France | The National Rally, a party of young people for young people

Forget the party of old, graying “fascists”. In France, the National Rally (RN) is attracting more than ever the new generation, whether they are activists or voters.

The results of the first round of early legislative elections last Sunday bear witness to this.

According to various polls*, between 23% and 33% of voters aged 18-24 voted for Marine Le Pen’s National Rally. This is less than the 40% who opted for the New Popular Front (left-wing bloc), but much more than the 14% who chose the RN in the 2022 legislative elections.

Social networks partly explain this increase. The RN has invested brilliantly in digital platforms, starting with its young president Jordan Bardella, 28, who has become a “king” of Instagram and, above all, TikTok, where he has 1.9 million subscribers and whose videos sometimes obtain more than 3 million views. These two networks are cited by 56% of young people as their main source of information, according to a survey by the newspaper The world.

The videos of “Jordan”, which focus very little on the party’s program, show him in the middle of a speech, preparing backstage, eating sweets, drinking drinks in a market or taking off his jacket to cries of admiration, revealing his eternal immaculate white shirts.

Very visual clips, where his advantageous physique is highlighted, as if he were a movie star.

According to The worldthe young people who follow him on the platforms find him “impactful, a very good speaker, friendly”, some even see him as the “ideal son-in-law”, from the middle class, as the “spokesperson for their generation”.

“He is a man of his time,” sums up Pierre-Stéphane Fort, author of Great replacementa long investigation into Jordan Bardella. “He grew up on social networks. He bases all his communication on that. He knows and handles all the codes of social networks very well. Humor, derision.”

This approach, which plays on proximity, makes his audience follow and understand him.

He enters the lives of young people, makes jokes on them. They feel like he is their friend… He is a political influencer, in fact.

Pierre-Stéphane Fort

We are decidedly far from the time when Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the party, terrorized television sets with his pirate eye and his horrifying remarks on the Shoah – this “detail of History” –, surrounded by old “reacs” nostalgic for French Algeria or former collaborators of the Third Republic^e Reich.

Renamed the National Rally, the former National Front has become a respectable party and, above all, attractive to young people, who see it as a choice alternative in a France that seems to have lost its bearings.

Convergence of the lines

This is true for voters, it is also true for party officials. In their book The far right, new generationthe journalist of The Express Marylou Magal and the journalist from Release Nicolas Massol tells how the party regenerated itself from the inside, to become a political machine as attractive as its TikTok president.

“With Marine Le Pen came the whole new generation,” Nicolas Massol sums up. “When she took over the party in 2011, she made the folkloric far right disappear, started talking about purchasing power, Europe, subjects closer to current concerns. At the same time, she did a real job of de-demonizing, abandoning several markers of her father, erasing anti-Semitic discourse and absorbing notions like same-sex marriage and voluntary termination of pregnancy…”

Many young people, like Jordan Bardella, will adhere to this renewed discourse and see in the National Front (which became the National Rally in 2018) the ideal family for their convictions and political ambitions. They come from Catholic families, from traditionalist, sovereignist backgrounds – in favor of a France more free from the European Union. They have studied, like order and dress well. They are no longer marginalized.

By their image, by the fact that they no longer have tattoos and shaved heads, they can mingle with other circles. They are the ones who will normalize the image of the RN.

Nicolas Massol, journalist from Release and co-author of The far right, new generation

This “new generation far right” is not limited to the RN, the journalist specifies. It also exists in the Reconquête party, founded by the former journalist Éric Zemmour, and even in the right wing of the Les Républicains party, whose president, Éric Ciotti, has just joined Le Pen. Its name is Jordan Bardella, but also Sarah Knafo (Zemmour’s partner), Marion Maréchal (Marine Le Pen’s niece), Geoffroy Lejeune, Stanislas Rigault, Pierre Gentillet and Pierre-Romain Thionnet.

In their book, the two journalists explain that these young executives, regardless of their affiliation, have been meeting for years at parties, bars and trendy nightclubs, to exchange and fantasize about their ideal France. According to them, these informal meetings have gradually contributed to the disappearance of the famous “sanitary cordon” which until now prohibited any link with the RN… thus promoting a certain form of convergence.

“We believe that the day has come when all the right-wing parties come together,” Nicolas Massol sums up.

What do they have in common? An “identity” vision and the fear of the “great replacement”, a theory according to which native French people will one day be a minority in France, faced with immigrants, mainly Muslims.

According to them, the role of politics is to defend the ethnoracial identity of France. They imagine that this France is prey to invaders from another civilization that is fundamentally hostile to European civilization and that must be fought because otherwise, we will die.

Nicolas Massol, journalist from Release and co-author of The far right, new generation

An existential fear, which translates into a controversial program at the RN. If it takes power, the party promises to abolish the right of the soil (no systematic French nationality if you are born in France to foreign parents), to give “national preference” (priority to French people for certain services, including access to social housing) and to prohibit dual nationals from “sensitive” jobs in the civil service.

Enough to create a lot of turmoil in the France of tomorrow.

* Ipsos and Harris Interactive

The great replacement

Pierre-Stéphane Fort

Studiofact Editions

240 pages

The far right, new generation

Marylou Magal and Nicolas Massol

Of Christmas

265 pages