This is not the first time that a competitor – Éric Zemmour today, Bruno Mégret yesterday – has broken his teeth trying to seize the ideological business of the Le Pen family. If the political organization often crosses difficult passes on the electoral and financial plan, the ideas lepéniennes continue to be attractive near a part of the French voters. Beyond the French specificities explaining this persistence, some fundamental dimensions hold the attention of those who observe the evolutions of the western radical right.
First, the strategy of stigmatization which consists in denouncing the frontists and the marinists as a den of neo-fascists no longer really works. This strategy of the blockade has so far prevented the Le Pens from reaching power, but it contributes, paradoxically, to making this movement “the center of gravity” of French politics, in the words of Marine Le Pen (The world, July 12, 2013). Boasting aside, that statement was pretty on point. The traditional right also knows something about it, which now finds itself atomized like the left. The denunciation ends up somehow strengthening the determination of some of the voters.
We must also dwell on the “de-demonization” of the marinist movement, which intrigues observers, because it is a complex process and, above all, has ancient roots. There is a lot of talk, and rightly so, about the major corrective measures taken by Marine Le Pen since 2017. For the 2022 presidential election, she continued the political softening business by abandoning the idea of leaving the euro. But the idea of making changes to the ideological software is older. For example, The world of December 15, 2006 already headlined that the “new style of [Jean-Marie] Le Pen” collected a quarter of support from the French.
At that time, it was Marine Le Pen, then vice-president of the National Front, who was trying to convince her father to adopt a new image and to tone down the theme of national preference, which was less successful than that of defense of traditional values. By looking at the Le Pen phenomenon over several decades, we can see the extent of the changes.
new dominance
Thus, in the 1980s, Jean-Marie Le Pen proposed a neoliberal approach rooted in the spirit of the times when he denounced, in The French first (1984), the “death trap of the welfare state”. Over the course of the presidential elections, this anti-state dimension has been relegated to second place in favor of an approach based on social protection measures and economic nationalism. Admittedly, the current program continues to insist on the preservation of the sovereign functions of the State. However, a recent study conducted by the specialist Gilles Ivaldi (CEVIPOF, March 25, 2022) shows that “crisis social-populism” which proposes redistribution measures now dominates in the economic program of the candidate of the National Rally. This is what makes it possible to offer a voice to those fearing social downgrading and the erosion of purchasing power.
At the same time, the changes are accompanied by ideological continuities. Thus, in her speech last Sunday, Marine Le Pen insisted on “the millennial idea of nation and people”. However, this is what corresponds to the nationalist conception of the French radical right, in particular of the Catholic fundamentalists – to which it is nevertheless hardly close -, for whom the French nation is part of long history, that is to say well before the France of the Enlightenment and 1789.
Similarly, immigration policy is still seen through a negative prism. For example, in the current program, we denounce the “submersion” of the French population, an expression also used in the past by Jean-Marie Le Pen (The world, January 22, 2007). Better to speak of “submersion”, a term less repulsive than the expression of “great replacement” which is connoted pure juice of the extreme right. Marine Le Pen thus left Éric Zemmour the vocabulary associated with right-wing radicalism.
This mixture of change and continuity makes it possible to understand that Marine Le Pen’s electoral results are neither accidental nor fatal. They are the culmination of substantive work begun a long time ago, which accelerated after the defeat in the second round of the 2017 presidential election. We would therefore do well not to underestimate the adaptability of the right extreme.