“Duration is a guarantee of seriousness, it is considered as such for wines”, smiles Jean-Marie Le Pen, who draws with difficulty from his memories to evoke the beginnings of the National Front. A few days away from 50 years of the creation of the FN, on October 5, 1972, the former president of the far-right party receives in the living room of his house in Rueil-Malmaison (Hauts-de-Seine). Surrounded by his two Dobermans, his wife Jany and his adviser Lorrain de Saint-Affrique, he is surprised to find that the National Rally does not intend to associate him with this anniversary.
“It seems to me so absurd to want to forget Jean-Marie Le Pen in the history of the FN.”
Jean Marie Le Penat franceinfo
At 94, the “Menhir” still has all its head, even if it eludes certain questions and prefers to entrust the past of the FN to historians. He chose to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of his creation at a party organized on October 22 in his mansion in Montretout, in Saint-Cloud (Hauts-de-Seine), in the presence of around forty handpicked guests. For its part, a sign of a certain embarrassment, the National Rally is organizing a simple symposium at the National Assembly as a commemoration on Thursday 6 October, without inviting Jean-Marie Le Pen. Why such embarrassment? Diving into the archives on October 5, 1972 and the beginnings of the RN.
The story begins in the early 1970s, with Ordre nouveau, a movement of young neo-fascists who advocated violent actions to spread their ideas. Founded in 1969, the group drags a sulphurous image and decided in 1972 to change strategy. Its leaders seek to structure themselves in view of the legislative elections of 1973 and to unite behind the same banner the scattered small groups of the extreme right. “Francois Duprat [l’un des cadres d’Ordre nouveau] go see Giorgio Almirante [le patron du MSI, un parti néofasciste italien]who advises him to practice ‘a smiling fascism'”reports historian Nicolas Lebourg to franceinfo.
“François Duprat then began to apply this strategy [du fascisme souriant]saying to ourselves: ‘We must drape ourselves in tricolor and sing the Marseillaise’.”
Nicolas Lebourg, historianat franceinfo
The leaders of the New Order then seek a leader to lead a unifying movement. They turn first to the essayist Dominique Venner and to Jean-Jacques Susini, former head of the Secret Army Organization (OAS), a pro-French Algerian terrorist group. But the two men refuse, tell Nicolas Lebourg and Joseph Beauregard in a biography of François Duprat (The man who invented the National FrontDenoel, 2012).
Journalist François Brigneau, notably a columnist at Minute and member of New Order, then slips the name of Jean-Marie Le Pen. The latter made a name for himself by being elected Poujadist deputy at the age of 27 in 1956, then as campaign manager for Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour during the presidential campaign of 1965. “In 1972, I had retired for a while from public life, when François Brigneau came to get me, remembers Jean-Marie Le Pen. I devoted myself to creating my livelihood at the time, the Serp, a publishing house.”
“They were barely hiding from looking in me for a parliamentarian who would be their respectable showcase and whom they would manipulate at will.”
Jean Marie Le Penin his memoirs (Fils de la nation, Muller editions, 2018)
Jean-Marie Le Pen accepts the proposal, but dictates his rules. “The New Order leaders had not anticipated that he would not be a straw representative. He directly imposed his conditions”, says historian Valérie Igounet. The future frontist leader weaves his networks and quickly takes the initiative of a meeting to launch the FN on October 5, without telling Ordre Nouveau. Despite the unitary will, tensions appeared from the start between the former deputy and the nationalist movement.
On the evening of October 5, about 70 people, according to historian Nicolas Lebourg, gathered at the Salle des Horticulteurs in Paris, during a private meeting. “We are between 100 and 200believes for his part the former FN deputy Christian Baeckeroot, present that day. There are divergent opinions, between those who are optimistic and those who do not believe in it. I believe that in the gallery, we find Jean-Marie Le Pen, François Brigneau, Alain Robert, perhaps François Duprat and Roger Holeindre…” The full name of the party was then National Front for French Unity, and it remained in the statutes until 1995.
When it was created, the FN was made up of three heterogeneous political tendencies. First, the national-populist family, carried by Jean-Marie Le Pen, is marked by the battles of its time, in the wake of the decolonization movement and the events of May-68. “All this is done in the wake of French Algeria”recalls Christian Baeckeroot. “Communism appeared as a threat, including on the military leveladds Jean-Marie Le Pen. For a few decades, a crushing military invasion by the Red Army was expected.”
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Then, the party integrates New Order and its reactionary program which wishes, once in power, the abolition of political parties, trade unions and even elections. One of the directors, François Duprat, is also known to have “imported Holocaust denial within the FN”recalls Valérie Igounet.
Finally, the party brings together one last component: those nostalgic for the Second World War. This is the case of collaborationists like Pierre Bousquet, Waffen SS within the Charlemagne division, and former Petainist militiamen like François Brigneau or Léon Gaultier.
The FN also tries to rally to him companions of the Liberation, like Georges Bidault. But the former boss of the National Council of Resistance (CNR) decided to leave the adventure in the same week of the official creation of the FN. “To make the party more popular, Jean-Marie Le Pen and the main FN cadres say that many resistance fighters had joined their ranks, but the latter in fact decided to quickly defect”confirms Nicolas Lebourg.
During the first political office of the FN organized on October 12, 1972, several figures of the extreme right of these three tendencies are around the table. François Brigneau is chosen as vice-president. Pierre Bousquet is propelled to the position of treasurer. The editor of the newspaper Activist will also officially file the statutes of the new party in the prefecture, with Jean-Marie Le Pen.
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On the sulphurous past of Pierre Bousquet, the former president of the FN today prefers to kick in touch. “We were thirty or forty years away from the war and, consequently, the options that people who were 60 had been able to take at 20 were not the main criteria.he explains today. The affairs of Algeria were closer than those of the Second World War.”
“Monsieur Bousquet had no sulphurous stories, for the good reason that he had no stories.”
Jean Marie Le Penat franceinfo
In the first organization chart also appears Alain Robert, main leader of the defunct far-right movement Occident, as secretary general of the FN. The post of Deputy Secretary General of the party was entrusted to Roger Holeindre, a former member of the OAS.
Behind men, there are ideas. From its creation, the National Front displayed an assumed link with the Italian neo-fascist party MSI. “There is no ideological filiation, but we put forward the defense of identical themes, such as immigration, insecurity, unemployment”says Jean-Marie Le Pen. “The link with the MSI is strategic”, adds Nicolas Lebourg. On the first poster printed by the FN in 1972, the slogan “With us, before it’s too late” is translated directly from Italian.
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The tricolor flame that the National Rally still uses fifty years later is also inspired by the MSI logo and its flame in the colors of the transalpine flag. “However, it is certain that Jean-Marie Le Pen was never a fascist”says Nicolas Lebourg.
“He has never been connected to violent actions, unlike the MSI. Jean-Marie Le Pen is a legalist.”
Nicolas Lebourg, historianat franceinfo
Over time, the president of the FN will establish himself as the undisputed leader of the nationalist right. Ordre nouveau continues to exist outside the FN, but its dissolution by the Ministry of the Interior in 1973 after several violent actions (82 street fights reported by the Place Beauvau just for the year 1973, according to Nicolas Lebourg) will a decisive element in the hegemony of Jean-Marie Le Pen. The “Menhir” also takes advantage of his oratorical talents. “It’s true that my personality may have played a role. The FN was above all a Lepenist movement. The leaders of the other movements were less well known”he says today.
Despite its participation in all the elections from 1974, the FN will experience more than ten years of crossing the desert. Less than 1% of the vote during the 1973 presidential election, 1.3% during the legislative elections the same year… With less than 300 members in 1981, the party was in great financial difficulty. “At the time, they were sometimes obliged to cut off the electricity at the party headquarters and to light themselves with candles”reports Valérie Igounet.
But with the arrival of the left in power that year and the economic crisis, the far-right party will manage to anchor itself in the political landscape, until its qualification in the second round of the presidential election in 2002. “I had warned, when they came to pick me up, that I would not stop, recalls Jean-Marie Le Pen. I said at the time that I wanted to take the initiative in rallying the national right, but on condition that I never withdraw.” The withdrawal will finally take place in 2015, when Marine Le Pen will exclude her father from the party. A way to draw a line under part of the history of the National Front.