PARIS -
For more than a quarter of a century, the French and European right-wing parties have invested in all global crises and fluctuations, starting with the Cold War and the events of September 11, 2001, through the issue of cartoons in Denmark and the last global economic crisis in 2008, to armed attacks in a number of countries. European countries and the waves of refugees resulting from the Arab Spring, ending with the repercussions of the Corona pandemic and the Russian-Ukrainian war, invested in all these events and crises to expand and expand their influence and gain popular electoral bases and new supporters.
historical roots
The historical roots of extreme right-wing parties in Europe go back to the interwar period in which the Nazi and fascist regimes flourished, and in France the Vichy government was the official supporter of these right-wing regimes.
After a period of decline and decline for decades, the extreme right-wing parties returned more structural and dynamic in the eighties and nineties, to reserve a prominent place within the European party political map, and demonstrated this through the repeated successes they achieved in the legislative, local, European and even presidential elections.
And because the dominant and distinguishing feature of these nationalist parties is based on the rejection of ethnic, religious and cultural diversity, hatred of immigrants and hostility to Islam, Muslims and foreigners, so the extreme right-wing tide has flourished, and it has presented itself as an alternative under the pretext of preserving national gains and defending countries from external dangers, especially Islam, which represents the greatest threat to culture European.
first fruits
The first fruits of this strong right-wing tide came quickly in France, with the candidate of the far-right National Front party, Jean-Marie Le Pen, known for his hard-line views on immigrants and Muslims, for the first time in the second round of the French presidential elections in 2002. Le Pen, the father, qualified alongside the traditional right-wing candidate, the late president Jacques Chirac, who won the elections.
This steady, strong and continuous rise of the French and European right-wing parties led to the achievement of successes and the accumulation of remarkable experience and expertise, especially in important political stations and major electoral elections.
These right-wing parties have moved from a small margin and an ephemeral political phenomenon, to a difficult figure and an essential and central component of the European political scene.
Founder of the French far-right National Front Jean-Marie Le Pen (Al Jazeera)
far-right infection
The National Rally party led by Marine Le Pen, and the rest of the European far-right parties, benefited greatly from the rise and victory of the populist nationalist right in the United States, led by Donald Trump, in the 2016 US presidential election, and from the British right's vote on the United Kingdom's exit from the European Union.
Other European far-right parties also benefited from this US nationalist rise, and from the important successes accumulated by Marine Le Pen's "National Rally" party in France.
This was translated by the French sociologist who specializes in far-right movements, Sylvain Cripon, by saying, "The rise of the far right has existed for several years, and what helped spread its infection to the rest of Europe, is the success of the French National Front party in the elections."
Accumulation of experience and success
In France, since the founding of the far-right National Front by the lawyer Jean-Marie Le Pen in 1972, this nationalist party has succeeded in changing its skin and its strategy and reproducing its discourse, relying in all this on the issues of identity and theories of “Great Replacement” and “Assification”, in The phenomenon of Islamophobia continued to grow after the repeated attacks on France, with the influx of refugees and the increase in the number of immigrants.
In a study and previous statistics published by the IFOP Institute, which specializes in opinion polls for elections, the figures show that the National Front achieved its first success in the 1983 local elections, in which Le Pen received 11.3% of the votes in the Paris region, and obtained 12% of the votes. in legislative elections.
Jean-Marie Le Pen further consolidated his far-right party in the French political scene by achieving impressive results in the French presidential elections in 1988, and obtaining 14.4% of the total votes participating in the elections.
Marine Le Pen outperformed her father in attracting the votes of the far-right (Al-Jazeera)
Bankruptcy of traditional parties
The "National Front" party, which later became the "National Rally" since 2017, after the arrival of its new president, Marine Le Pen, to the second round of the presidential elections, also benefited from the bankruptcy of the programs of the traditional right- and left-wing parties, in order to achieve new successes.
In 2014, the party was able for the first time in its history to enter the Senate in the elections to renew half of the members of the Council and obtain two seats.
At the time, Marine Le Pen described this event as a "historic victory", and saw in it "a dynamic accelerating from one election to another."
According to the same Ifop study, Marine Le Pen returned to achieve outstanding results in the 2014 European elections, where her National Rally party led the elections with 24.8% of the vote, compared to 20.8% for the right-wing opposition party, the Union for a Popular Movement. The ruling Socialist came in third place, receiving only 13.9% of the vote.
Following these results, Le Pen was able in 2015 to form a right-wing parliamentary bloc in the European Parliament under the name "Europe of Nations and Freedoms", consisting of 40 deputies from various European far-right parties, such as the Italian Northern League and the Austrian Freedom Party.
From Parliament to the Presidency
At the level of the French presidential elections, the French right-wing parties, especially the traditional ones, are considered a major player in these major political events. Indeed, they are considered the most presidents of France during the Fifth Republic since Charles de Gaulle (1958-1969) and Georges Pompidou (1969-1974). and Jacques Chirac (1995-2007) and Nicolas Sarkozy (2007-2012).
As for the "National Front" party led by Jean-Marie Le Pen, it remained stagnant in the presidential elections. After it managed to surprise in 2002 and reached the second round, it rolled to fourth place in the 2007 presidential elections and could not pass the first round.
However, the situation changed with Marine Le Pen assuming the leadership of the National Right Party, where she ranked third in the first presidential elections in which she participated in 2012, achieving 17.9%, surpassing her father, who received 16.9% of the votes when he reached the second round in 2002.
Which made Le Pen, the father, declare, following the good results his daughter achieved in the first round, saying, "I am not jealous of Marine, that I handed the torch to my daughter, who runs faster than me."
In the wake of the slogan of her presidential campaign for the year 2017 “Rearrange France”, Marine Le Pen continued to arrange her strategy and ran to take second place (21.30%) and pass to the second round with centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron (24.01%).
maximum speed
However, according to observers of the French issue, the candidate of the National Rally party reached its maximum speed in the current presidential elections of 2022, when she obtained 23.15% in the first round, while the outgoing president obtained 27.84% of the votes, to qualify the two candidates for the decisive stage in the poll. Which will be on April 24th.
This is the highest percentage achieved by Le Pen in the three presidential campaigns in which she participated.
Many observers believe that Marine Le Pen appears very close to the Elysee Palace more than ever, especially with this great closeness and diminished points between her and Macron.
The French far-right also gained great momentum in this presidential election, as the results show that it obtained nearly a third of the votes, calculating the percentage of votes obtained by the "Repatriation Party" candidate Eric Zemmour (7.1%) and Nicolas Debon-Aignan, "Rise up France" (2.1%). Both called for a vote for Marine Le Pen in the next session.
Thus, the far right achieved the highest result, not only in the 64 years of the Fifth Republic, but throughout the entire modern history of France.
It can be said that this great momentum, the rocket rise and the success that the extreme right is experiencing today, was the result of decades of experience and expertise that Marine Le Pen gained from her father and from her political environment, which she expressed after her success in the first round, saying, "We face this second round, armed with the experience we gained Five years ago, it would be of great benefit to us."