Victor Mallet, a veteran British foreign correspondent and commentator for the Financial Times, explores how the far right has moved from the fringes to the mainstream in France. In a phone interview, he discussed his new book, “Far-Right France: Le Pen, Bardella and the Future of Europe,” and the rise of the National Rally party. The interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
The National Rally is often described as a party of extreme viewpoints, and one that exists outside of the mainstream. After all your research, visiting French towns that have been changed by the far right and speaking with voters, how has your perspective changed?
I’ve been following the far right on and off for 30 years, so it wasn’t a surprise to find how powerful the party was and how popular it was with voters. A lot of people in Britain are very reluctant to describe their own far-right politicians as extremists, but when they look at the continent they think, “Oh yeah, those neo-Nazis in Germany” or “Those fascists in France.” They have this perception of people with tattoos who are kind of racist thugs.
Why We Wrote This
In his new book, “Far-Right France,” journalist and Financial Times senior editor Victor Mallet examines the far right’s transformation from outside the mainstream to a party garnering the support of 30% to 40% of French voters.
But actually, [the far right] is a mainstream party in the sense that 30% or 40% of French people are expressing support for this party, and the people who support them are not the cliché. They could be middle-class people, accountants, public servants, bakers, or butchers. People I interviewed often said, “I’m not so keen on [the far right’s] policies toward immigration or race but I really support them because I’m fed up with the [current] government.”
Rightly or wrongly, they perceive that this will be a radical shift that will change the government, which they feel has been run by the same kind of people for the last 50 years.
You wrote that Jordan Bardella, president of the National Rally, said that the party’s project is “to change everything without destroying anything.” Is that possible?
So, first, you have the issue of whether or not they will do what they say they’ll do [if they win the presidency]. The signs are that on immigration they will be very tough and quite Trumpian in the way they run the system. They’re going to try and change the constitution; they’re going to try and reduce the number of immigrants to a trickle; they’re going to deprive noncitizens of their rights [like social security benefits], which essentially requires a constitutional change. “Liberty, equality, fraternity,” which is a universal idea since the French Revolution, will now be applied purely to French citizens. These are radical changes.
Could institutions in France be disrupted as quickly as in the U.S.?
It is possible, but it will mean the party having control not only of the Élysée Palace but also of the National Assembly. In other words, winning two elections. The National Assembly election will be called almost inevitably by whoever is president, whether it’s the far right or somebody else. If [the far right] then got control of the National Assembly as well, which has traditionally happened in France, that gives them a lot of power.
In the case of Germany, for example, if the AfD [Alternative for Germany party] was in government – even if it was the biggest party – it would almost certainly be in a coalition. [Italian Prime Minister] Giorgia Meloni is in a coalition. So, to some extent, those parties are constrained by their coalition.
There is also the matter of whether or not the constitutional court would push back against some of the constitutional changes. I’ve had people tell me, “Yes, that would be a point of resistance.” But the far right wants to change the justice system and the media, which they feel are biased toward the left.
Are the issues that have traditionally been at the forefront of far-right politics still resonating? Is their stance on immigration still relevant? What about the environment?
Immigration isn’t always top-of-the-agenda for French voters. For the National Rally, because immigration has always been their calling card – as it was for [President Donald] Trump and Brexiters – they can count on those voters who are angry and concerned about immigration. But what they need to win in the French two-round system is to attract another 15% or 20% of the voters who are not necessarily obsessed by immigration, but are concerned about other things.
On the environment issue, it’s really an energy price issue for the National Rally. They’re not denying climate change, but they’re saying that the [green energy] transition is too painful for French consumers, that we shouldn’t punish them with green fuel taxes or try to make too much effort toward carbon neutrality.
When I asked Bardella about climate change, he said that we shouldn’t deny the reality of climate change because that would be making the same mistake that the left made for decades in denying that immigration was an issue.
You write about how Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of the far-right National Front party, which Marine Le Pen renamed the National Rally, once said that “A nice FN is of no use to anyone.” Will the change in leadership help or hinder the party in the upcoming elections?
That’s the big tension: between Marine Le Pen, who is her father’s daughter, and Bardella. Bardella is more open to the rest of the right coming over. The center right is already splitting and some of them are coming over to the far right. And that’s not just politicians, that’s also the voters.
But this issue of whether the detoxification policy by Marine Le Pen is watering down the party too much, Jean-Marie Le Pen very much believed that Marine Le Pen was making a mistake. He said, “Actually, people like the devil.” He warned Marine Le Pen that if she was too normal, then the party would lose its cachet. You can see that Marine Le Pen has brought the party very slightly closer to the center, very slightly further away from the far right.
For example, the [far-right] AfD in Germany is considered too toxic for the French and they don’t want to associate with people who are sometimes openly neo-Nazi. The [French far right] are not linked with them in the European Parliament because they don’t like their policies and neither do French voters.
So, in that sense, this [watering down] is not damaging the party. And if you look at the polls and you look at voting records, so far, it hasn’t done them any harm. While [Marine Le Pen] is very slightly moving away from the extreme toward the center, the rest of French society and the rest of Europe is actually moving more toward the right.