Le Pen S Extreme Right And The

Development Of It S Electorate. Essay, Research Paper

Le Pen s Extreme Right and the development of it s electorate.

In this essay I will be looking at the Extreme Right and how through the years the FN (Front National) has managed to become the leading and most popular party of the far right in France. I will also be looking at the different voting tendencies that the Extreme Right has had to cope with through out the last 40 years.

To understand better how the Extreme Right has become increasingly more successful with the public in general, it is important to take a look at some of it s background history.

The Extreme Right, before the FN was created, was made of many different fragmented movements which had at their heads strong charismatic leaders, a typical historical necessity for a far Right movement, or party, not just in France but everywhere, for example A. Hitler in Germany and B. Mussolini in Italy. It s a proven fact that a movement or party with far right tendencies, needs a strong leader or it will not survive, it is very important not to confuse movement with parties, movements is what the French Extreme right had before the creation of the FN with the exceptions of two parties, the first one being Poujades (UDCA) formed in 1953 and the second Tixier-Vignancour s party, both of which tried running for the elections both ending up in failure. A movement is generally not large nor powerful enough to enter their leader for the elections its list is generally not large enough, but on the other hand a party can do so if one, its list is large enough and they consider to have enough votes from their electorates to cover their campaign costs (need to have 5%+ of the overall votes to be refunded). This is one of the reasons why the FN came about.

There were movements such as Ordre Nouveaux who believed in the use of violence to communicate their political message, on a number of occasions did their partisans take part in conflicts, such was the case in Paris at la Porte de Versailles on the 9th of March 1971 were ON met and fought against the left partisans and the police. The fighting lasted 2 hours, this was the worst recorded fight since Mai 1968. Due to theses movements violent tendencies it was decided to scrap both Ordre Nouveau and the Communist League so to try and prevent any reoccurrence of this type. Before this happened, some public figures had accused the Front National of being a cover up for Ordre Nouveau, they had described it as a way of giving Ordre Nouveau a second chance, was something to go wrong. But in fact it was set up to act as a host for the fragmented movements that made up the Extreme Right. It was time for the Far Right to gather it s forces together and partake in the political fight as one united force, in most cases, still not sharing the same principles but at least fighting for roughly the same ideologies.

Ordre Nouveau along side certain other leaders of the other Extreme Right movements had under estimated J.M.Le PEN who they had decided was the providential man of the FN due to his high involvement in Extreme Right Politics (Poujade, Korea, Indochina, Algeria, through to Tixier-Vignancour) with only one exception that being Ordre Nouveau, which in the long run his non participation played in his favour. J.M.Le PEN is the only political figure still alive and in politics to have experienced both the 4th and the 5th republic regime, therefore making him more experienced than the majority. Le Pen had partook in nearly all the Extreme Right fights but at the same time had made sure not to get too deeply involved, which on the other hand was not to be said for his fellow colleagues, who for the majority were already leaders of various movements or certainly too involved in movements such as Ordre Nouveau, La FANE and many other far right movements therefore making them inadequate for the specific post. The various leaders who had plotted against him were in for a surprise, they thought they could control him they wanted him to become the leader but behind they wanted to be pulling the strings, the result was to be very different. As soon as Le Pen came to power he started getting rid of the extremists, he thought that if he was to broaden his electorate circle, changes had to be made this took around ten years due to people like Mark Fredriksen which was at the head of La FANE (an extremist neo-nazi organisation which strongly believed in the use of violence).

It is at this stage that it is wise to ask one self: what really consists the electorate of the FN. But first it is wise to remind one self of the different traditional tendencies that constitute the base of the electorate of Jean Marie Le Pen.

At the start, the FN was a failure Ordre Nouveau before its termination had abandoned it and had gone it s own way and the FN was finding it difficult to attract voters. So this is why it is important to go back a stage further and look at the Extreme Rights supporters this so to understand better the evolution or should I say the change of the electorates. At the start the typical electorates were called Le Terreau Traditionel otherwise known as the Gross roots supporters these were people such as the Royalists, and the anti revolutionaries of 1789 they were a group of dissatisfied people who wanted the old regime back, King, Queen, Church and Country, there were also the revol