LAURA STEVENS/CAMERALAURA PRESS Face of the future: Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, niece of leader , is challenging her aunt’s politics

30 | | 1-7 NOVEMBER 2019 THE CLOSING OF THE CONSERVATIVE MIND Between revolution and reaction In the latest article in our series, we look at the of French politics and the emergence of Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, who aspires to unite the far right with the traditional Catholic right By Hugo Drochon

he primaries to choose the can- to today”). It has had several editions, no- parliament but suffrage was strictly limited didate for in the tably in 1963 and in 1968, when it changed to propertied men. Thiers was in favour of 2017 French presidential election its name to Les Droites en ; the fourth expanding suffrage, and organised several took place in November 2016. and final edition was published in 1982. colourful campaign banquets to promote There were three main candi- Rémond’s thesis, as the 2016 primaries it, but Guizot was implacably opposed. His Tdates: the early frontrunner Alain Juppé, show, still captures something essential answer to those who wanted to vote was the former president and about French politics. “enrichissez-vous!” (enrich yourself!). In the outsider François Fillon. To everyone’s Legitimists can be traced back to the roy- short: earn enough money so that you have surprise, Fillon came first in the first round alists who rejected the French Revolution the right to vote. The monarchy was over- of voting on 20 November, relegating Juppé and value tradition, Catholicism and order. thrown by the popular revolution of 1848. into second place and eliminating the for- They supported the House of Bourbon, and The Bonapartists hark back to the “little mer president he had served under as prime were in power during the Bourbon Res- general” himself, but they came to promi- minister. In the second round, Fillon beat toration after the fall of Napoleon in 1815: nence after 1848 when Napoleon’s nephew Juppé by winning more than 66 per cent of they attempted – and failed – to reverse the Napoleon III discarded the Second Repub- the vote. changes inaugurated by the revolution and lic, to which he’d been elected president, to What was striking about the contest is restore the Old Regime to France. found the Second French Empire in 1852. that each candidate seemed to incarnate one They were overthrown during the July Bonapartism is associated with a strong of the three “rights” traditionally associated Revolution of 1830, when the Orléanists charismatic leader who legitimises his rule with France: the “liberal” Juppé, the “au- came to power. The Orléanists support- through plebiscites, thereby integrating the thoritarian” Sarkozy and the “traditional- ed constitutional monarchy under Louis lower classes, in contrast to the old nobil- ist” Fillon. Juppé was the modernising “Or- Philippe of the House of Orléans and were ity (Legitimists) or the upper classes (Or- léanist”, keen on reform. Sarkozy was the liberals, especially economically. The pe- léanists), into politics. Like the Orléanists, populist and authoritarian “Bonapartist”, riod is closely associated with banking, who tried to reconcile the French Revolu- who had scant regard for intermediary bod- industry and finance; Louis Philippe was tion with the monarchy, the Bonapartists ies. Fillon was the “Legitimist”, relying on known as the “Bourgeois King”. The two accept the legacy of the revolution and call the nostalgic conservative Catholic vote. dominant figures were the left-of-centre for a strong nationalist state. It was the historian René Rémond who Adolphe Thiers and the right-of-centre Throughout the four editions of his book elaborated the thesis of the “three rights” François Guizot, whom the king favoured. Rémond tried to keep his thesis up to date. in his 1954 book La Droite en France de 1815 Today we might call these two men “aris- After the fall of the Bourbons the reac-

à nos jours (“The right in France from 1815 tocratic-liberals”: they were in favour of tionary “Legitimist” faction settled into t

1-7 NOVEMBER 2019 | NEW STATESMAN | 31 t opposition, but it made a return in the social and economic liberalisation, mod- May were won by Marine Le Pen’s re-­ 20th century through the Action Française, ernisation and a firm commitment to the baptised National Rally (from the historic a nationalist, anti-Semitic group founded European project, of which de Gaulle had FN), which edged out Macron’s Renew in reaction to the Dreyfus affair. It grew to been critical. When Chirac came to power Europe list. As they did with Macron’s La prominence in the interwar years under the in 1995, he reinstated French state author- République En Marche!, the elections con- leadership of , becoming a ity, and returned to the dirigiste principles firmed the anchoring of the National Rally royalist, counter-revolutionary, anti-par- of how to run the economy. (RN) in French political life. But here we liamentary and anti-liberal movement. It If it hadn’t been for “Penelopegate” – come to the limits of Rémond’s “three supported Catholic (that Ca- the “fake jobs” scandal engulfing Fillon’s rights”. Where does the National Rally fit tholicism should be the state religion) as English wife, Penelope, and questions about in? Should there also be a “fourth” right? well as the collaborationist Vichy regime who was paying for his fine tailored suits – That is the view the Israeli historian Zeev and Marshal Pétain, becoming entwined Fillon might today be . Sternhell put forward in his 1978 book La with fascism, with which it has a compli- He didn’t miss out by much, claiming 20 Droite révolutionnaire, 1885-1914: Les origines cated relationship. per cent of the vote in the first round of the françaises du fascisme (“The revolutionary The Orléanists came back to power in elections in April 2017 and finishing third, right, 1885-1914: the French origins of fas- the aftermath of Napoleon III’s defeat just a little over a percentage point behind cism”). In it he argued that there exists a dis- tinct fourth “revolutionary” right in France: it is revolutionary because although it rejects As they did with Macron’s En Marche! the French Revolution like the “Legitimist” right, with which it shares certain character- party, the elections anchored the istics, it does not call for the return to the Old Regime. Instead it calls for the establishment National Rally in French political life of a new regime: fascism. For Sternhell, the revolutionary right cannot be simply sub- sumed under the “Legitimist” label as it in- to Bismarck in the Franco-Prussian War Marine Le Pen, who came second. Em- corporates elements of the radical left: it is a of 1870, which led to the collapse of the manuel Macron won 24 per cent in the merger of George Sorel’s revolutionary syn- Second Empire. Adolphe Thiers re- first round and defeated Le Pen in the sec- dicalism and the Action Française. turned to become the first president of the ond round of the contest on 7 May, 66 to Third Republic (1870-1940), where he put 34 per cent. rance has long been home to many down the Paris Commune and forced the The moment that best captured Fillon’s of the leading theorists of the far- Prussian troops to leave two years ahead doomed candidacy was the rally he held right, but Sternhell’s thesis of a of schedule. In his revised 1982 edition, on the Trocadero in Paris on 5 March 2017, specifically French fascism and its Rémond classified the liberal presidency of where he stoically gave a speech in heavy incarnation in the Vichy regime, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing (1974-1981) as an rain. At that point most of his party had Fparticularly in his subsequent book Ni droite Orléanist presidency. deserted him because of the scandals, but ni gauche: L’idéologie fasciste en France a large crowd had been bussed in because (Neither Left Nor Right: Fascist Ideology in he Fifth Republic, Charles de of the efforts of “Sens Commun” (Com- France), has been an ongoing source of con- Gaulle and are all mon Sense). This is a micro-party within troversy. And yet, isn’t the phrase “neither instances of nationalist Bona- the Republicans, founded on the back of the left nor right” precisely one of Marine Le partism. De Gaulle was char- 2013 anti-gay marriage protests known as Pen’s slogans? ( has used it too ismatic and authoritarian. He the “Manif pour tous”. These conservative in the UK.) Tpositioned himself above the party politi- Catholics came out on the day for Fillon, as When Marine Le Pen became leader cal fray and ruled through plebiscite, the they had to help him win the primaries. of the FN in 2011 her aim was to break the centralised state being the main actor of It has been reported that Fillon might glass ceiling of 18 per cent of the vote her political reform. The Fifth Republic, have had some support from : he father Jean-Marie Le Pen had achieved founded in 1958, institutionalised that form called Putin the defender of Christians in as party leader in 2002, when he reached of rule, so that today the structures of the the Middle East. In supporting both Fillon the second round of the presidential elec- French state, with a powerful president, and Le Pen – he met the latter in Moscow tion, losing to Chirac. She achieved this remain Bonapartist. during the campaign and offered loans to ambition by winning 34 per cent of the vote The ongoing struggle between the Orlé- the National Front (FN) – Putin thought he against Macron. anist and Bonapartist right during the Fifth had his bases covered. Macron was smeared How did she do it? If Le Pen senior Republic is well captured by the failed re- during the campaign: there were reports was nicknamed the “Devil of the Re- election campaign of Giscard in 1981. He lost on Russian networks that he was in a rela- public”, his youngest daughter has set to the Socialist François Mitterrand in large tionship with Mathieu Gallet, chairman of about “de-demonising”­ the party, break- part because , who had taken Radio France, and that the “Jewish lobby” ing with her father over Holocaust de- on the Gaullist mantle, refused to back him. supported him. nial (she formally expelled him in 2015) Giscard had served under De Gaulle, but In the event, Macron’s victory destabi- and purging skinheads and other extreme had set up his own more liberal party with- lised the balance of French politics. The old groups from rallies. Her acceptance of the in the Gaullist coalition, and had expressed left vs right binary has in large part been re- democratic rules of the game militates some reservations over de Gaulle’s plebisci- placed by the opposition between a liberal, against Sternhell’s view of the existence tary rule, which Mitterrand characterised as pro-European centrism, as represented by of French fascism – although he was a “permanent coup d’état”. Macron, and a nationalist, populist far-right. to point out that the French far-right in Giscard’s presidency was marked by The elections in the end came round to accepting elections.

32 | NEW STATESMAN | 1-7 NOVEMBER 2019 comfortable around gay people) to advocate for “” – France’s exit from either the EU or the – during the presidential election. That backfired, as older voters were concerned about their pensions and savings, and the debacle on the other side of the Channel wasn’t particularly edifying. Leaving the eurozone isn’t a vote winner in France, and after the election Le Pen fired Philippot and dropped the policy.

acron has been accused of playing with fire by mak- ing French politics a contest between him and Le Pen: if he loses does that mean Le MPen will become president? In truth, it is difficult to see the RN gaining more than 40 per cent of the vote in the second round of a presidential contest. However, there is an emerging politician of the right who is attracting interest and whose mission is to unite the far right and Long shadows: leader of , Marshal Pétain (right), with General Franco in 1940 the traditional Catholic right. She is Le Pen’s younger and equally blonde (seemingly a The origins of the Front National are to too. Today Le Pen’s RN has the largest share necessity for populists nowadays) niece be found in the short-lived Poujadist move- of the working-class vote. Marion Maréchal-Le Pen. ment of the 1950s. This was a revolt of small Much of this shift can be attributed to Maréchal retains the libertarian anti-tax southern Catholic provincial shopkeepers her former right-hand man Florian Philip- economics of her Poujadist predecessors against taxes, the (“Jewish”) Parisian elite pot. He is an openly gay graduate of the but she is also socially conservative: al- and immigration. If the movement faded elite École Nationale d’Administration. He though she too is divorced and has a daugh- after the creation of the Fifth Republic in started his political career close to Jean- ter, she is Catholic, pro-life and anti-immi- 1958 – Pierre Poujade, the leader, supported Pierre Chevènement, a former Socialist gration. Nor is she as anti-European as one the centrist in 1965 and voted minister who resigned over Mitterrand’s might assume: Jean-Marie Le Pen at first for Mitterrand in 1981 – it marked French pro-­European stance. He was the driving supported European integration, which he political life. It was there that a young fire- force behind the new souverainiste (pro- thought would increase France’s prestige, brand by the name of Jean-Marie Le Pen first French sovereignty) and economic national- and Maréchal continues to hold that view, entered politics, and he went on to found ist platform of the FN. Philippot pushed Le wanting to balance the EU back in favour

the FN, whose main electorate at the time Pen (who is twice-divorced, pro-choice and of France. But the most important issue t was the “pieds-noirs”, the white European settlers who had been forced out of Algeria during the war of independence.

he FN was at first economically libertarian, identitarian Catho- lic and anti-immigration. But that electorate can get you only so far. Marine Le Pen began to Thunt on the old grounds of the moribund Communist Party. She got her political break in the north, where she became a regional councillor in the Nord-Pas-de- Calais, the former mining region blighted by deindustrialisation. There she saw an opportunity to expand the FN vote: while immigration remains the main platform in the south, in the north she married it with . Here is an echo of Sternhell’s thesis: the French far-right comes about through the mixing of the far-left and the far-right. Sternhell reminds us also that although there were revolutionary “red” trade un- t THREE LIONS/KEYSTONE/HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES ions, there were reactionary “yellow” ones

1-7 NOVEMBER 2019 | NEW STATESMAN | 33 t for her is to defend Christians against as Macron’s, which redefines the centre conservative Catholics but he tried to ap- Muslims. As she put it in June 2016 during ground, the left-right opposition in France peal more broadly to the right through a an interview on the French news channel tends to reassert itself. Maréchal’s ambition neoliberal economic programme, more ex- BFMTV: “A father is afraid of his daughter is to form a “union of the right”, bringing all treme than anything Macron was offering. wearing a burqa. It doesn’t matter whether the rights together. This strategy is a thin- This combination of Legitimist Catholic she will buy it with francs or .” ly veiled rejection of her aunt’s approach, and libertarian neoliberal strands would be Maréchal and Marine Le Pen were once which tries to be “neither left nor right”; Maréchal’s most natural habitat, and af- close but their relationship has become Maréchal believes the pathway to the presi- ter the 2017 election she dropped “Le Pen” strained: even though Maréchal was, at 22, dency lies on the right. Historically that from her surname, distancing herself from the youngest deputy in modern political certainly seems to have been the case, and the RN brand. history to enter the French parliament in the old idea was to bring the Bonapartist The “Legitimist” base still exists, but only 2012 (the previous youngest was Saint-Just and Orléanist strands together, as exem- represents about 8 per cent of the voting in 1791), Marine publicly rebuked her niece plified by the tussles between Giscard and share: what the Republicans, stripped down in 2017 by saying she would not be made a Chirac. But Sarkozy broke new ground to their very bones, were able to achieve in minister if she became president because of by combining authoritarian Bonapartism the European elections in May. The problem her lack of experience. Maréchal also clashed with elements of the nationalist far-right, for Maréchal is that the liberal right has been with Philippot over abortion. especially on immigration and identity is- largely captured by Macron, and his strategy has been to drive a wedge between liberals and conservatives by opposing “progres- Maréchal’s ambition is to bring all the sives” against “reactionaries”. For Maréchal to succeed, she would rights together. This strategy is a thinly need to generate a new conservative pole, combining conservative social values with veiled rejection of her aunt’s approach neoliberal economics. She would, in short, need to endorse the politics of the Atlan- ticist of the late 1970s, and be- After the 2017 election, Maréchal retired sues (he set up, for example, a “Ministry for come a sort of French . from politics to found the far-right Institute National Identity”). Sternhell was right to point out the ex- for Social Sciences, Economics and Politics, istence of a in France, one that a training school in . There she hopes aréchal faces formidable combined elements of the far-left and the to educate the future intellectual shock obstacles. The first, most far-right. But he also correctly saw that the troops of the culture wars. Its programme obvious one, is her aunt: radical right on its own would never be of speakers has included the xenophobic Marine Le Pen’s authority strong enough to come to power without polemicist Éric Zemmour, the essayist within the National Rally is outside assistance. The bulwark against François Bousquet, and the transhumanist­ Muncontested, and she will have a hard time its rise remains the vibrancy of the “three surgeon Laurent Alexandre. dislodging her. rights”: and uniting them is still the route to Maréchal has kept active, commenting A more propitious route would be to go power in France today. l on events in the media, organising dinners hunting on Fillon’s old turf of the “Tro- Hugo Drochon is the author of “Nietzsche’s with supporters and, as Mark Lilla reported cadero right”: Fillon’s support base was Great Politics” (Princeton University Press) in the New York Review of Books, attending the American Conservative Political Ac- tion Conference (CPAC) in February 2018. Lilla noted how her on individual- ism struck a strange chord at a meeting of private property absolutists and gun-rights fanatics (the attack on individualism as the root cause of all social evils has been a staple of reactionary ideology since the French Revolution). Inspired by the CPAC event, Maréchal or- ganised her own “Convention of the Right” in September, bringing together Zemmour and Alexandre. She also invited the phi- losopher Raphaël Enthoven as a respond- ent to their planned debate on a “critique of the elites”. In a recent article in Atlantico, a Exploring trust, identity and libertarian online magazine, she outlined health in a changing world her vision. Alongside the usual tropes about immigration, she repeated her attack on “international finance”, and defended the artisan small businesses and families, Free exhibition wellcomecollection.org Wellcome’s free museum and whom she believed were taxed too much by Now open Euston Euston Square library for the incurably curious the French state. It was distinctly Poujadist. After a transformative presidency such

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