If many people took to the streets on Saturday June 15 to shout “youth fuck the National Front” and “we love France, not R’Haine”, there were however much fewer than in 2002, when Jean-Marie Le Pen reached the second round of the presidential election. At the time, more than a million people took to the streets, disgusted by this qualification. On Saturday, there were only 640,000 across the country, according to the CGT, and only tens of thousands according to the authorities.
For some May 1, 2002 marchers, there was no question of demonstrating. Because they decided to vote for the extreme right. Jérôme, who responded to 20 minutes, estimate that “the era of Jean-Marie Le Pen is over”. If he notes the “provocations” and the “shocking” outings of the former president of the party who was convicted three times for negationism, he nevertheless defends him, believing that it was necessary “not to take everything at face value” and assures that his vision was “clairvoyant on immigration”.
The image of a party that “has changed”
At the polls, the demonization, trivialization, even normalization of the National Rally, which obtained its first parliamentary seats in 2012, is felt. “This party has changed, me too,” judges Sylvain who specifies that he was committed to the left like “all [s] “family”. From an unfrequented party, founded in particular by those nostalgic for French Algeria and former Nazis, the RN has become one of the greatest political forces in France. Two weeks before the first round of early legislative elections, the National Rally finds itself at the top of voting intentions, with around 30%.
Its image has smoothed out, despite the regular legal convictions of party executives and sympathizers. Thus, the former vice-president of the RN, Steeve Briois, must be tried this Tuesday with four other members and ex-members for “complicity in provoking discrimination”. The far-right mayor had published a Practical Guide which recommended his candidates to “defend the national priority, for example in the allocation of social housing”.
The vagueness of women’s rights
“The personality of Jean-Marie Le Pen, his excesses and his ideas were a repellent,” agrees Arnaud, who demonstrated against the National Front in 2002, in Paris. The teacher voted for Marion Maréchal, of the far-right Reconquest party, for the Europeans, “less out of conviction than to shake up the left,” he assures. He criticizes the “unforgivable cowardice” of the left which would have given up fighting against “political Islam” and regrets that the community of his wife, of Algerian origin, has “not forgiven him for his emancipation”.
The issue of women’s rights is often raised by the far right, but the party’s votes are much more nuanced than the figure of Marine Le Pen, leader of the political family since her father’s withdrawal, suggests. Thus, in April, European RN deputies abstained on the introduction of the right to abortion in the European Charter of Fundamental Rights. In 2021, they voted against a resolution condemning Poland which almost completely banned abortion or against a resolution providing training against sexual harassment within the institutions of the European Union.
From insecurity to attacks
More than women’s rights, many new sympathizers of the far right are focusing on jihadist attacks. Arnaud mentions that of Mohammed Merah, who notably murdered children from a Jewish school in Toulouse, and those of November 13. Myriam, who had “before, always been in the PS” also talks about the attacks. For her, “since 2015, something has happened”. Among those who responded to 20 minutes, many suffer from insecurity, one of the RN’s mainstays along with immigration. Sylvain thus claims to have been attacked “six times in ten years”, systematically by “migrants”. “I want the return of order, if it goes through the RN, then it goes through the RN,” he insists.
Laurent, “gay activist in [s] “youth”, believes that it is “easy to be left-wing and full of good intentions in an upscale neighborhood”. “Insults, burglaries, thefts…” He would have suffered from living in a neighborhood where he claims to have “always had problems with the same populations”. “I prefer “fascists” in power and being able to walk around in the evening in safety, with borders, sorting of immigration and “refugees”,” he says. A thought far removed from the momentum of May 1, 2002…