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Populism and the Changing Vision of Front National on European Integration

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Populism and the Changing Vision of Front National on European Integration POPULISM AND THE CHANGING VISION OF FRONT NATIONAL ON EUROPEAN INTEGRATION MA Thesis in European Studies Graduate School for Humanities Universiteit van Amsterdam Author: Mai-Linh Scholten Date: January, 2018 1 1 Author unknown, ‘Front National’, http://globetribune.info/2013/10/17/marine-le-pen-predicts-collapse-of-eu/front- national/, retrieved 18 September 2017. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................................ 3 DEBATE & METHODOLOGY ............................................................................................................................................. 4 1. POPULISM AND THE ROOTS OF FRONT NATIONAL .................................................................... 6 1.1 POPULISM .................................................................................................................................................................... 6 1.2 POUJADISM .................................................................................................................................................................. 8 1.3 ORDRE NOUVEAU....................................................................................................................................................... 9 1.3.1 Gérard Longuet............................................................................................................................................ 11 1.3.2 François Duprat .......................................................................................................................................... 12 1.4 MAURRAS AND PETAIN ........................................................................................................................................... 12 2. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF FRONT NATIONAL ................................................................... 14 2.1 ANTI-REPUBLICANISM AND AUTHORITARIANISM .............................................................................................. 14 2.2 COMMUNICATION, LANGUAGE AND SYMBOLS ..................................................................................................... 15 2.3 MARINE’S FRONT NATIONAL ................................................................................................................................. 17 3. FRONT NATIONAL AND THE IDEA OF A CULTURAL EUROPE .................................................... 21 3.2 JEAN-MARIE'S VISION ............................................................................................................................................. 21 3.2 MARINE’S VISION ..................................................................................................................................................... 22 4. FRONT NATIONAL AND EUROPEAN POLITICAL INTEGRATION ............................................... 24 4.1 EUROSCEPTICISM & EUROFASCISM ...................................................................................................................... 24 4.2 FRONT NATIONAL’S VISION ON EUROPEAN INTEGRATION BEFORE 1990 .................................................... 26 4.3 FRONT NATIONAL’S VISION ON EUROPEAN INTEGRATION SINCE 1990 ........................................................ 27 4.3.1 The European Union and immigration .............................................................................................. 28 4.3.2 The European Union, Russia and Front National .......................................................................... 31 5. THE OPPOSITION TO THE EUROPEAN UNION AS DERIVATIVE OF POPULISM ................... 33 5.1 THREE ‘POPULIST PERIODS’ ................................................................................................................................... 33 5.3 OTHER POPULIST ELEMENTS ................................................................................................................................. 34 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................................................... 37 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................................................... 40 Introduction France has always been a leading country in world politics. Together with China, France is the oldest republic in the world. For centuries, French was the primary political language, and it has been the model for the rest of the civilized world for centuries. However, the French are famous for the characteristic that they are unable to let go of traditions and hold on to them for too long. France missed out on the digital revolution of which English is the primary language, and the country is losing its influence on international grounds. The European Union was once a united force between France and Germany, but nowadays it is mostly Germany that is the leading country. France is also a member of the United Nations Security Council, but in this council, France cannot compete with superpowers such as the United States, Russia, and China. Furthermore, just as other European countries, France was suffering from an economic crisis and the situation still is not stable. The unemployment rate is high with a budgetary deficit. Another critical point in France is the growing problems in the Banlieues, as a result of growing economic inequality in the country. 2 This year, it was for the first time that the French chose between two presidential candidates who were not representatives of the traditional socialist or conservative parties. Defeating Marine le Pen in the second round of the elections, Emmanuel Macron was elected president of the Republic in April 2017. If Marine le Pen had won the elections, there was a considerable chance that France would have left the European Union. For the last decades, Front National is known as a Eurosceptic party. What most people do not know is that the party was pro-European Union until the 1990s. This thesis examines the changing position of Front National towards European integration and looks at the role populism played in this change. It argues that populism is indispensable in this context and that it is rather a strategy or an instrument to gain votes than an ideology or political style. It sees the negative view of Front National regarding European integration as a populist tool to gain votes. Before the 1990s, Jean-Marie le Pen was pro-European cooperation, and in fact he supported an ever closer union. In the 1980s, he even wrote a book, almost a myth, in which he promoted European unity on a political and cultural domain. The main research question is: ‘Is the current attitude of Front National towards the European Union explainable when looking back at the history and nature of the party and to what degree would populism be the incentive?’ The first part of this thesis will elaborate the history and the characteristics of the party in general, to subsequently look at its vision on European integration and the role that populism plays in this vision. 2 Verplancke, M., ‘Mia Doornaert: “De Fransen zijn te koppig om in te zien dat ze verkeerd bezig zijn”’, http://www.demorgen.be/interviewreportage/mia-doornaert-de-fransen-zijn-te-koppig-om-in-te-zien-dat-ze-verkeerd-bezig-zijn-bf88f19f/ retrieved 5 May 2017. This thesis is divided into five chapters. The first chapter will look at the roots of Front National in the French political history of the far right. This chapter treats its predecessors, but also people and movements that were important to the party. The second chapter looks at the general characteristics of Front National. This chapter focusees on the ideals, goals, themes, discourses, methods, use of language and other features. The third chapter looks at the cultural idea of Europe according to Front National. It is divided into a cultural and a political vision on Europe because during the research it became apparent that a cultural Europe and political Europe mean something very different to Front National. This chapter will show that the cultural idea of European unity was, and still is, very important to Front National. The fourth chapter assesses the party's vision regarding political unity in Europe and the role of Euroscepticism. Front National was pro-European integration until the 1990s, but they became anti- European integration ever since. The fifth chapter will show that this change of heart was driven by populism and was not an inevitable outcome of the nationalist ideology like we assume today. It argues that the current position contrasts strongly with the pro-European integration position of the party before 1990 and the lasting sentiment of European cultural unity within the party. This study aims to argue that Front National blames the European Union for the crisis in France and that this is a characteristic populist stance. To support this argument, it argues that Front National is using populist rhetoric in response to the economic and social crises in France in an attempt to increase its support amongst the population. It will show that antipathy towards the European Union is one of three essential populist instruments that the party has been using to blame someone or something for a crisis. The first instrument is that the party linked unemployment to migration and started to blame a group (migrants) for a crisis. This began in 1978 when Jean-Marie le Pen used the quote:
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