The news that the two rival leaders of French Toryism, Jaques Chirac and Valerie Giscard D'Estaing, are to make common cause in the upcoming French elections is no surprise. Their alliance is as much about fending of the challenge of the far right as making common cause Mitterrand's Socialist Party.
Given its very high opinion poll scores, all the major political are running scared of Jean-Marie Le Pen's Front National.
Ever since the Le Pen got his electoral breakthrough at the 1984 European clections, the 300 Club issue of the precise political character of the riv nas beer hotly debated. Is it really a fascist party? Or is it simply a re run of the 1950s 'Poujadist' movement, which Tallica sec tions of the rural petty bourgeoisie against big capital and modernisation?
The Front National is not a party - it was founded in 1972. At its foundation it fused two different trends - an ultra-right alliance of 'national conservatives around Le Pen, with strong links and i the hard-core fascist street fighters who had been in organisations like Occident and O:der Nouvean.
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Key themes of Le Pen's movement were the virtues of the French people and opposttion to relinquishing French colonies like Álgeria. Occident and Order Nouveau stressed thedangersof Bolshevism' and the Jews.
The Front National has seen permanent internal struggles between these two currents. Anti-semitism was originally not a key theme of Le Pen's wing of the movement, despite Le Pen's ersonal outburst: bout the Holocaust, of which he claims has 'no knowledge'.
In the late 1970s the move ment was strengthened by a third trend, Solidariste led by the late jean Pierre Stirbois. This included a strong Catholic fundamentalist current, the Committees of Christian Solidarity, for whom anti-semitism was an important question. Another important spect of the influence of the Catholic fundamentalists is of course the championing of "family values' and hostility to At the beginning of the 1980% the movement was further strengthened by right-wing Gaullists, who wereadmirers of Reaganand Thatcher's brand of economic liberalism.
Le Per's formidable political achievement has been to weld the different currents into a stable and sizeable organisation, around a common ideology and an uncontested leader. composed of three major cle ments - economic liberalism, racism and an authoritarian model of 'democracy. On the economy the FN has broken with the old-style fascist cor orate state, in favour of ultra hatcherite liberalism and hos tility to the welfare state. This is a typical petty bourgeois economic doctrine.
relationship between the seople and the president based on referenda. The FN denounces the political, trade union and bureaucratic oligarchies' which disrupt the sacred relationship between the people and the leader. This points strongly to the abolition of the National Assembly if the FN came to power, or at least a drastic curtailment of its sowers in favour of presiden ial perogatives Front National racism is primarily anti-immigrant, with a strong flavouring of antisemitism. But the times clash, for example during the Gulf war. Le Pen, and his effective deputy Mdme. Stirsois, took a strong anti-US anc anti-Israel line. But this wa:
contested by many rank-and-file members who wanted a strong anti-Arab line.
The FN line on the Gulf war was not just determined by its anti-Israel impulses but by and defence of French capitalist Afraid alright: Chirac interests, the response of Le Pen was more coherent than that of many of his rank and file.
Who supports the Front National? Opinion polls have shown that Le Pen has won lectoral support amon ges and social classes. But hi electorate is primarily an urban and middle class one. with workers, especially skilled workers, under-represented in his clectorate. But most of all the vote of the FN is unstable.
Many FN voters vote once for Le Pen, and then return to their traditional party or abstain. But most of all the FN vote is a protest vote. Only a third of voters who supported LePen in the last presidential elections said they were politically close to the FNitself. A large minority said they were politically of the left, former voters for the Communist Party or the Socialist Party.
The nice one son about why the FN has won support is obvious from these tacts.
Except for the brief period after it came to power, the Socialist Party government has applied austerity policies for ten years. Millions of voters are disillusioned about the official left parties, but have no confidence on the old right wing Gaullist and centre parties In the absence of a mass radical alternative, Le Pen's movement ends up the winner.
Mitterrand did a lot in the mid-1980s to boost Le Pen, by changing the electoral laws to enefit smaller parties. Mitter and figured that a strong FN vote would help keep the right Nothing out of kovernica could be more cynical or short sighted.
So is the FN fascist? Le Pen has created a bloc of genuine fascists and extreme right-wing conservatives. But the political character of the party is as near to fascism as makes no difference. It is a different form of fascism to that which existed in the 1930, in particular it lacks the demagogic anti-capitalist opulism characteristic of the Nazis and Mussolini's move ment.
But Le Pen in power would mean mass deportation of immigrants, a fierce attack on democratic rights, and a furious assault on the workers ganisations. The instability of Le Pen's electorate shows that he may have created a mass movement with a lot of support on the issue of immigration. But he is far from being on the verge of power.
opinion poll result which bizarrely embodies this contradiction is that more than half of FN voters are against the party forming the government! The problem is that over time, especially if Le Pen gets a vote over 20 percent in this year's elections, this could change. Fascism in France remains a dynamicand potent force. Antifascist and anti-racist campaigning is of course vital to combat it; but in the end only the creation of a viable socialist alternative French capitalism's crisis will provide an answer.
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