The verdict is in. Everything changes so that nothing changes: who doubts today that an RN candidate will be in the second round of the 2027 presidential election? However, this suspended moment, when, for the first time in its history, the party presented two presidential candidates, must leave its mark. After eight presidential elections where the name “Le Pen” had been present, 2027 will not be an accident but built on the patient legacy of the two generations of Le Pen.
It is a sociological heritage, not a programmatic one. In 1984, when the FN emerged on the national scene, the party wanted to be “the true right” and its electorate was rather bourgeois. In 1995, unemployed workers and workers voted strongly for the FN, which, to align with its demands, declared itself “neither right nor left”. In the 2010s, the overvoting of the working classes ensured victories in the first round and, by being blocked in this segment, defeats in the second.
A proactive nationalist style
In 2022, Marine Le Pen is now campaigning, ensuring that she defends a “national, social and popular” project. This is the exact impression of her father in the 1970s, except that he used the word “right” where she said “project”. There is thus no economic doctrine: Jean-Marie Le Pen was able to pride himself on being the “French Reagan” and defend a “common European currency”, his daughter was able to move from sovereignist protectionism to accommodation to the European Union.
Plasticity is the first quality of lepenism: it is a heritage which is not preceded by any testament. The Jean-Marie Le Pen of the group era often repeated: “It is better to lose on your ideas than to win on those of others”. Was this betrayed? Not really: since the legislative campaign of 1978, the first subject of the FN/RN has been its opposition to immigration. He has always defended a Caesarist conception of power. These two points are constant and are the motivations of both its members and their voters.
The rapprochement with the money powers on a national scale, the compromises inherent to municipal powers, Jordan Bardella’s ostensible taste for “bling-bling”, perhaps put him at risk of losing part of his popular dimension. But to believe that this dimension is built on the economic program would be a mistake: for those concerned, national pride, the fight against immigration, and the promotion of an interclassist vision of the economy constitute popular markers. Lepenism is not a program with a string of points but a proactive nationalist style.
Submission to the presidency
Lepenism also has a partisan heritage. In the long run, it is undoubtedly the most incredible. In 1972, the name FN was taken from a nationalist platform of 1934, responsible for bringing together the various small groups of the time around a minimum program. It was a fiasco like a plethora of other attempts at nationalist unity over the decades. It is the historical particularity of the French extreme right to be divided into a myriad of small groups.
From 1984, the FN became its flagship. All trends had their representatives there, and Jean-Marie Le Pen as arbiter. The split experienced by the party in 1999, emptying it of its activists, executives and elected officials leaving with the splitter Bruno Mégret, had the effect of putting an end to this system. From then on, the FN operated on the principle of submission to its presidency, with absolute distrust of internal factions.
When the electoral situation improved, everyone could see that the loss of radical activists was more than compensated. The Le Pens may have been consistently underestimated: since the 1970s, there have been nationalists wanting to do “Lepenism without Le Pen”, convinced that it would be more effective. The latest were Florian Philippot and Éric Zemmour. The Le Pens were able to offer the French far right the permanence of a competitive party.
A fruitful void
Together, these two dimensions finally refer to the cultural dimension of the Lepenist heritage. Being far-right meant being part of a subculture – a small, closed environment to which one belongs through their knowledge of its rules and representations. We were Maurrassian, national-Catholic, fascist with Bucard tendencies, or Déat, etc. Until the split in 1999, the various groups and their theoreticians were presented to young activists during their summer universities.
Slowly but surely, Lepenism, this movement mocked by radicals for its lack of doctrine, devoured all space. It replaced all the chapels. The members of the New Right who looked down on him, some of whom followed Bruno Mégret then Éric Zemmour, found him culturally empty. But this void proved fruitful. Everyone was able to project into lepenism what they wanted. The best slogan of frontist propaganda remains that of the 1990s: “Le Pen Le Peuple”.
Sweeping away all subcultures, lepenism has been a political offer uniting voters around a partisan identity that is certainly minimal but effective. We generally place the Le Pens in the continuity of General Boulanger who, at the end of the 19th century, knew how to unite the discontented from all walks of life. The final legacy of Lepénism is to have taken the French far right out of its status as ephemeral flashes in the pan to make it a lasting and normalized offering within the right-wing market.
This content is blocked because you have not accepted cookies and other trackers.
I manage my choices I authorize
About opinions
This text is signed by a guest author. He expresses his opinion and not that of the editorial staff. Our Live section aims to allow the expression of pluralism on religious, social and current affairs subjects, and to encourage dialogue, according to the criteria set by our editorial charter.
Share your opinion in comments or by writing to us at: readers.lacroix@groupebayard.com
