codified and guided through the state\u2019s authority\u201d, for the state \u201cembodies the community that the people have organised in order to fulfill their destiny\u201d.19<\/p>\n
There is a simple explanation for this glaring contradiction. The FN leadership\u2019s aim was to build a mass organisation. The traditional Gaullist emphasis on the state, which all the French right-wing parties shared, compelled it to adopt a distinctive stance.<\/p>\n
Le Pen himself was clearly impressed by the successes of free-market economics in the US and the UK, especially their ability to attract small employers. So he grafted monetarism onto his racist and nationalist ideology and blithely disregarded the ways in which it contradicted the ideas of most of his members, not to mention his own earlier statements.<\/p>\n
M\u00e9gret, a racist with no scruples about working alongside fascists, rapidly crawled up the party hierarchy, winning a seat on the National Executive in a matter of months. As the leader of the \u201cnational monetarists\u201d inside the party, he was to play a key role in persuading its fascist founders to commit themselves to the free market in all official documents.20 His success may be gauged by the fact that in June 1985, the party\u2019s \u201cNine Proposals\u201d to give French nationals preferential treatment in the job market, were copied, word for word, from a Club de l\u2019Horloge document on unemployment.21<\/p>\n
In spite (or perhaps because) of their growing influence over economic policy, the arrivistes from the Club de l\u2019Horloge failed to win stronger representation on the FN\u2019s leading bodies. The fascists who founded the FN in 1972 had plainly decided to keep control. Of the 21 members elected to the National Executive in 1985, only three did not have long-standing, close links with the fascists.22<\/p>\n
At the same time, other fascists rallied to the FN. Here we might single out for special mention Michel Schneider\u2014author of an \u201cEssay in Favour of Neo-Fascism\u201d and \u201cThe Principles of Fascist Action\u2019\u2014who became an adviser to Stirbois; and Bernard Antony, aka Romain Marie, whose meteoric rise brought him a seat on the National Executive and in the European Parliament. Antony, a serious fascist in the mould of the Spanish Falangists, was for many years associated with the innocuous-sounding \u201cCommittees for Christian Solidarity\u201d movement.<\/p>\n
As one might expect, the Committees were anything but innocuous. Antony saw them as \u201can active, fighting cutting edge\u201d which would fight for, among other things, \u201cthe abolition of the current laws on trade union representation\u201d, \u201cChurch control over education\u201d and an end to \u201cthe genocide under anaesthetic of France and its people.\u201d He subsequently founded Pr\u00e9sent, a clerical fascist daily paper with a wide distribution but a very small readership.23<\/p>\n
Nods and winks<\/p>\n
The leadership believes that, with fascists of this calibre operating at every level of the organisation (not just in the upper echelons), the party\u2019s fascist core will not be weakened by the recruitment of half-baked racist populists.24<\/p>\n
At regular intervals \u201cnods and winks\u201d towards the fascist cadre at all levels had to be given to prevent them becoming too restive at the long term concealment of open fascist policies. For example, in May 1984, Le Pen referred in passing to France\u2019s \u201cliving space\u201d and feigned amazement when it was put to him that he meant lebensraum (living space), the doctrine German Nazis claimed gave them the \u201cright\u201d to invade other countries.<\/p>\n
Such references were used more often to feed the faithful their traditional diet of anti-semitism, negationism (the notion that the holocaust never happened) and assorted conspiracy theories. In November 1983 FN leader Arnaud de Lassus launched an attack on the Socialist\/Communist Government in terms of \u201cthe four superpowers colonising France today: Marxists, Freemasons, Jews and Protestants. And behold in the Cabinet: Fiterman, Hernu, Badinter and Rocard.\u201d In September 1987 Le Pen declared that the question of the existence of the gas chambers was a \u201cdetail\u201d of the history of the Second World War.<\/p>\n
Despite its repulsive racism and chauvinism, the FN does not openly advocate the destruction of the workers\u2019 movement or the establishment of a totalitarian system. Even more striking is the fact that it has rarely attempted to bring terror onto the streets as a party, for example by attacking its favourite scapegoat, immigrants. Until now the FN has confined itself to using intimidating racist language without carrying out attacks as a party. This is not to ignore or minimise the fact that there are a horrific number of attacks and racist crimes that the FN has influenced others to carry out or that have been perpetrated by individual FN members.<\/p>\n
Why such official reticence? Partly due to the fact that many of its voters would withdraw support if the FN launched a campaign of terror in its own name. It also reflects the fact that the bosses are not faced with a revolutionary social movement of workers which fascists might save them from. The misleadership of the unions and workers\u2019 parties, aggravated by 13 years of \u201cSocialist\u201d rule, has created a situation in which, for the moment at least, there is neither the need nor the mass support for a fascist movement. In such circumstances the FN remains a fascist front, dependent for electoral support on people who would not accept the ideas of a large section of the leadership.<\/p>\n
The FN\u2019s fascist turn<\/p>\n
At the 1988 presidential elections Le Pen turned in his best ever electoral performance: 14.4% of all votes cast, or 4,375,000 votes. This marked the beginning of a subtle change in the FN\u2019s politics.<\/p>\n
The FN found that it was systematically excluded from all power. The two round system that Chirac\u2019s government brought back for the parliamentary elections inevitably worked against the FN. Unable to reach agreement with the conservative parties, Le Pen and his cronies had to endure the spectacle of Charles Pasqua appealing directly to FN voters. \u201cOn essentials, we share the same values,\u201d Pasqua said in April 1988. The FN was caught in a dead end at the moment of its greatest electoral glory. Its vote held up in the June 1988 parliamentary elections at a comparable level to 1986, but it failed to win seats.25 Racism, populism and the free market were no longer enough.<\/p>\n
The FN hardened its tone, with references to the fascist past becoming more frequent. On 1 May 1988 it organised its first ever Paris May Day demonstration. Apart from being a two-finger sign to the workers\u2019 movement, it was used as a reminder that Vichy was the first government to institute a bank holiday on May Day. Then Le Pen accused the conservative parties of being in cahoots with an alleged \u201cJewish lobby\u201d. He marked the new parliamentary session with a piece of foul word-play on the name of the (Jewish) minister who delivered the opening speech, Durafour. Le Pen\u2019s comment was \u201cDurafour-cr\u00e9matoire\u2019, which might be translated as \u201cOut of the oven and into the crematorium\u201d, a clear reference to the extermination of the Jews. It served the dual purpose of making headlines and reminding the faithful that they hadn\u2019t been forgotten.26<\/p>\n
A few months later Le Pen wrote an article in Pr\u00e9sent attacking \u201cforces preaching an ideology of world unity\u201d:<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are the Freemasons. I believe the Trilateral plays a role. The big internationals like the Jewish International have played a not inconsiderable role in reinforcing this anti-national mood.\u201d27<\/p>\n
To accompany this hardening of tone, Le Pen\u2019s company, SERP, decided to come into the modern age. Founded by Le Pen and his friend Gaultier (a veteran of the Vichy Militia and the SS), the SERP caused a stir during the 1960s for distributing records of pro-Hitler songs.28 At the end of the 1980s it began to distribute videos such as \u201cSieg in Western\u201d (a Nazi film made in 1940) and \u201cDie Volksf\u00fchrer L\u00e9on Degrelle\u201d (in praise of the Belgian fascist leader).29<\/p>\n
The \u201c50 Proposals\u201d on immigration unveiled by M\u00e9gret in November 1991 indicate the depth of the FN\u2019s racism. In what amounted to a manifesto for apartheid, the party spelled out more brazenly than ever how it proposed to treat immigrants. There would be \u201cpreferential treatment for French people in employment, housing and social welfare benefits\u201d; \u201cunemployed immigrants who overstay their visas\u201d would be \u201chunted down\u201d; \u201cnecessary expulsion procedures [would be] put into action\u201d; there would be \u201cquotas in schools\u201d; immigrant hostels would be closed down and immigrant areas \u201cdismantled\u201d.<\/p>\n
Once more the response of the other parties, left as well as right, was to try to prove that they could implement what the FN\u2019s racist voters were looking for. The Socialist government set up detention centres near sea-ports and airports to imprison immigrants awaiting expulsion (thus implementing proposal 46 on the FN\u2019s list) and chartered airplanes to repatriate them (FN Proposal 47). The Communist Party launched a petition against illegal immigration (FN Proposal 44). Once the right took control of parliament again the law on nationality was changed (FN Proposal 8), there was no automatic right to citizenship (FN Proposal 9) and \u201cstop-and-search\u201d powers were granted to the police (FN Proposal 50).<\/p>\n
The FN began to wonder how to counter the situation where the other parties were stealing its racist clothes. After the 1989 European Elections, Roland Gaucher, National Executive member and leader of D\u00e9at\u2019s war-time fascist Rassemblement National Populaire, bewailed the fact that the party \u201chad not made enough of an effort in the direction of workers. I for my part have never been too keen on monetarism\u201d.30 It should be borne in mind that the FN\u2019s vote had just dropped by two million as compared to the 1988 presidential elections.<\/p>\n
The FN had a rethink on its economic policies and bit by bit abandoned the free-market policies of the 1980s. To some extent this process was forced upon it by the Maastricht and GATT treaties, both of which were based on monetarist principles but had an unmistakably \u201canti-national\u201d logic. Carl Lang, the FN\u2019s new General Secretary, declared in 1991 that:<\/p>\n
\u201cWe must make a very special effort on social solidarity\u201d.31<\/p>\n
In March 1992, M\u00e9gret unveiled a 51-point programme on social and economic policy. The apartheid policies of the 50 measures were, unsurprisingly, carried over into this new document; but free market economics were abandoned to be replaced by a covert form of corporatism.<\/p>\n
Free enterprise, the FN said, \u201cshould cease to be a place of struggle between employers and workers, as Marxists claim\u201d but should \u201cinstead become an authentic community of work where everybody, regardless of their position in the social hierarchy, has a place.\u201d32 Measures the FN had once considered \u201csocialist\u201d and therefore the root of all evil, such as the minimum wage, maternity leave, or extended holiday pay, were taken up by a party that had become worried about its credibility amongst the poorer layers of society.<\/p>\n
A few months later an official explanation of the FN\u2019s new world vision appeared in its \u201ctheoretical\u201d journal Identit\u00e9, laying claim to the \u201canti-capitalist\u201d (in fact anti-semitic) legacy of the Nazis:<\/p>\n
\u201cThe spirit of cosmopolitanism along with its nationless corollary, anonymous nationless capitalism, undermines the fabric of society and the economy. Far from bringing prosperity, it causes unemployment and poverty throughout the world . . . Economic questions can no longer be debated in terms of Keynesianism versus monetarism or collectivism versus capitalism, but between a global concept of the economy and a national concept, between unbridled speculative capitalism and industrial, community-minded capitalism. These two world-views are radically opposed.\u201d33<\/p>\n
These changes were ratified at the November 1992 Convention in Nice. According to the new economic programme, employers \u201care not free to act as they wish, but are subordinate to the people\u201d.34 Although denationalisation was still advocated, the party made a new call for protectionist tariffs.<\/p>\n
From the early 1990s, monetarism became a favourite target of FN leaders. M\u00e9gret explained that \u201cfree market economism is close to cosmopolitanism.\u201d35 Pierre Vial, the \u201cnegationist\u201d historian who had once wanted to simply abolish income tax, claimed:<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m anti-free market, and I\u2019m at least as concerned about social rights as I am about national ones.\u201d36 Le Pen voiced his opinion that \u201cthe causes of unemployment are immigration, excessive taxes and the free movement of currencies.\u201d37<\/p>\n
By means of this great leap backwards, the FN was able to move closer to the roots of fascism, where \u201cnationalism\u201d and \u201csocialism\u201d sit side by side.<\/p>\n
Until then it had avoided all physical confrontation with the left. Now it was showing its muscle. The fascist organisation, Troisi\u00e8me Voie, was asked for help stewarding a meeting Le Pen was to speak at in Chartres, following a series of confrontations with anti-fascists from the area. Faced with a large counter-demonstration, the fascists decided to attack. The anti-fascists were not equipped to defend themselves and the fascists routed them.<\/p>\n
The FN also set about creating a fascist movement among students. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Paris universities were the scene of violent confrontations between fascists and the left (Le Pen was an enthusiastic participant in these38). The FN reforged links with the fascist GUD and started the REP which carried out attacks on left-wing students, notably on central Parisian campuses (the Sorbonne, Jussieu and Assas). In Autumn 1994, two members of the FN\u2019s youth section in Montpeller fired on students who were tearing down FN posters.<\/p>\n
In October 1992, in a speech to the Nice conference marked by a frankness that would have been unthinkable a few years ago, Le Pen gave a hint of how he sees the future: \u201cWe must respect legality while it exists . . . We\u2019re an army in civvies, but it would not be right for us to go around parading arms today . . . If you\u2019ve got a firearms license, choose a 9 mm in preference to the 6.35 mm, it\u2019s more effective.\u201d39<\/p>\n
But the factor which affected the FN\u2019s standing most during this phase was Le Pen\u2019s handling of his party\u2019s line on the Gulf War. The FN owes most of its electoral success to anti-Arab racism. The Gulf War should, therefore, have been a godsend. Yet the FN decided not to support the reactionary war of the US and its allies but instead supported Saddam Hussein.<\/p>\n
The reasons for this highly unpopular decision (and it was unpopular even inside the FN) were thoroughly ideological. The choice was between the destruction of an \u201cArab enemy\u201d and the chance to support a possible attack against Israel. The FN, true to its anti-semitic reflexes, fell in behind Saddam.<\/p>\n
Anti-semitism is not synonymous with fascism despite its historic centrality to pseudo-scientific racist \u201ctheory\u201d. Not all racists are anti-semites. Indeed the standard racist agitation of the FN was not anti-semitism but anti-Arabism. But opposition to a war involving French forces against an Arab country was more than a wink to fascist elements who hoped to see Saddam Hussein smash Israel. It was also a way of testing whether the electorate might welcome such a turn. The fact that the bulk of the FN leadership stood out against the Gulf War, exposing their patriotism to question, indicates the depth of their commitment to fascist and anti-semitic ideals.<\/p>\n
The results of this experiment were disastrous for the FN. Some of the movement\u2019s notables, such as Pierre Sergent, a former OAS man and a close friend of Le Pen, publicly criticised the FN\u2019s failure to support the French Army and came out on the Israeli side.40 Le Pen disappeared from the media and plummeted in the opinion polls. The electoral bubble had burst.<\/p>\n
The return of the right<\/p>\n
Although the FN flourished during the first period of \u201ccohabitation\u201d between a Socialist president and a conservative parliament, in 1986-1988, the right\u2019s victory in the parliamentary elections of March 1993 had a very different effect. Even before the elections, at the 1992 Maastricht referendum, Le Pen had to put up with Pasqua and S\u00e9guin stealing his clothes. A large section of the FN\u2019s voters were seduced by the future Interior Minister\u2019s nationalist turn of phrase. These voters preferred the \u201crespectable\u201d racist right to a party tainted with fascism.<\/p>\n
The June 1994 Euro-elections marked a watershed in the FN\u2019s history. Not so much because it won fewer votes than in 1989 \u2014 10. 6% (2,038,843) compared with 11.7% in 1989 \u2014 as because of the rise of Phillippe de Villiers, who won the support of a considerable number of Le Pen voters, taking him ahead of the FN. De Villiers is made of the same racist, nationalist mettle as M\u00e9gret, but behaved throughout the Maastricht campaign in a manner more typical of Pasqua or S\u00e9guin. He has made himself a \u201crespectable\u201d option for those dithering over whether to vote for Le Pen. During the April 1995 Presidential election he will be in direct competition for many of Le Pen\u2019s voters; it seems probable that the FN will not repeat its terrifying four million votes of 1988.<\/p>\n
The FN today is stagnating. Its share of the vote is declining. Although opinion polls show 35% of the population agreeing with its policies on immigration, 87% regard it as sectarian and racist and 73% think it is a threat to democracy.41 Support is clearly falling compared with previous years. Even if it can boast around a thousand local government seats, it does not control any town with over 10,000 inhabitants. It has certainly put down roots, but its growth has stopped.<\/p>\n
FN activists are well aware of this. At the FN\u2019s Ninth Conference (February 1994) differences between fascists and nationalists broke out into the open. Tendencies were openly formed for the first time so that different slates could be put forward for the Central Committee. Le Pen publicly condemned what he saw as \u201cclan manoeuvres\u201d but still failed to get his own way. The crunch came when he asked for backing for J-M. Dubois, a personal friend and the president of the Modern Business and Freedom circle. Dubois is Le Pen\u2019s passport to the business world.42 A vote against him was in effect a vote against the leader. He was not elected so Le Pen simply co-opted him onto the Central Committee and the National Executive.<\/p>\n
In the same way, he appointed Bruno Gollnisch as party vice-president. His short-term aim here was to counter the authority of M\u00e9gret (Delegate General) and Carl Lang (General Secretary)43 but he may also view Gollnisch as a possible successor.<\/p>\n
Gollnisch is a Professor at the University of Lyons-III whose popularity with Le Pen may owe something to his reverence for Vichy, his enthusiasm for Vladimir Zhirinovski and revisionist ideas on the holocaust. His promotion is a clear indication that Le Pen (whose authority is not in doubt for the moment) is out to weaken M\u00e9gret and the \u201csofter\u201d wing of the party and strengthen those elements closest to his own heart, the pro-Vichy, pro-Hitler, anti-semitic elements.<\/p>\n
Where now for the FN?<\/p>\n
The FN presently finds itself in a dilemma. A large chunk of its vote is defecting to the traditional right-wing parties who have shown they can match the FN for racism, chauvinism and reaction. At the same time, any move further to the right would cause an even greater electoral haemorrhage. Le Pen is still in control of the organisation but is having difficulties maintaining a balance. Already he is being openly criticised by the Catholic fundamentalist-fascist wing of the FN around Bernard Antony for refusing to call for the abolition of the right of abortion, or even to support anti-abortion commandos.<\/p>\n
It seems unlikely that things can go on in this way for much longer.44 The conflict in the leadership could soon engulf the whole organisation. After the Presidential election, those seeking power by parliamentary means will be increasingly tempted by possible alliances with sections of the traditional right, ideally with De Villiers or Pasqua.<\/p>\n
On the other hand both top leaders and cadres who are frustrated by the lack of electoral progress in recent years and who fear that all their gains are being eroded, may decide the only way to consolidate the party is through street mobilisations. They will be increasingly tempted to break with the party\u2019s \u201csoft\u201d wing and present the FN as a party struggling for power by direct action.<\/p>\n
The formal end of the recession has brought no \u201cfeel good factor\u201d to France. When and if recovery makes itself felt, mass unemployment is not going to disappear. In recent years a new, politically conscious layer of youth has emerged. As yet it has little contact with the workers\u2019 movement. Despite this, and despite the weakness of the unions, these youth could bring about revolutionary explosions in every European imperialist country.<\/p>\n
But these same conditions could also provide a breeding ground for fascists, if the workers‘ movement fails to embrace a revolutionary solution. In such circumstances, the FN (or a section of it) could well resort to openly fascist methods to recruit disillusioned or disoriented youth.<\/p>\n
This is why the fight against the FN and its ideas is of central importance for the workers\u2019 movement and for youth. We have seen how the FN has been able to infect the workers\u2019 movement with racism. We have seen how a section of the leadership aims to create a mass fascist party. Today, we can stop the FN in its tracks, provided we are clear about how to do so.<\/p>\n
What is needed to stop the rise of the FN, the propagation of its racist ideas and its transformation into a fascist party, is a revival in workers\u2019 confidence. The slight increase in struggles of late, the mobilisation of youth against the minimum wage last Spring, can be built on. They must become a beacon for permanent change, a bastion of resistance to racist ideas. And they must be capable of mobilising the youth and the unemployed.<\/p>\n
We have to be prepared to fight the FN on all fronts. The recent experiments in thuggery are a reminder that a fascist party cannot be built without street mobilisations. The natural fodder for such mobilisations are the unemployed and the most despairing elements of society. Steps must be taken immediately to prevent that from happening.<\/p>\n
Every demonstration and every meeting of the FN should be countered by mass mobilisations of workers, youth, immigrants and the unemployed, with the aim of destroying the FN. To do this we need to build a mass anti-fascist united front of workers and youth that can counter the racist lies and help politically destroy the FN, as well as organise militant and accountable workers\u2019 defence squads to physically smash the FN.<\/p>\n
Since the last war, no mass fascist party has been able to take root in France. After ten years at the centre of French politics, the FN has prepared the ground for such an organisation. In the coming years a mass fascist party is possible. It is up to us to make sure that the possibility is not turned into reality.<\/p>\n
Endnotes<\/p>\n
1 Le Pen, Le Vrai. Dossiers du Canard Encha\u00een\u00e9. No 45, October 1992, p42.<\/p>\n
2 Quoted in Le Pen, Le Vrai, p73. The speech was delivered on 2 April 1989 at a meeting commemorating the fascists\u2019 victory in the Spanish Civil War.<\/p>\n
3 Ren\u00e9 Monzat, \u2018Politis\u2019, La Revue, 5, p96.<\/p>\n
4 Quoted by G. Bresson and C. Lionet, Le Pen (Seuil, 1994), p200<\/p>\n
5 This group withdrew from the FN in 1987, claiming Le Pen had become \u2018putty in the hands of the Zionists\u2019! (See Le Pen, Le Vrai, p41)<\/p>\n
6 Le Pen, Le Vrai, p40.<\/p>\n
7 P. Milza. Fascisme Fran\u00e7ais. Flammarion, 1987,p325.<\/p>\n
8 G. Birenbaum. Le Front National en Politique. Balland, 1992<\/p>\n
9 Quoted in Le Pen, Le Vrai , p.37.<\/p>\n
10 Some claim that the FN is in large measure the creation of the Socialist Party in general and Mitterrand in particular. See for example E Faux, T Legrand and G Perez, La Main droite de Dieu Seuil, 1994<\/p>\n
11 Faux, Legrand and Perez highlight Mitterrand\u2019s support for Le Pen and the way he put pressure on television stations to let Le Pen appear on the small screen.<\/p>\n
12 Today\u2019s MSI, anxious to prove itself as a respectable party, refuses to sit with the FN!<\/p>\n
13 E. Plenel and A. Rollat, La R\u00e9publique menac\u00e9e Le Monde Editions1992,p.368.<\/p>\n
14 Birenbaum, op cit p. 67.<\/p>\n
15 For further details, see Blandine Hennion, Le Front national, l\u2019argent et l\u2019establishment. La D\u00e9couverte, 1993.<\/p>\n
16 See Plenel and Rollat, op cit, for a critical discussion of the FN\u2019s involvement. The FN has the ear of some prison officers\u2019 and police associations. It does not appear to have made any inroads into the rest of the labour movement.<\/p>\n
17 Le Pen appears to have been inspired by the US Republican Party\u2019s 1984 convention. See Le Pen, Le Vrai, p73.<\/p>\n
18 J. Vander Velpen, Les Voil\u00e0 qui arrive EPO\/Reflex, 1993, p. 76.<\/p>\n
19 Quoted by Plenel and Rollat, op cit, p. 193.<\/p>\n
20 This is not to say that there was ever a Chinese wall between fascists and national monetarists inside the FN. Many were won to fascism after they joined.<\/p>\n
21 Birenbaum, p. 67.<\/p>\n
22 Ibid, p. 84.<\/p>\n
23 Point 7 of the \u2018Fundamental Principles\u2019, quoted by Birenbaum, op cit, p. 246.<\/p>\n
24 At the FN\u2019s 1991 Conference held in Nice, 39% of all delegates were long-time political activists. 22% had belonged to the Tixier-Vignancour Committees, 13% were ex-members of Occident or Ordre Nouveau and 8% had been in the PFN. Thus a large section of the membership base has a clear fascist past.<\/p>\n
25 The only candidate to take a seat was the late Yann Piat who left the FN a few months later.<\/p>\n
26 In the row that ensued, some non-fascist high-profile members saw their chance to sever ties with the FN, among them Yann Piat.<\/p>\n
27 Plenel and Rollat, p. 53.<\/p>\n
28 Le Pen wrote a sleeve-note for the record in which he claimed Hitler\u2019s movement \u201cwas popular and democratic at the end of the day\u201d. As a result, he was charged and convicted in 1971 with \u201capologising for war crimes\u201d. See Le Pen, Le Vrai, p52.<\/p>\n
29 Ibid.<\/p>\n
30 Birenbaum, op cit p.175.<\/p>\n
31 Vander Velpen, op cit p.77.<\/p>\n
32 Ibid.<\/p>\n
33 Ibid, p.79.<\/p>\n
34 Hennion, op cit p.103.<\/p>\n
35 Le Pen, Le Vrai, p. 95.<\/p>\n
36 Ibid.<\/p>\n
37 Le Monde, 27 May 1994.<\/p>\n
38 For an account of these, see Le Pen, Le Vrai.<\/p>\n
39 Plenel and Rollat, p.47. The FN\u2019s Member\u2019s Guide says that \u201ccommitted members must bear in mind that one day it may be necessary to use weapons.\u201d See Velpen, op cit p. 85.<\/p>\n
40 Le Monde, 3 September 1990<\/p>\n
41 Le Monde, 2 February 1994.<\/p>\n
42 Dubois is a former Gaullist-party member who now holds elected office on behalf of the FN. He believes that belonging to the French section of the SS \u201cmeans nothing\u201d.<\/p>\n
43 From 1991 Le Pen began appointing elements of both wings of the party to the leadership to fend off challenges. In fact this method only strengthened M\u00e9gret and those elements least committed to fascism. Lang, successor to Stirbois, is a case in point. Since becoming General Secretary he has altered the party machine by removing 29 consituency secretaries installed by Stirbois.<\/p>\n
44 The expulsion of Le Pen\u2019s adviser Saint-Affrique shows just how explosive the situation is. At the FN\u2019s 1994 summer school Saint-Affrique denounced the presence of fascists (in M\u00e9gret\u2019s entourage)! To the delight of the press he was immediately and publicly expelled by M\u00e9gret, with Le Pen\u2019s eventual approval<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The French Front National (FN) was founded in 1972 as a coalition of fascist tendencies. It grouped together Vichy collaborators, young thugs and a handful of non-party fascists, like Jean-Marie Le Pen, who had played minor roles in the post-war history of the French far-right. By 1980 the FN had only 270 members, of whom […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7724,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1],"tags":[104,15],"class_list":["post-3205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-uncategorized","tag-archive","tag-france"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7724"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3205"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7067,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3205\/revisions\/7067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}