Amer El-Ibrahim
September
The rise of the extreme right in Europe is a subject that is ubiquitous in today’s conversations. We only think of its present popularity when it comes to our minds, but what about its history and its implication in today’s affairs? The results of the recent elections in France have made it clear that the right is now a force to be reckoned with, but was it always like this?
First of all, the notions of the political “left” and “right” stem from the French Revolution, when, in the former National Assembly, people who were loyal to the crown sat on the right, while people who supported the revolution sat on the left. The right came to be recognised as wanting order above progress, supporting traditional institutions such as the family and the church and usually enforcing a strict social hierarchy. Meanwhile, the left was seen as being the exact opposite of the right, wanting change and reforms, from the political to the religious and social spheres.
However, the extreme right in France did not appear until much later, tracing its origins back to the period of The Third Republic, when the country suffered terrible financial and territorial losses as a result of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. In times of despair and crises such as the defeat in front of the Germans, a hurt national sentiment is as likely an outcome as is hunger and alienation. This was observed when the victorious party took Lorraine and Alsace; people became polarized and were pushed to one political spectrum or the other. The Dreyfus Affair of 1894, when a Jewish officer named Alfred Dreyfus was accused of treason on false chargers much motivated by his ethnicity, crystallized the extreme right as a force.
Until this event, French nationalism was seen as a part of the left, specifically as liberal nationalism, but during this affair nationalism was integrated into the far-right sphere, evolving into ethnic nationalism and blending with xenophobia and anti-Semitism. An important figure of the right was Charles Maurras, founder of integralism—a concept which stipulated that Catholic thought should be at the core of the state—who joined the small monarchist Action Francaise in 1898 He was the spiritual architect of this party and transformed it into a beacon of the extreme right by postulating his idea of integralism and by embedding in it a nationalism that bordered on xenophobia,anti-Semitism, anti-parliamentarian views and hatred towards the Republic. The Action Francaise was a forerunner of the right in France and the most relevant extreme right party that resulted from the Dreyfus affair. Its popularity reached its height during the interwar period when a number of extreme right parties made their appearance, prompted by the general rise of fascism in neighboring Germany and Italy. One of them was the Jeunesses Patriotes, founded by the multi-millionaire Taittinger. Another one was the Croix-de-Feu, originally an association for veterans decorated with the “fire-cross”, became nationalist and anti-parliamentary leanings during the leadership of Colonel La Rocque. However, both failed as parties mainly because of the lack of revolutionary spirit, being the armed hand of the bourgeois order rather than projecting a new one.
The Faisceau was the first movement that was inspired by the Italian fascist party. The party was founded by Maurras’s former right hand, George Valois, who developed a strong leaning towards fascism, along with anti-bourgeois and prone to violent stances. Valois’s inflammatory rhetoric soon isolated the party and threw it into anonymity. The last generation of the right-extremists of the interwar period developed at the end of the thirties and is characterized by Jack Doriot’s Parti Populaire Francais (PPF) and Marcel Deat’s Rassemblement National Populaire. These parties were different from the others of their sort because the national question was not the founding basis of the parties, the social part and the idea of a new corporatist society being their main preoccupations. Additionally, their short-lived success was due to the fact that both leaders were affiliated in the past with left-wing organizations, subsequently rallying the working class into their movement.
Nonetheless, the variety of the extreme right during the interwar period does not prove a propensity of people towards this spectrum, rather it showcases the generally anti-democratic values and attitudes of the citizens as anti-parliamentarism was very popular throughout the period. Although the right press and the ideas it diffused were widely popular, the parties’ electoral fortunes dwindled, so they were not able to take power.
However, the establishment of the Vichy regime led by Marshal Petain after the May defeat in 1940 was the synthesis of varied branches of the extreme right, from Maurassians to fascists, which did not express themselves in plenitude during the 1930s. The main philosophy of this regime could be summed up by the triad “work, family, country” and it consisted of accentuated nationalism, the refusal of individualism and egalitarianism, as well as the search for national unity, the rejection of cultural freedom and an anti-intellectual sentiment. Nevertheless, this regime was not just a regular puppet state controlled by the Germans, rather it was a long-awaited opportunity to implement a national revolution that would cleanse France of the decay that parliamentarism had brought.
In the years following the war, the extreme right had to deal with the legacy the Vichy regime left, which was not favorable to them. The most important extreme right movement of the Fourth Republic was the Jeune Nation, which was the first organization that branded itself as neo-fascist. Its success can be traced to the fact that it purified itself of Petainiste views, but it was limited mostly to students rather than the masses and was dissolved by the authorities in 1958 for agitation for violent actions. The transition to the Fifth Republic and the Gaullist regime stifled the extreme right even more, which would plunge into marginality for the next 20 years.
Born from the student revolts of May 1968, the Ordre Nouveau (ON) was the major extreme right organization in the 70s. It emphasized anti-communism and anti-immigration, contesting initially the electoral system, but later creating a legitimate political party that ran for elections called the Front National (FN). The movement exploited the nostalgia for the Vichy Regime embodied by Catholic fundamentalists, integralists and other remnants of interwar extreme-right parties. The spirit of the party was concentrated on anti-communism, nationalism, anti-immigration, a strong state and defense of traditional values. Jean Marie Le Pen, founder of the party and its leader until 2011, opposed the fascist leanings of the ON members of the party and emphasized the need for the party to remain legal. This conflict inside the party resulted in the ON leaving, thus offering space for other closeted right extremists. Other parties resulted from this split, but they remained completely marginal.
From the 1970s to the present times, the FN remained the main extreme right force in France. Its first breakthrough happened in 1983 and after this point, its popularity only grew, but the party never exceeded the 20 percent mark in elections until 2012, when the leadership was moved to Le Pen’s daughter, Marie Le Pen.
What one can gather from all of this is that the extreme right was never a force to be reckoned with in the history of France and only in the last decade did it become an actual threat to democracy and the well-being of the state. There are resemblances from the past to today’s situation, especially to the interwar period when such tendencies had an important sway. By focusing mainly on what happened in the last century, I wanted to highlight that such movements leaning towards the extreme right are something recurrent and that the danger of them taking power has always existed. The only difference is that this year they almost won. However, similar to the interwar period, their newfound popularity seems to stem from discontent regarding the current government and state of affairs, and not from an actual conviction in what they postulate. But this remains only an impression and should be regarded with doubt.