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This article is about the French political party, not the WWII French resistance movement Front National.

The National Front (FN, Template:Lang-fr) is a French political party, founded in 1972 by Jean-Marie Le Pen. Although the party describes itself as a "mainstream right" organization, observers in the media and some scholars depict the party as "far right" and even, in some cases, as "racist" and "anti-semitic."

The FN claims to have 60,000 members. In the 2002 presidential race Front National candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen finished second to Jacques Chirac in a runoff election.

Leadership

Jean-Marie Le Pen has led the party since its foundation. Other major members are:

• Bruno Gollnisch, general delegate of the Front National
• Carl Lang, general secretary

Other prominent members include:

• Marine Le Pen, Jean-Marie's daughter, who ran an unsuccessful campaign in the 2002 regional elections in the Île-de-France région

Occasionally, Le Pen's leadership has been questioned. In a widely publicized move, Bruno Mégret and other major National Front members split away in 1998 to form a new party, the National Republican Movement (Mouvement National Républicain - MNR), alleging that Le Pen's provocative comments and his management style were limiting the National Front to being a marginal opposition party, without any possibility of gaining power . This led to a major purge and reorganization of the leadership of the Front National.

Political platform

The Front National posts a comprehensive political platform on its website. Amongst other things it argues for:-

• a return to more traditional values: to include making access to abortion more difficult or illegal; paying women to stay at home and raise children; refusing "aberrant" cultures such as modern art and gay culture; promoting certain local traditional culture
• compulsory military service
• greater independence from the European Union and other international organizations
• the establishment of tariffs or other protectionist measures against cheap imports
• death penalty

More famously perhaps the party opposes immigration, particularly Muslim immigration from North Africa/West Africa and the Middle East. In a standardized pamphlet delivered to all French electors in the 1995 presidential election, Jean-Marie Le Pen proposed the "sending back" of "three million non-Europeans" out of France, by "humane and dignified means".

However, in the campaign for the 2002 French presidential election, the stress was more on issues of law and order – one of the recurrent themes of the National Front is tougher law enforcement and higher sentences for crimes, and the reinstatement of the death penalty.

Elsewhere the Front National regularly campaigns against the "establishment", which encompasses the other political parties as well as most journalists. Le Pen lumped all major parties (French Communist Party (PCF), French Socialist Party (PS), Union for French Democracy (UDF), Rally for the Republic (RPR)) into the "Gang of Four" (an allusion to China's "Cultural Revolution"). According to National Front, the French right-wing parties are not true right-wing parties, and are almost indistinguishable from the "Socialo-Communist" left; the corrupt "establishment" is betraying France, and it opposes by all means the coming of the Front.

The FN is qualified by political scientist Pierre-André Taguieff as "national-populism". In 1988, René Rémond took the same epithet and spoke of a "resurgence of populism" (Notre siècle, 1988). René Rémond considers that the FN is the main representant of the far-right family in France, which blames others to have taken side with the left-wing (la bande des quatre). However, René Rémond thinks that the FN has accepted the inheritance of the 1789 Revolution, which is disputed by Michel Winock and Pascal Perrineau (Histoire de l'extrême droite en France). Michel Winock defines the FN as the conjunction of all far-right French traditions: the counter-revolutionaries, the pétainistes (collaborationists under Vichy France), fascists and members of the OAS terrorist group. Winock underscores Le Pen's statements against the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen and therefore his opposition to the French Revolution. On the other hand, Pierre Milza and Guy Antonetti refuse to class it as fascist party, while Michel Dobry defines it as a party with fascist tendencies. Robert Paxton considers that fascist ideology may come back under the guises of the FN.

History

The FN was born out of the second congress of the Ordre nouveau (New Order) far right movement on June 10-11, 1972, when it was decided to create this structure to participate in the 1973 legislative elections. The party was created on October 5, 1972, under the name of Front national pour l'unité française (National Front for French Unity), called Front National. Jean-Marie Le Pen became its first and only president until this day, while François Brigneau, Roger Holeindre and Jean-Pierre Stirbois formed the Bureau national (National Office).

The party didn't make any relevant electoral scores until the beginning of the 1980s, in part because of competition from the Parti des forces nouvelles. In 1982, Jean-Pierre Stirbois gain one of the first victory of Le Pen's party, scoring 12,6% in Dreux. During the June 17, 1984 European elections, the party obtained 10 deputies, its largest score until now. The FN then gained 35 seats after the March 16, 1986 elections, taking advantage of the new proportional ballot.

Bruno Mégret became the general secretary of the FN in 1988, overshading Jean-Pierre Stirbois, whom accidentally died the same year. Carl Lang or Bruno Gollnisch were then called by Mégret at the party's head. Royalists such as Michel de Rostolan, Thibault de la Tocnaye or Olivier d'Ormesson join the FN in the 1980s, recognizing in it a continuity of the Action Française royalist movement.

In 1998, young Comorian Ibrahim Ali, 17 years old, was shot dead by three FN billstickers (15 years, 10 years and 2 years of prison for the group) .

In December 1998, Bruno Mégret, then number 2 of the FN, quit the party to found what would become the MNR.

Bruno Gollnisch, professor of Chinese at Lyon III university, is suspended for five years on charge of historical revisionist discourses held on October 11, 2005. On January 7, 2005, Jean-Marie Le Pen declares in far-right newspaper Rivarol that the German's occupation wasn't so inhuman.

Besides the MNR, the FN must also guards itself against Philippe de Villiers' MPF, which shares similar ideas and has seen several former FN members join it, among whom Jacques Bompard, mayor of Orange.

Electoral successes

Municipalities

The Front National (FN) has been elected in several municipalities, typically where there is unemployment and tension between local people and immigrants. The party has tended to cut back on social services for immigrants as well as cultural activities deemed "anti-family" or "multicultural." Spending has been redirected to the municipal police and other services.

One of the party's earliest successes came in the city of Dreux, when in 1983 they won the city council and deputy mayorship, amid rising unemployment and ethnic tensions. In Orange the Front National reduced school spending by 50%. In Vitrolles 150 civil employees were fired, while the police force was expanded from 34 to 70 officers. During the election campaign, members of the Department of Protection-Security (DPS) shot and killed 17-year old Ibrahim Ali. In Vitrolles, the party sought to give 500 euros to the families of each French baby born, but was unable to do so for constitutional reasons. In Vitrolles the director of the cinema was fired because he had shown a movie about homosexuality and AIDS.

The FN has made some electoral alliances with other right-wing parties between 1977 and 1992. The RPR condemned them in September 1988, as did the Parti républicain latter do in 1991. Regional alliances (Charles Millon) were then sometimes passed.

2002 presidential election

In the 2002 presidential election many commentators were shocked when Jean-Marie Le Pen gained the second highest number of votes, and thus entered the second voting round. Almost all had expected the second ballot to be between Jacques Chirac and Lionel Jospin. This result came after the election campaign had increasingly focused on law and order issues, with some particularly striking cases of juvenile delinquency catching the attention of the media, and low voter turnout. Furthermore, Jospin had been weakened by multiple candidacies from his own political block. The election brought the two round voting system into question as well as raising concerns about apathy and the way in which the left had become so divided. After huge demonstrations against the FN, Chirac went on to win the presidency in an overwhelming landslide (83%), aided by ubiquitous support in the media and academia, while Le Pen's constituency was either ridiculed or ignored by the French press. Even Jospin himself urged voters to choose "the lesser of two evils". The day of the election, France's most popular national newspaper, Le Monde, featured a front page article entitled "Chirac, bien sûr" ("Chirac, of course").

European issues

The Front National was also one of several parties that backed France's 2005 rejection of the treaty for a European Constitution. In Le Pen's opinion, France should not join any organization that could overrule its own national decisions. The FN is the leading member of Euronat, which gathers the most radical "euronationalist" parties. In the European Parliament, it is part of the non-inscrits parties.

Elections

See also

• Islam in France

References

1. http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2000/eurounion/story/haider
2. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1969847.stm
3. http://www.adl.org/international/le-pen_new.asp
4. http://www.tau.ac.il/Anti-Semitism/asw97-8/france.html
5. http://www.frontnational.com/lefn_organigrammes_adherents.php
6. http://www.bruno-megret.com/article.php3?cat=10&id=358
7. http://www.irr.org.uk/europebulletin/france/extreme_right_politics/1995/ak000006.html
8. Mouloud Aounit: "No to 'ordinary racism'" (president of the MRAP — Movement Against Racism and For Frienship Between Peoples), in L'Humanité, May 21, 1998
9. Enfin des excuses aux parents d'Ibrahim Ali, in L'Humanité, June 19, 1998

External links

• Front National homepage
• The Guardian: The true face of the National Front
• 1995 presidential election
• Brookings Institution analysis of anti-Semitic violence in France and the rise of Front National
• University of Sunderland analysis of Front National, published 1998
• BBC News report of the party split in 1999
• FYI France, "The Front National" (extensive bibliography, works in English & French & other)

• 1972 establishments
• Far right political parties in France
• French nationalist parties
• French National Front
• Euronat members