National Front (France)

National Front
Front national
Leader Jean-Marie Le Pen
Founded 1972
Headquarters 76 rue des Suisses
Nanterre
Ideology

French nationalism

Antiglobalism,
Third Position,
Right-wing populism,
Euroscepticism,
Protectionism
International affiliation Euronat, ITS (2003-2007), Alliance européenne des mouvements nationaux (2009 -)
European affiliation Alliance of European National Movements
Official colours Blue, White and Red
Seats in the National Assembly
Seats in the Senate
Seats in the European Parliament
Seats in Regional Councils
Website
http://www.frontnational.com/
Politics of France
Political parties
Elections
Constitution of France
Parliament; Government; President

The Front national (FN)—sometimes translated in English as the National Front—is a French far-right, nationalist[1] political party, founded in 1972 by Jean-Marie Le Pen. The Front national claims to have 75,000 members,[2] however, according to the party's treasurer, formerly Jean-Marie Le Pen's lawyer, Wallerand de Saint-Just, it includes only 16,000 to 18,000 members. The movement's early electoral successes in 1984 were achieved with only 1,500 formal members, but this increased to an apex of 42,000 before the party's schism of December 1998. In the French presidential election of 2002, Le Pen finished a distant second to Jacques Chirac in a runoff election. From 2002 to 2006, the Front National established itself as the third largest political party in France, after the UMP (Union pour un Mouvement Populaire, formerly RPR), and the socialist party (Parti Socialiste). Internationally, the FN is affiliated with Euronat.

Although the party describes itself as a national right, populist and souverainist organization, observers in the media describe the party as "far right"[3] or "extreme right".[4][5] Le Pen has been condemned for apology of war crimes, apology of crimes against humanity, and trivializing the Holocaust.[6]

Contents

Leadership

Jean-Marie Le Pen has led the party since it was founded. Other leading members are:

Other prominent members include:

A number of former members of the party have been removed or decided to leave it for ideological reasons, and/or because of the party's electoral decline:

Le Pen's leadership of the party is strongly concentrated and centralized, and his personality and authority are very important to the party.[7] Occasionally, Le Pen's leadership has been questioned. In a widely publicized move, Bruno Mégret and other leading National Front members split away in 1998 to form a new party, the National Republican Movement (Mouvement national républicain - MNR), alleging that Le Pen's provocative comments and his management style were limiting the National Front to the role of a marginal opposition party, without any possibility of gaining power.[8] This led to a major purge and reorganization of the leadership of the National Front. However, for the purpose of the 2007 presidential election, Mégret made an agreement with Le Pen in order to avoid division.

A National Front political poster. The text reads, "Immigrants are going to vote...and you're abstaining?!!". Voting rights in France are restricted to those who possess French nationality (as well as EU citizens living in France for local and European polls).

Political platform

The National Front posts a comprehensive political platform on its website. Amongst other things it argues for:

The party opposes immigration, particularly Muslim immigration from North Africa, West Africa and the Middle East. In a standardized pamphlet delivered to all French electors in the 1995 presidential election, Jean-Marie Le Pen proposed the "sending back" of "three million non-Europeans" out of France, by "humane and dignified means".[9]

In the campaign for the 2002 French presidential election, the stress was more on issues of law and order. Recurrent National Front themes include tougher law enforcement, firm sentences for all crimes and the reinstatement of the death penalty.

The Front National regularly campaigns against the "establishment" that, in its view, encompasses the other French political parties and most journalists. Le Pen lumped all major parties (French Communist Party (PCF), French Socialist Party (PS), Union for French Democracy (UDF), Rally for the Republic (RPR)) into the "Gang of Four", an allusion to China's "Cultural Revolution". The FN often presents itself as an "underdog" or "outsider."[10] According to the Front National, the French right-wing parties are not true right-wing parties, and are almost indistinguishable from the "Socialo-Communist" left.

The Nature of the Platform

Anti-fascist demonstration, requesting the dissolution of the FN and of Bruno Mégret's MNR, an offshoot of the FN.

Political scientist Pierre-André Taguieff described the FN as "national-populism" as early as 1984. In 1988, René Rémond took the same epithet and spoke of a "resurgence of populism" (Notre siècle, 1988). René Rémond considers the FN as the main representative of the far-right family in France. However, Rémond believes that the FN has accepted the inheritance of the 1789 Revolution and is "included in the frame of representative democracy", which is disputed by Michel Winock and Pascal Perrineau (Histoire de l'extrême droite en France) who cites Le Pen's statements against the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen as clear signs of opposition to the French Revolution. Winock also defines the FN as the conjunction of all far-right French traditions: the counter-revolutionaries, the pétainistes (collaborationists under Vichy France), fascists and members of the OAS terrorist group. Jonathan Marcus notes that Le Pen is set apart from much of the historic French far Right by "his self-proclaimed acceptance of not just the electoral path to power, but of the parliamentary system itself." Marcus also remarks that although Le Pen has an ambiguous (and somewhat hostile) attitude towards the Revolution in general, he has "accepted the heritage of the French Revolution, in an attempt to place himself within the Republican mainstream."[11] Peter Davies, in his book on the French extreme Right, remarks that the FN is home to contradictory impulses (conservative and radical, neo-fascist and national-populist), but "more than anything, the party is defensive and protective about the nation... a fine example of 'closed nationalism.'"[12]

Elsewhere Pierre Milza and Guy Antonetti refuse to class the FN as a fascist party, while Michel Dobry, professor at the Sorbonne university (Paris-I), defines it as a party with fascist tendencies. Robert Paxton suggests that fascist ideology may come back under the guises of the FN.

Foundation of the National Front and history until the 1990s

The FN was born out of the second congress of the far Right movement Ordre Nouveau (New Order) on June 10–11, 1972, in which it was decided to create a party to participate in the 1973 legislative elections. The party's founding was formally announced on October 5, 1972, under the name of Front national pour l'unité française (National Front for French Unity), called Front National. The party was intended to unite different groups of the far Right. Jean-Marie Le Pen became its first president (a position he has retained until the present day), chosen because he was not a former member of ON, and therefore could better reach out to other Rightist groups.[13] The Bureau national (National Office) included François Brigneau, a former member of Marcel Déat's collaborationist National Popular Rally (RNP)[14] and Ordre Nouveau bigwig, as vice-President;[13] Alain Robert as General Secretary;[13] Roger Holeindre, a former member of the OAS, as Assistant Secretary-General;[13] Pierre Durand as Assistant Treasurer; and François Duprat, a former member of Occident[13] and popularizer of the negationist thesis (in particular Richard Harwood's pamphlets).[15][16]

Others founding members include Roland Gaucher (1919–2007), also a former member of Déat's RNP;[14] Victor Barthélémy, former general secretary of the Legion of French Volunteers Against Bolshevism; Léon Gaultier, a former lieutenant of the Division Charlemagne; Gilbert Gilles, a former adjutant in the Division Charlemagne and former member of the OAS; Pierre Bousquet, a former corporal in the Division Charlemagne; André Dufraisse, a former member of the Parti Populaire Français who also served in the Division Charlemagne gaining the nickname Tonton Panzer (Uncle Panzer); and Jacques Bompard, a former supporter of the OAS.[17]

Although ON was banned in June 1973, the influence of ON and neo-fascist groups remained strong in the FN, especially through François Duprat. Duprat had links to FANE and other neo-nazi organizations, and described ON activists as "national-revolutionary." Duprat was killed by a car-bomb in 1978, a blow to the neo-fascist faction.[13]

Through the late 1970s and early 80s, the FN gained several new groups of supporters. Solidarists, notably Jean-Pierre Stirbois, joined during the late 70s, lessening the influence of the neo-fascists. A group of Catholic fundamentalists under Bernard Anthony defected to the FN from the CNIP in 1984. Lastly, the received intellectual support from the thinkers of the Nouvelle Droite.[18]

The party didn't have any relevant electoral successes until the beginning of the 1980s, in part because of competition from the Parti des forces nouvelles (PFN), an off-shoot created in November 1974 from National Front members opposed to Le Pen. In 1974, Le Pen called for members of the Third Position Revolutionary Nationalist Groups (GNR), headed by François Duprat, to join the FN.

However, in 1983, Jean-Pierre Stirbois, then general secretary of the FN, gained one of the first victories for Le Pen's party, scoring 16.7% in the Dreux by-election. The FN then won the city council and deputy mayorship, amid rising unemployment. The victory was made possible by an electoral alliance with the conservative Rally for the Republic (RPR), headed by Jacques Chirac. The FN had made alliances with other right-wing parties since 1977 and continued to do so until 1992. Finally, the RPR condemned them in September 1988, as did the Parti républicain in 1991. Regional alliances (Charles Millon, leader of La Droite) were then sometimes passed.

During the June 17, 1984 European elections, the party obtained 10 seats. The FN then gained 35 seats in the March 16, 1986 legislative elections, taking advantage of the new proportional ballot, which president François Mitterrand (PS) had imposed in order to moderate a foreseeable defeat by the right-wing RPR, headed by then mayor of Paris Jacques Chirac. The RPR won anyway, and Mitterrand nominated Chirac as Prime minister, setting up the first cohabitation between the two main political parties in France, the PS and the RPR, in the executive, since the 1958 founding of the Fifth Republic. Furthermore, some hard-liners in the FN spin-off to create the French and European Nationalist Party.

In 1988 Bruno Mégret became the general secretary of the FN, overshadowing Jean-Pierre Stirbois, who died the same year. Carl Lang and Bruno Gollnisch were then promoted by Mégret to senior levels within the party. Royalists such as Michel de Rostolan, Thibault de la Tocnaye and Olivier d'Ormesson also joined the FN in the 1980s, seeing in it a continuation of the Action Française royalist movement.

From the 1990s to today

During the nineties a debate over strategy within the FN led to a growing division between those who wanted to affirm the continuity with a fascist past, and those who wanted alliances with sections of the traditional Right. This came to a head in 1997-8, following some successes at municipal elections in 1995. Several traditional Conservative leaders showed they were willing to have alliances in the context of regional councils. The result was a series of demonstrations against these leaders, mostly organized by the "Manifeste contre le Front national". Faced with this kind of publicity, the Conservatives moved away from the FN. The result was a crisis in the FN which led to a split.

1995 municipal elections

National advertisement in Marseille, predicting the now unrealised possibility of Jean-Marie Le Pen becoming President in 2007

The FN collegial lists won three cities during the June 1995 municipal elections, all in the southern Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region, in a political context of triangulaires ("triangulars," opposing a left-wing candidate to a conservative candidate and an FN candidate). The party has tended to cut back on social services for immigrants as well as cultural activities deemed "anti-family" or "multicultural." Spending has been redirected to the municipal police and other services.

Jacques Bompard, a former member of the national leadership of Occident and of OAS, was then elected mayor of Orange, one of the FN's strongholds, in 1995 (scoring 33% of the vote in the first round and 36% in the second), and re-elected in 2001. He then left the FN, to join Philippe de Villiers's Movement for France (MPF) in 2005. Daniel Simonpieri won in Marignane, with 33% in the first round and 37% in the second, and Jean-Marie Le Chevallier won in Toulon with 31% in the first round and 37% in the second. Two years later, in 1997, Catherine Mégret, the spouse of then general delegate Bruno Mégret (who was ineligible) won in the first round, with an absolute majority (52.48%) the partial municipal election of Vitrolles, Bouches-du-Rhône.

The FN's management of these towns became controversial, amid liberal economic policies (In Orange, Jacques Bompard reduced school spending by 50%, while in Vitrolles, lead by Catherine Mégret, 150 civil employees were fired, while the police force was expanded from 34 to 70 officers), and censorship in public libraries. In Vitrolles, the party sought to give 500 euros to the families of each French baby born (in accordance to the FN's policy of "national preference" (préférence nationale). The purpose was to allow money to French citizens only but she was unable to do so for constitutional reasons.

Some of these mayors remain very popular in their cities. For example, Jacques Bompard has been re-elected twice (in 2001 and 2008) with more than 60% of the votes at the first turn. Bompard was however expelled from the FN in 2005, and, along with Marie-Christine Bignon, FN mayor of Chauffailles, he joined Philippe de Villiers' Mouvement pour la France (MPF).[19] Since 2005, the FN has therefore lost control of all municipalities it had won.[19]

Censorship in towns controlled by the FN

The General Inspection of Libraries made a report, directed by Denis Pallier, at the request of the Minister of Culture, in particular concerning the management of Marignane's and Orange's public libraries. Such libraries depend, in France, on the municipal council, and hence on the mayor, who is responsible for their management. The report stated that in 1996, Marignagne's public library received the order to "put an end to the subscription to L'Événement du Jeudi, Libération, and La Marseillaise" - all of them left-wing newspapers. It refused to acquire Le Rose et le noir: Histoire des homosexuels en France depuis 1968 ("The Rose and the Black: A History of Homosexuality in France Since 1968"), as well as a list of 70 children's detective fiction (including Agatha Christie, Conan Doyle, etc.). It also refused to acquire Zaïr Kedadouche's autobiography, entitled Zaïr le Gaulois, a Frenchman from Maghrebin origins who became a regional counsellor and counsellor to the delegate minister to City and integration; Freud's Cinq leçons sur la psychanalyse and Le Mot d'Esprit et sa relation à l'inconscient; a book by the abbé Pierre and Bernard Kouchner's Dieu et les hommes. At the same time, Marignane's municipality had the library acquired, without informing them, 60 books from far-right editors, some of them openly declaring themselves negationists and upholding conspiracy theories about a so-called "Judeo-Masonic conspiracy". In Toulon, the municipal adjoint to culture claimed that pluralism meant that Marx and Hitler should be on the same bookshelf, while he persuaded the librarian to buy books from far-right publishing house Editions Elor, where authors related to far-right daily Présent. In Orange, the library refused books concerning racism, hip hop or fairy tales from other countries, in particular from the Maghreb, as well as books written by authors opposing the far-right (i.e. Jean Lacouture's biography of Montaigne, Didier Daeninckx, etc.)[20][21][22][23][24]

Furthermore, in Vitrolles the director of the cinema was fired because he had shown a movie about homosexuality and AIDS.

Mégret's split in 1998

Supporters of Le Pen and of the "national-conservative" tendency (Roger Holeindre, etc.) opposed "nationalist revolutionaries" closer to Bruno Mégret and Third Position ideologies.[25] The split between Mégret and Le Pen started on July 16, 1997, during an FN meeting near Strasbourg. Roger Holeindre, vice-President of the FN, initiated the hostilities against Mégret by criticizing "ideological racialism" theories supported by FN members close to the Nouvelle Droite and former members of the Club de l'Horloge.[26] He also advocated a return to more "paternalist" approaches of immigration issues, in the French colonialist tradition.[26] Roger Holeindre was part of the "TSM" current (Tout sauf Mégret, Anybody But Mégret), along with Samuel Maréchal, Marine Le Pen, Jean-Claude Martinez, the Catholic current represented by Bernard Antony and Bruno Gollnisch, and Martine Lehideux,[26]

Mégret thereafter quit the FN in December 1998, and founded, in 1999, the National Republican Movement (MNR), along with Serge Martinez (vice-chairman), Jean-Yves Le Gallou (executive director and member of the European Parliament from 1994 to 1999) and Franck Timmermans (secretary-general). Other notable members of the party included Jean Haudry, Pierre Vial, Jean-Claude Bardet, Xavier Guillemot, Christian Bouchet (leader of Unité Radicale, a Third Position movement) and Maxime Brunerie (author of the attempted assassination of Chirac in 2002, which lead to the dissolving of Unité Radicale).

Juridical battle (1998-1999)

The "Megretist crisis" led to an Ubuesque situation, in which Le Pen and Mégret fought for the legal right to use the name "Front National." Just before Mégret filed with the sous-préfecture of Boulogne-Billancourt the name "Front national - Mouvement national" (cancelled by the courts in May 1999), Le Pen filed (on 27 January 1999) articles for the creation of an association "Front national pour l'unité française" (National Front for French Unity).

However, both figures were outraced by the legal owner of the appellation "Front national," a resistance, and therefore anti-fascist movement created in 1941 by Communists, and which also gathered Catholics and religious people. Along with René Roussel, currently responsible for the legacy of the Resistant Front National, the satiric weekly Charlie Hebdo deposed the FN name to the INPI (Institut national de la propriété industrielle, the institute in charge of trademarks) on 18 December 1998 (explaining why neither the FN nor the MNR could simply call themselves "Front National"), with the intention of giving the name back to its original owners. Thus, legally, the FN is not named "Front National," an appellation reserved to the original Front National, the French Resistance. At the time of the liberation of Paris (August 1944), after the deportation and death of many of the members of its clandestine leadership, the FN component of the French Resistance counted Frédéric Joliot-Curie, Pierre Villon, Henri Wallon, Laurent Casanova, François Mauriac, and Louis Aragon among its adherents.[27][28]

After the 2002 presidential election

In the 2002 presidential election', many commentators were shocked when Jean-Marie Le Pen gained the second highest number of votes, and thus entered the second round of voting. Almost all had expected the second ballot to be between Jacques Chirac and Lionel Jospin (the Socialist candidate). This result came after the election campaign had increasingly focused on law and order issues, with some particularly striking cases of juvenile delinquency catching the attention of the media, and low voter turnout. Furthermore, Jospin had been weakened by multiple candidacies from the left-wing of the political spectrum. The election brought the two-round voting system into question as well as raising concerns about apathy and the way in which the left had become so divided. After huge demonstrations against the FN, Chirac went on to win the presidency in an overwhelming landslide (83% of the vote), aided by ubiquitous support in the media and academia, while Le Pen's constituency was either ridiculed or ignored by the French press. Jospin himself urged voters to choose "the lesser of two evils". The day of the election, France's most popular national newspaper, Le Monde, featured a front page article entitled "Chirac, bien sûr" ("Chirac, of course").

A year after the 2002 presidential election, in which Le Pen succeeded in getting in to the second round against Jacques Chirac, Le Pen appointed his daughter, Marine Le Pen, to the executive of the party.

In 2004, opponents of Le Pen in the executive such as Jacques Bompard, mayor of Orange, the largest town administrated by the FN, and Marie-France Stirbois (who particularly opposed Marine Le Pen's nomination, which they saw as the establishment of a "Le Pen dynasty") were steered away from the center of power. Along with Catholic traditionalist Bernard Anthony, Jacques Bompard organized a rival summer university in 2004.[19] Bompard was finally expelled from the FN in 2005,[19] and thereafter joined Philippe de Villiers' Movement for France (MPF), a national-conservative party which has similar ideas to the FN, and hence represented the FN's main rival for the 2007 presidential and legislative elections. Several former FN members have joined it, including the FN's only two mayors.

Carl Lang tried to bring former FN members back into the FN, by inviting in 2001 members disappointed in the MNR to rejoin the FN. The MNR, however, has allied itself with the FN with an eye to the 2007 presidential election (and, even more, of the legislative elections), thus making de Villier's MPF the main competition.

2007 electoral defeats and economic problems

Before the 2007 presidential election, Jean-Marie Le Pen and Bruno Mégret, who had split to create the rival party, the MNR, agreed to ally again in order not to lose votes to internal disputes. However, Le Pen still trailed in fourth place behind Nicolas Sarkozy (31%), Ségolène Royal (26%) and François Bayrou (19%), with 11% of the vote.

In the 10 and 17 June 2007 legislative elections, the party won no seats. The party's 4.29% represented one of its lowest scores since the party's creation, and only one candidate- Le Pen's daughter Marine Le Pen in the Pas de Calais department reached the runoff (she was defeated by the Socialist incumbent).

These electoral defeats partly accounted for the FN's financial problems. Le Pen announced, in 2007 and 2008, the sale of the FN headquarters in Saint-Cloud, Le Paquebot[19] (as well as of his personal armoured car, a Peugeot 605, sold on eBay[29] ). 20 permanent employees of the FN were also dismissed in 2008, also for economical reasons.[30]

Legal problems and Holocaust denial condemnations

On January 7, 2005, Jean-Marie Le Pen declared in the far-right newspaper Rivarol that the Germans' occupation of France "hadn't been so inhumane".[31] On 13 September 1987 he had already referred to the Nazi gas chambers as "a point of detail of the Second World War." In accordance with the 1990 Gayssot Act prohibiting Holocaust denial and other forms of negationism, he was at the time sentenced to pay 1.2 millions Francs (183,200 Euros).[32]

Bruno Gollnisch, MEP and leader of the European parliamentary group Identity, Tradition and Sovereignty since its creation in early January 2007, was sentenced the same month to three months of prison on probation and 55,000 Euros in damages and interest by Lyon's tribunal correctionnel for the "offense of verbal contestation of the existence of crimes against humanity".[33] On October 11, 2004, Gollnisch had declared:

I do not question the existence of concentration camps but historians could discuss the number of deaths. As to the existence of gas chambers, it is up to historians to make up their minds {de se déterminer}.[34]

Ultimately, Gollnisch was found not guilty by the Cour de cassation on 24 June 2009.[35]

Some FN activists have been prosecuted for illegal acts: on May 1, 1995, Brahim Bouraam was pushed into the Seine River by four FN activists.[36][37] In December 1997, skinhead David Beaune was tried in Le Havre for the death of Imad Bouhoud.[38][39][40] In 1998, Ibrahim Ali, a 17-year-old Frenchman with Comorian origins, was shot dead by three FN billstickers, members of the FN's militia, the Department of Protection-Security (DPS) (15 years, 10 years and 2 years of prison for the group).[36][41]

European issues

The Front National was also one of several parties that backed France's 2005 rejection of the Treaty for a European Constitution. In Le Pen's opinion, France should not join any organisation that could overrule its own national decisions. The FN is the leading member of Euronat, which gathers the most radical "euronationalist" parties. In the European Parliament, it was part of the non-inscrits parties until 2007, when it managed to set up an alliance with other euro-sceptic and nationalist parties, thus reaching the minimum number of MEPs necessary to make up a group for the purposes of the Parliament's standing orders, dubbed Identity, Tradition, and Sovereignty and led by FN member Bruno Gollnisch. Identity, Tradition and Sovereignty however ceased to exist in November 2007, following the defection of the Greater Romania Party.[42]

Others

In January 2007, the party attempted to establish a base within the virtual reality game Second Life; however, their presence was quickly opposed by the international socialist grouping within the game, Second Life Left Unity.[43]

Congresses

MEP (3)

Regional Counselors (118)

List of general secretaries of the FN

Elections

French National Assembly
Election year # of 1st round votes  % of 1st round vote # of 2nd round votes  % of 2nd round vote # of seats
1978 82,743 0.3% — — 0
1981 44,414 0.2% — — 0
1986 2,705,336 9.7% — — 35
1988 2,359,528 9.7% – – 1
1993 3,152,543 13.8% 1,168,160 5.1% 0
1997 3,800,785 14.95% 1,434,854 5.70% 1
2002 2,862,960 11.3% 393,205 1.85% 0
2007 1,116,136 4.29% 17,107 0.08% 0
President of the French Republic
Election year Candidate # of 1st round votes  % of 1st round vote # of 2nd round votes  % of 2nd round vote
1974 Jean-Marie Le Pen 190,921 0.8% — —
1981 — — — — —
1988 Jean-Marie Le Pen 4,376,742 14.5% — —
1995 Jean-Marie Le Pen 4,571,138 15.0% — —
2002 Jean-Marie Le Pen 4,805,307 16.86% 5,525,906 17.79%
2007 Jean-Marie Le Pen 3,835,029 10.44% — —
European Parliament
Election year # of total votes  % of overall vote # of seats won
1984 2,210,334 11.0% 10
1989 2,121,836 11.8% 10
1994 2,050,086 10.5% 11
1999 1,005,225 5.7% 5
2004 1,684,868 9.8% 7
2009 1,091,681 6.3% 3

Previous Logos used by the National Front

National Front logo of France.svg

References

  1. ↑ "Can Le Pen win French election?". London: BBC News. January 8, 2007. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6242585.stm. Retrieved March 25, 2010. 
  2. ↑ "Adhésion - Front National". http://www.adhesions-fn.com/. 
  3. ↑ "CNN Specials - The Haider Effect". CNN. http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2000/eurounion/story/haider. 
  4. ↑ Hainsworth, Paul. 2000. "The Front National: From Ascendancy to Fragmentation on the French Extreme Right." In The Politics of the Extreme Right, ed. Paul Hainsworth, 18-31. London: Pinter.
  5. ↑ "Analysis: Far-right lives to fight again". London: BBC News. May 5, 2002. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1969847.stm. Retrieved March 25, 2010. 
  6. ↑ "Jean-Marie Le Pen renvoyé devant la justice pour ses propos sur l'Occupation". Le Monde. 13 July 2006. http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3224,36-794895@51-776560,0.html/. 
  7. ↑ Marcus, Jonathan (1995). The National Front and French Politics. New York: New York University Press. pp.27-51
  8. ↑ "Bruno-Mégret.com". http://www.bruno-megret.com/article.php3?cat=10&id=358. 
  9. ↑ "IRR: Issues in the French presidential elections". http://www.irr.org.uk/europebulletin/france/extreme_right_politics/1995/ak000006.html. 
  10. ↑ Davies, Peter (2002). The Extreme Right in France, 1789 to the Present. London: Routledge. pp136.
  11. ↑ Marcus, Jonathan (1995). The National Front and French Politics. New York: New York University Press. pp.102-103
  12. ↑ Davies, Peter (2002). The Extreme Right in France. p143.
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 13.3 13.4 13.5 Marcus, Jonathan (1995). The National Front and French Politics. pp.12-26
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 Nonna Mayer, Mariette Sineau, "France:The Front National" in Helga Amsberger, Rechtsextreme Parteien, Leverkusen, Leske & Budrich, 2002, on the website of Sciences-Po (p.4) (English)
  15. ↑ Interview of Pierre-André Taguieff by Valérie Igounet, Paris, 2 avril 1993, quoted by Valérie Igounet, in Histoire du négationnisme en France, Le Seuil, 2000.
  16. ↑ Henry Rousso, "Les habits neufs du négationniste," in L'Histoire n°318, March 2007, pp.26-28 (French)
  17. ↑ Le Point n°1546, 01/22/2007 Le Pen et ses fantômes
  18. ↑ Marcus, Jonathan (1995). The National Front and French Politics. pp.35-39
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 19.2 19.3 19.4 FN on http://www.election-politique.com (French)
  20. ↑ LE LIVRE DANS LES GRIFFES DE L'EXTRÊME DROITE FRANÇAISE, article published in autumn 1999 in Argus, a review published by the Corporation des bibliothécaires professionnels du Québec (French)
  21. ↑ Le Front national impose ses choix à la bibliothèque municipale d'Orange, Le Monde, July 12, 1996 (French)
  22. ↑ M. Douste-Blazy dénonce « les critères de choix des ouvrages » de la bibliothèque d'Orange, Le Monde, July 12, 1996 (French) (subscription) (See here for a search on Le Monde edition of July 12, 1996 concerning this subject)
  23. ↑ « Orange : le rapport qui dénonce la censure FN », in L'Express of July 11, 1996
  24. ↑ "La Provence" boycottée à Orange], in Libération, May 24, 2003 (French)
  25. ↑ E. Lecoeur, Dictionnaire de l'extrême-droite, Larousse 2007, p.215
  26. ↑ 26.0 26.1 26.2 Erwan Lecoeur, 2007, pp.263-264
  27. ↑ Possible récupération d'une appellation usurpée par l'extrême droite, L'Humanité, January 8, 1999 (French)
  28. ↑ La nouvelle bataille des Résistants du vrai "Front national", L'Humanité, January 16, 1999 (French)
  29. ↑ Pascal Riché, Après le "Paquebot", Le Pen vend sa 605 blindée sur eBay, Rue 89, 29 April 2008 (French)
  30. ↑ "La Peugeot de Le Pen à nouveau mise en vente sur ebay". 20 Minutes. 30 April 2008. http://www.20minutes.fr/article/228650/Politique-La-Peugeot-de-Le-Pen-a-nouveau-mise-en-vente-sur-ebay.php. 
  31. ↑ Le Pen: L'Occupation allemande "n'a pas été aussi inhumaine"
  32. ↑ "Jean-Marie Le Pen renvoyé devant la justice pour ses propos sur l'Occupation", Le Monde, July 13, 2006
  33. ↑ "Bruno Gollnisch condamné pour ses propos sur l'Holocauste" (in French). REUTERS cable. L'Express. January 18, 2007. http://www.lexpress.fr/info/quotidien/actu.asp?id=8443. Retrieved January 18, 2007. "délit de contestation de l'existence de crime contre l'humanité par paroles" 
  34. ↑ NEGATIONNISME: Lyon III demande la suspension de Bruno Gollnisch, Le Nouvel Observateur, October 13, 2004 (French)
  35. ↑ Gollnisch blanchi par la Cour de cassation, Le Nouvel Observateur, 24 June 2009 (French)
  36. ↑ 36.0 36.1 Mouloud Aounit: "No to 'ordinary racism'" (president of the MRAP — Movement Against Racism and For Friendship Between Peoples), in L'Humanité, May 21, 1998
  37. ↑ Rapport de la Commission d'enquête parlementaire sur le DPS -- Official report of the inquiery commission of the French Parliament regarding the DPS militia, cited on Voltaire Network's website
  38. ↑ Mort d'Imad Bouhoud: le deuxième skinhead arrêté au Portugal, in L'Humanité, June 3, 1995
  39. ↑ French skinhead gets 18 years for murder, BBC News Monitoring, December 13, 1997
  40. ↑ Flambée de colère au Havre contre les skinheads qui ont noyé Imad, L'Humanité, May 24, 1995
  41. ↑ Enfin des excuses aux parents d'Ibrahim Ali, in L'Humanité, June 19, 1998
  42. ↑ MEPs welcome fall of far-right group EU Observer
  43. ↑ Exploding pigs and volleys of gunfire as Le Pen opens HQ in virtual world, The Guardian, January 20, 2007 (English)

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