After decades of being political pariahs, the far right in France is closer than ever to forming a government after the parliamentary elections, whose first round starts on Sunday and the second on July 7th.
Based on the latest polls, the French far-right party Alarme National (RN) Marina LePen further increased its percentage before the first round of the parliamentary elections and probably collect 37% of the votes, according to research published today in the newspaper The Echoes.
Here are some highlights from his administration dominated by the Le Pen family for more than half a century.
1972: Former soldier Jean-Marie Le Pen founds the National Front, a fringe far-right party made up of Algerian war veterans and French collaborators of the Vichy regime.
1974: Le Pen is a candidate in the presidential elections, but receives less than 1% of the votes. Two years later, his house in Paris is bombed. No perpetrator of the attack was found.
1981: Le Pen is unable to secure a sufficient number of supporters to run in the presidential elections, won by François Mitterrand. Over the next few years, Le Pen gradually attracted new supporters.
1986: The far-right party wins its first seats in the National Assembly.
1987: Le Pen has made derogatory statements about homosexuals with AIDS and numerous statements containing racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic insults, which have provoked outrage that has often put him at risk of legal action against him. However, support among some voters is growing.
1988: Le Pen obtains 14.4% of the vote in the presidential elections. The following year, the National Front obtained more than 10% of the votes in the European elections. It also begins to target Islam and Muslim immigrants as one of its main political concerns.
1995: National Alert candidates win three municipalities in the cities of Toulon, Orange and Marignan, in the south of France, demonstrating their growing electoral popularity.
2002: Le Pen runs for president and obtains 16.86% of the vote, enough to see him face Jacques Chirac in the second round of the presidential election. Reaching the second round is a shock in France and there is widespread disgust that a far-right party managed to register such high numbers. Politicians from the right and left are uniting to prevent Le Pen from winning the second round. Chirac wins with more than 80% of the vote in the second round.
2008: A court sentenced Le Pen to a suspended prison sentence of three months and a fine of 10,000 euros because it considered that the Nazi occupation of France was not “particularly inhumane”.
2011: Le Pen’s daughter Marine Le Pen becomes the new leader of National Alarm after a period in which the party has underperformed in elections and faces increasing financial pressures.
2012: Marine Le Pen runs for president for the first time, but is unsuccessful.
2014: RN experienced a year of great electoral success, gaining control of 11 municipalities and also coming first in the European elections.
2015: Jean-Marie Le Pen is expelled from the party after describing the Holocaust as a “detail” of the Second World War. In the same year, his own daughter excludes him from the party.
2017: Marine Le Pen runs again for president, but loses to Emmanuel Macron. After that defeat, he intensified efforts to make the party more open to a wider electorate, seeking to distance it from its racist and anti-Semitic past. It also imposes a more professional appearance on party deputies, which is essential for their presence in the media and on social networks. In 2018, the party’s name changed to Reunião Nacional (RN).
2022: Jordan Bardela, Le Pen’s 28-year-old protégé, is chosen as the new president of RN.
June 2024: Bardella leads the party into the European elections, shaking Macron’s party, which after suffering a crushing defeat, is forced to call early parliamentary elections. Bardella is the candidate for Prime Minister of RN.
AMP Source