National Rally

National Rally, far right French political party founded in 1972 by François Duprat and François Brigneau. It is most commonly associated with Jean-Marie Le Pen, who was its leader from 1972 to 2011, and his daughter Marine Le Pen, who succeeded her father in 2011 and led the party until 2022. Since its beginnings, the party has strongly supported French nationalism and controls on immigration, and it often has been accused of fostering xenophobia and antisemitism.

Origins of the National Front and early political successes

In its first decade of existence, the National Front dwelt on the fringes of French political life, representing a uniquely French twist on western Europe’s maturing neofascist movement. Having resurrected slogans used by French fascists in the 1930s, the FN initially appealed to veterans of the Algerian War and to followers of the right-wing populism of the Poujadisme movement led by Pierre Poujade in the 1950s. Indeed, Le Pen himself was closely tied to Poujadisme, having won a seat in the National Assembly in the 1956 election that proved to be the movement’s high point. Electoral success was slow to come for the FN, however, and in 1981 Le Pen failed to obtain the 500 signatures required to secure a place on the presidential ballot.

The party’s fortunes turned in the early 1980s, as it posted strong showings in mayoral elections in Paris and Dreux and won 10 seats in the European Parliament. The FN made further advances into the political mainstream in the 1986 French legislative elections, winning roughly 10 percent of the vote and 35 seats in the National Assembly. That performance was not to be repeated, however, as it owed more to French Pres. François Mitterrand’s manipulation of electoral procedures (changed before the 1986 election from a two-round majoritarian process to a system of proportional representation) than to any real increase in the FN’s popularity. Even though the FN would continue to collect approximately 10 percent of the total vote, after the return of two-round majoritarian voting in 1988, it failed to send more than a handful of representatives to the legislature. Le Pen fared better in the 1988 presidential election, garnering almost 15 percent of the popular vote, and the following year the party retained all 10 of its seats in the European Parliament. Le Pen himself continued to be one of the most divisive personalities in French politics throughout this period, and some of his public comments, which minimized the events of the Holocaust, led to fines and widespread criticism.

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By the 1990s the FN had established itself as a significant force in French politics. In 1995 Le Pen captured more than 15 percent of the vote in the presidential contest, the FN won mayoral elections in Toulon, Orange, and Marignane, and a former FN member was elected mayor of Nice. In spite of these victories, the party continued to characterize itself as an organization outside of the French establishment, and it placed itself in opposition to virtually the entirety of the political mainstream, from the French Communist Party to the Socialist Party to the neo-Gaullist Rally for the Republic. This antagonistic relationship was made apparent in 2002, when Le Pen won a surprise victory over Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin in the first round of the presidential election. In the second round the reaction against Le Pen was overwhelming, as disparate parties united behind incumbent Jacques Chirac to return him to office with the largest margin of victory in the history of the French presidency.

Le Pen’s performance in the 2007 presidential election was far less impressive. Chirac’s longtime rival, Nicolas Sarkozy, ran a campaign that siphoned away potential FN supporters with promises of tougher immigration laws, and Le Pen failed to advance beyond the first round of balloting. The following year a French court imposed a three-month suspended sentence and a €10,000 fine on Le Pen for comments he had made in 2005 that violated France’s statute on Holocaust denial. As the party’s performance at the local and regional level began to falter, Le Pen’s personal behavior became more of a liability than an asset, and it was increasingly clear that his daughter was being groomed to succeed him.

The rise of Marine Le Pen and the creation of the National Rally

Assuming leadership of the party from her father in January 2011, Marine Le Pen distanced herself from the extreme views that traditionally had been associated with her father and the FN, while she continued to present immigration—particularly from Islamic countries—as a threat to France. The telegenic Le Pen led the party to a record showing in the first round of cantonal elections in March 2011, and the FN ultimately prevailed in two districts. In the first round of the 2012 presidential election, she finished third behind Sarkozy and Socialist candidate François Hollande. Although Le Pen did not earn a place in the second round, she won 18 percent of the vote, the highest-ever first-round total for a National Front presidential candidate.

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Remaining a prominent figure in the French political scene, Le Pen continued to recast the FN as a credible alternative to France’s major mainstream parties. As Hollande’s approval ratings sagged, support for the FN surged, and the party performed exceptionally well in local elections in March 2014. As impressive as those results were, they were eclipsed in May 2014, when the FN finished first in elections for the European Parliament. Capturing approximately one-fourth of the vote, the FN rode a wave of Euroskepticism to its best-ever performance in a national election. A bitter feud between Marine and Jean-Marie Le Pen led to the expulsion of Jean-Marie from the party in August 2015.

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After a deadly terrorist attack in Paris in November 2015 left more than 130 dead, the FN capitalized on growing anti-Islamic sentiment. The party performed well in the first round of regional elections in December 2015, but the Socialists strategically withdrew poorly polling candidates ahead of the second round to ensure that the anti-FN vote was not split. The Republicans captured the regional presidency in those areas, and one FN candidate criticized the apparent collusion among the mainstream parties, stating that “there are some victories that shame the winners.” Marine Le Pen characterized the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom in June 2016 and the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States that November as proof that her brand of right-wing populism was on the rise, and a number of polls showed Le Pen in the lead ahead of the April 2017 presidential election. Although Le Pen boasted a strong showing in the first round of polling, she finished a distant second to Emmanuel Macron in the subsequent runoff.

In June 2018 Le Pen announced that the party was changing its name to the National Rally in an effort to stoke populist resistance to the “arrogant tyranny” of the European Union (EU). At that time Le Pen and other party officials were under investigation for the misappropriation of millions of euros in EU funds, but Le Pen denounced the criminal probe as politically motivated. The rebranding of the party did appear to bear some fruit in European Parliament elections in 2019, with the National Rally narrowly edging Macron’s centrist La République En Marche! (LREM). As Macron struggled to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic, Le Pen tried to position the National Rally as a viable alternative to LREM, and opinion polling indicated that National Rally candidates were poised to win key races in the June 2021 regional elections. Both LREM and the National Rally performed below expectations in those contests, however; the center-right Republicans emerged as the clear victors. In November 2022 Le Pen stepped down as leader of the National Rally in order to devote her attention to the party’s parliamentary group. Jordan Bardella, a 27-year-old rising star within the far right, became the first person from outside the Le Pen family to lead the National Rally in half a century.