By leading a radical but unfinished demonization since 2011, Marine Le Pen has reshaped the party which she inherited from her father, who died Tuesday at the age of 96. Without renouncing the fundamentals of a political formation built on the rejection of immigration.
Jean-Marie Le Pen was no longer the president of the National Front (FN), former name of the National Rally (RN), since January 2011, when he emotionally handed over the keys to the party to his daughter Marine. He hadn’t even been a member since the summer of 2015, when this same younger daughter excluded him. But upon the death of the tutelary figure of the French extreme right, Tuesday January 7, it was towards the party and its executives that eyes were immediately turned: how was the RN going to react?
The legacy of Jean-Marie Le Pen is “assumed”defends the RN deputy Philippe Ballard. “He was the only one to raise the alarm bells”estimates the Oise parliamentarian. The far-right party, in a press release released Tuesday afternoon, welcomed “a visionary, imposing in the public debate the major subjects which structure political life today”such as immigration, globalization, “the downgrading of France” or “the risk of dilution in the European Union”. The nationalist tribune is even portrayed by MEP Thierry Mariani as a “whistleblower” on themes still dear to the party now led by Jordan Bardella.
At the forefront of the positions inherited from the founder of the FN is “unquestionably” a “focus” on immigration, notes political scientist Jean-Yves Camus. “What remains of Jean-Marie Le Pen is the obsession with migration, the false nose of an ethnicist vision of the nation”says Marie Toussaint, environmentalist MEP, about this politician who is often convicted in court for racist, anti-Semitic, Holocaust denial and Islamophobic comments.
By taking the head of the party, Marine Le Pen nevertheless reoriented its line. “Jean-Marie Le Pen’s main scapegoat was immigrants, whoever they may beunderlines Erwan Lecœur, sociologist and associate researcher at the Pacte laboratory in Grenoble. When her daughter takes power, she looks at what is happening elsewhere and deduces that the subject from now on is Islam. It transforms the RN into an anti-Islam party, which allows it to conquer new electorates, such as women and young people.”
The economic line defended by the party with the flame has also evolved under the presidency of Marine Le Pen. While her father, a supporter of Ronald Reagan, defended an ultra-liberal vision in the 1970s and 1980s, the heiress made protectionism one of her political markers. A programmatic evolution which “concerns all parties”believes Thierry Mariani, because “the world has changed”. In recent years, the RN has presented itself as the party defending the interests of the middle class, even if its economic proposals are criticized by specialists.
The fact remains that behind the modernization of the political line, the RN does not reject the father figure. “If Jean-Marie Le Pen’s FN had not existed, the RN would not be where it is,” summarizes Jean-Yves Camus, historian specializing in the extreme right. “He will remain the one who, in the storms, held in his hands the little flickering flame of the French Nation and who, through limitless will and tenacity, made the national movement an autonomous, powerful and free political family”writes the RN in its tribute on Tuesday.
The internal organization of the RN also closely resembles that of the FN. “It is still a party organized like the Communist Party of the 1920s, with an extremely strong structure, very centralized, not very democratic internally, which brings together very diverse tendencies of the extreme right”observes Erwan Lecœur. With uno difference however: “Under Jean-Marie Le Pen, all the number 2s ended up being forgotten; for the moment with Jordan Bardella, it seems to be working well”notes Jean-Yves Camus.
Led with an iron fist by Jean-Marie Le Pen until 2011, the party also claims to have evolved profoundly over the past fifteen years. “The real difference with Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella is that they really want to exercise power”notes MEP RN Thierry Mariani. Certainly, confirms Erwan Lecœur, “Jean-Marie Le Pen probably never thought that he could conquer power through the ballot box, unlike his daughter”. But the patriarch was also limited by the political context of the time. Jean-Yves Camus thus recalls “the solidity of the sanitary cordon against the extreme right” at the time, notably in 2002.
“Jean-Marie Le Pen was undoubtedly not a man whose culture was that of power, but what could he do more than his score in the 2002 presidential election (17.79%)?”
Jean-Yves Camus, historian specializing in the extreme rightat franceinfo
To achieve her goal of victory, Marine Le Pen very early on began to demonize her party and turn the page on her father’s outrageous or hateful declarations. This normalization effort notably resulted in the change of name of the party in 2018, as well as a renewal of its representatives. From the old guard, close to the father, “There aren’t many people left”according to Erwan Lecœur, who points to a notable change “generational” among party executives, such as Jordan Bardella, or deputies Jean-Philippe Tanguy and Laure Lavalette.
Communication is now blocked: only the dozen or so party spokespersons are authorized to respond to the press. “The RN has become professionalized, the way it operates internally has completely changed”assures Thierry Mariani, taking up an argument frequently repeated by the troops of the far-right party. The numerous racist comments and problematic profiles of RN candidates during the 2024 legislative campaign undermine this discourse.
Signs of “holes in the racket”notes Jean-Yves Camus, who were able to contribute to the unexpected success of the Republican front. Proof also, according to Marie Toussaint, that “under a modernized and body-built veneer, the ideology has remained the same: praising a supposed unshakable identity, stigmatizing those who do not correspond to this idea, essentializing to better exclude”.
The RN will now have to decide what it does with the figure of its founder, hated by a large part of the voters, as Mathieu Gallard, director of studies at Ipsos, recalls on X. In today’s frameworks, “very few people claim” by Jean-Marie Le Pen, says Philippe Ballard. Invited on television sets since Tuesday, they are cautious. THE press release from Marine Le Pen, released on Wednesday, remains on a personal level and limits itself to saluting the memory of her “papa”with whom she had reconciled in recent years. “The RN’s strategy is to focus on its presidential candidate, without putting a piece back in the machine on someone who did not allow them to access power”explains Erwan Lecœur. The praise will come “if the party comes to power”adds the sociologist.
