How right is far-right?

France's Rassemblement National

Some readers have asked me whether it’s appropriate to call France’s Rassemblement National (RN) a far-right political party – let alone neo-fascist.

The RN is normally referred to in the media as far-right, and in my earlier post I adopted that term. I’ve also seen left-wing French politicians call them neo-fascist.

France’s parliamentary elections go through two rounds, if there’s no clear winner in the first. The RN got more votes than any other party in both rounds, rising from 31 to 37 percent. But they won only 24 percent of seats due to anti-RN collaboration and tactical candidate withdrawals in the second round. The outcome, then, was disproportionate. The conclusion that the RN “came third” after the second round is based on seat numbers, and overlooks the popular vote.

I’ve had a closer look at the RN’s election manifesto and below I translate some of the main points, without judgement. Writing it down doesn’t mean I’m endorsing it. Readers can judge for themselves where RN sits on the ideological spectrum, but I’ll conclude with an assessment.

The Rassemblement National’s manifesto begins with “the duty of protection”. They want to “ensure the defence of the nation’s territory in a degraded international environment”. They would “preserve full and entire sovereignty over our nuclear capability and guarantee our model of comprehensive armed forces”. (Since Brexit, France is the EU’s only nuclear-armed country.) RN would “refuse any transfer of military and diplomatic capability to the EU, while favouring a European preference in military spending by European states”.

RN wants to “protect the French people from the flood of migrants”. They describe a “lack of control over immigration” that makes assimilation “impossible” and that leads to “separatism”. They want to reserve the right of free movement through the EU to those of European nationality and to reinforce sanctions against those who employ “clandestine workers”. They would like to amend the constitution, by referendum, to formally give priority to French nationals. They would restrict family allowances to the French and require five years of work in France as a condition of access to non-contributory welfare payments, if necessary entrenching that through a constitutional referendum. They would remove “all exemptions that prevent expulsion of foreigners”.

In response to a rise in violence and drug-trafficking, they want to reinforce the citizen’s fundamental right to safety. They want to increase detention centers for young people and get on with building prisons. And, for example, they’d implement a presumption of legitimate defence for law enforcement and list those guilty of street-level sexual harassment in the sex-offenders register. They want to crack down on fraud, in part by implementing a biometric identity card and by strengthening controls over illegal imports.

RN wants to protect France’s natural environment, but they also want to defend the French quality of life by rejecting “punitive” ecological policies. They want to get out of European regulations that fix energy prices and that weaken France’s competitiveness.

They see the family as forming “the roots of our social and civilisational model”. As against the EU’s plan for more immigration to sustain their populations, RN favours “natality” (the birth-rate) to “ensure the continuity of the Nation and of our civilisation”. They have policies favouring those with children. (The brochure has an image of a family with two children.) Along with the family, RN sees agriculture as occupying “a special place in the heart of the French people”. They want to shift wealth taxes away from real-estate assets, and towards movable financial assets, in order to reduce the disincentive to maintain immovable properties and pass them on in good condition to the next generation.

RN wants to rationalise the State and public spending. They’d privatise public broadcasting. And they’d devolve power to local elected officials. They have a back-to-basics education policy, referencing science, French and history.

They want an industrial policy that encourages enterprises established in France and that combats the brain-drain. They’d “create a French sovereign fund to augment national savings and direct it towards strategic sectors of industry and innovation”.

“To preserve French civilisation”, the RN would pass a law “targeting Islamist ideologies, a truly totalitarian menace of modern times”. (This is placed at the bottom of the document.) They’d restore to the French language “a preferred place in our foreign policy”. And they’d explore the idea of a “patriotic voluntary national service”.

The brochure I’ve been quoting hasn’t a single face that (on appearance) could be described as a “person of colour”.

The RN’s manifesto is unabashedly nationalist and nativist. That is, it believes in a distinctively French nation (and civilisation) and it favours the French-born citizen. It has conservative views about family and cultural heritage. It is not neoliberal as it favours protectionism and national industrial policy. On the other hand, no fascist party would privatise media. It wants to reduce the powers of the state by devolving to the local level and using referendums. But it also wants to reinforce some state powers, notably in defence, law and order, immigration and family-friendly social policy.

It’s a right-wing conservative nationalist party.

There are no explicit signs of fascism in the manifesto. There’s no glorification of war as a purifying nation-restoring experience, nor a plan to suborn social and economic institutions to a total State. While the parliamentary leader is highlighted, it’s not a cult of personality.

They believe that immigrants should assimilate to a national culture. You can have your religion, but keep it private. Their attitude towards Islam could, if taken too far, however, result in persecution of minorities of a kind that was one of the worst features of fascism. And they do want to deport foreigners convicted of crimes, to make it harder for immigrants to reunite family in France, and to end the right to citizenship of children born in France to foreign parents.

Marine Le Pen has made efforts to moderate the image of her party. She distanced RN from the Alternative für Deutschland party (AfD) in the European parliament after a leading AfD candidate said members of the SS were “not all criminals”. AfD were kicked out of the Identity and Democracy political group and have since joined a new one. On the other hand, RN has joined forces with Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party which presently governs in Hungary, along with other right-wing parties, to form a new group styling themselves as Patriots for Europe.

It’s up to the reader, then, to decide whether to call RN far-right. At the same time, though, think about which parties are called far-left or communist. Are we adding the qualifier far because we don’t like a party, and hence want to typify it as extreme and “unfit to govern”? Or is it fully justified by a party’s policies lying beyond the pale of civilised democratic politics?

RN is normally described as far-right in the press, even though it gets around a third of votes now, and on that basis could be considered mainstream. I haven’t seen any reports that reach out sympathetically to supporters to find out why they vote for RN. It’s easy, however, to find journalists digging into the life of RN’s former leader Jean-Marie Le Pen and then making historical links with the Nazi-dominated Vichy government.

President Macron doesn’t want to appoint a government that would include RN. But the largest parliamentary bloc, which is left-wing, is insisting that it should form the government and have all its policies implemented, without exception, even though they fall well short of a majority (with 180 out of 577 seats). This bloc includes La France Insoumise, whose leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon is, for Macron, also off limits. Mélenchon is reportedly “furious”. Compromise doesn’t come easy to these guys.

Macron’s rise was accompanied by the virtual destruction of the traditional centrist left and right parties. The French aren’t happy with forming coalition governments, now that things have fragmented. They could follow the example of some of their European neighbours and make up a multi-party arrangement.

And you thought New Zealand was messy!

The image is taken from the manifesto brochure and shows RN leader Jordan Bardella.