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In 2009, the Front National (FN) obtained a mere 6.34% of the vote in the European parliamentary elections. Some pundits began discussing the FN's decline at a time when Nicolas Sarkozy was said to have found the anti-FN recipe: strong leadership and robust right wing rhetoric. Five years later, the illusion has dissipated. During the 2012 presidential election, Marine Le Pen managed to attract 17% of the vote. The FN came out first in the 2014 European elections with a historic score of 24.9%. Why has the proportion of French people who see the party as a danger for democracy fallen from 70% in the early 2000s to 47% in 2013?1 Has the Front National genuinely changed and become more acceptable for an increasing share of the French electorate, or should this new strength be attributed to the context of economic and social hardship that has fuelled populist parties across Europe?
The Front National's presence in French politics is not new. The party was founded in 1972 by Jean-Marie Le Pen, and members of the far right nationalist movements Occident and Ordre Nouveau. It brought together anti-communists who denounced Charles de Gaulle's policy of retreat from Algeria, and developed a nationalist and neo-fascist ideology, though its members numbered only in the hundreds. Some of the FN's founding figures had been part of the collaborationist Milice, the SS and the terrorist Organisation de l'Armée Secrète (OAS), a violent paramilitary group that fought against Algerian independence from France. Jean-Marie Le Pen was a less controversial figure. He had been part of the poujadiste movement in the 1950s, an anti-establishment, anti-elite, and anti-tax movement that defended shopkeepers and craftmakers, led by Pierre Poujade. It took 10 years for the Front National to break through in the French political system and establish itself as one of the most significant pillars of the French right.
Between 1984, when the FN first obtained a double digit result at the European elections, and its failure in 2009, the party maintained a relatively strong presence in French politics. In 2002, Jean-Marie Le Pen managed to qualify for the second round of the presidential election, thereby beating the outgoing Socialist Party prime minister, Lionel Jospin. Jacques Chirac won by a comfortable majority of 82%,...