By Sam Wainwright
PARIS — With the National Front (FN) registering up to 20% in polls and in control of four local councils, its leader Jean-Marie Le Pen recently boasted, "We have become a movement to be reckoned with, not just in France, but on the international scale as well, where we are like the older brother to all the patriotic and nationalist parties".
French fascism is not on the verge of taking power. Nevertheless, it has already left a huge mark on French society. What does this organisation really stand for, and why has it grown in influence?
The FN was founded in 1973 by members of a small right-wing group called New Order. For most of the 1970s, it remained insignificant, with only a few hundred members. In 1973 it received 1.32% of the national vote, and presidential candidate Le Pen picked up only 0.74%. Its only advance was its absorption of some smaller neo-Nazi groups.
The FN's breakthrough came in the late 1970s, when it shifted the focus of its propaganda from anticommunism to anti-immigrant scapegoating. Its 1978 election slogan was, "One million unemployed means one million too many migrants".
Migrants are blamed for all of society's social and economic woes. The FN calls for all migrants (including those with French citizenship) to be deported immediately. By the early 1980s, it was polling up to 10% in some council elections.
Why did migrant bashing prove such a winner? Much like Australia, since the late 1970s, French governments have pursued privatisation, cuts to social spending and reduction of workers' wages and conditions. The resulting economic insecurity, social dislocation and anxiety have nurtured the FN.
For most of the 1980s these policies were being introduced by a Socialist Party (PS) government. Both the traditional conservative and "left" parties inflicted the same painful policies on working people. Even the large and influential Communist Party was tarnished by its failure to put up a fight against these measures, particularly when it participated for a time in the PS government.
In this context, the FN presents itself as "the only alternative to left and right".
The traditional parties also open the door to the FN by giving credibility to the "immigration problem" myth. Anxious to deflect popular anger at their policies, they have been all too willing to fix the blame on migrants. While they pretend to distance themselves from the violently anti-migrant policies of the FN, their own policies become ever more extreme in an attempt to stop their support leaking to Le Pen's party.
The whole outlook of the FN is framed by a fanatical nationalism, of which racism forms an important component. "French identity" is presented as besieged by immigration, multiculturalism and "globalisation".
In the words of second in command Bruno Megret, "We must come together again, proud in the knowledge of our civilisation's superiority". The FN's leaders are quite relaxed about inciting racial and ethnic hatred, such as recent statements about "stinking migrants" or Le Pen's confirmation on US television that he regarded the Jewish holocaust as a "detail of history".
The French government is struggling to impose even more cuts to social spending, as required by the Maastricht Treaty. These measures are very unpopular and have met some fierce resistance.
By opposing the Maastricht Treaty, along with its demagogic condemnation of "globalisation", "American influence" and "unpatriotic" bosses who move their factories to countries with lower wages, the FN creates an aura of being radical, anti-system and on the side of working people.
This sort of talk has succeeded in seducing some sections of the white work force. In the 1995 presidential elections 27% of workers, 28% of the unemployed and 19% of employers voted for Le Pen.
In the tradition of fascist movements, the FN presents workers and bosses as having a common interest in building a great and powerful France that will bring wealth to them both.
Megret says: "Workplaces should no longer be viewed according to the Marxist schema as a place of confrontation between workers and bosses".
For the FN, trade unions are an obstacle to the creation of a "loyal partnership" between workers and bosses. Consequently, it proposes banning strikes in a number of sectors and giving bosses the right to reclaim the wages of workers who take industrial action.
The FN is heavily influenced by and implanted within conservative Catholic fundamentalism. In the last few years, the capitalist media and politicians have cultivated a "back to morals" crusade, which the FN has helped to propel and also profited from.
For the FN, a "real French" person is white and Catholic. In the towns it controls, it often patronises and promotes the church, overturning the separation of church and state achieved by the French Revolution.
The FN is opposed to abortion and contraception. Some of its members are involved in the "anti-abortion commando squads" that have carried out attacks on clinics. One of its "solutions" to unemployment is a return to the "strong family" — that is, driving women out of the work force.
It proposes that preschools be closed down because "The family is the first place where education should take place".
Leaders of the FN talk about its need to "conquer cultural space." As well as its weekly newspaper, the FN has an extensive publishing operation and puts out its own theoretical reviews.
These draw quite openly on fascist and historical revisionist theories. In them one can read about the "virtues" of Mussolini's Italy or why those who collaborated with the Nazis were more "courageous" than people in the resistance.
In the towns it controls, the FN's main cultural agenda has been censorship. Library collections are purged of "undesirable" works and replaced with books by its sympathisers.
In the last few years, the FN has worked very consciously to extend its influence in community life.
A central part of this strategy has been efforts to establish its own "trade unions". Not surprisingly, its first attempts have not been very successful.