12	 ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 28 NO 6, DECEMBER 2012
Anne Friederike
Delouis
Anne Friederike Delouis
is a Lecturer in Social
Anthropology at the
University of Orléans,
France. She has worked
on cultural memory and
metaphors in political
discourse. Her current
research focuses on German
minorities in Europe and the
Americas. Her email is
anne.delouis@univ-orleans.fr.
Extreme right-wing parties are faring well in these crisisriddled
times: Chrysi Avgi (Golden Dawn) obtained an
unprecedented 7 % of the vote in the Greek parliamentary
elections of 6 May and the re-run on 17 June. The
‘Party for Freedom’succeeded in bringing down the Dutch
minority government in April. In several European countries
– Austria, Hungary, Finland – far-right parties garner
more than 15 % of the popular vote.
From April to June of this year, all eyes were on France
where two significant elections took place. More than 6.4
million French citizens, i.e. about 18 % of the electorate,
voted for the candidate of the Front National, Marine Le
Pen, in the first round of the presidential elections on 22
April. This result was more than she had been credited for
in the latest opinion polls before the election. She thus
managed to mobilize more voters than her father, JeanMarie
Le Pen, had gathered ten years before when he proceeded
to the second round of the elections – the greatest
success of the French far-right party so far.
Such a high level of far-right votes can seem surprising
in a country that prides itself on being instrumental in the
history of human rights, that has enshrined the equality
of all, regardless of their origin, at the very beginning of
its constitution, and that brandishes the Republican ideals
of ‘liberty – equality – fraternity’ on countless public
buildings.
Who are these 6.4 million, and what has motivated their
vote? Did they act on the spur of the moment? Should they
be seen as ‘protest voters’ ready to fall back into the political
mainstream if their grievances are dealt with?1
Or are
they outright racists, hostile to democracy, and needing to
be educated so as to become better citizens?
Socio-economic and geographical statistics yield some
basic facts: the Front National appeals particularly to
voters living in the north and east of France, and to those
in the countryside rather than city-dwellers; a majority of
them are male, but the gender gap is closing. Voters aged
between 35 and 44 preferred Marine Le Pen to Nicolas
Sarkozy, but put her in second place after François
Hollande. She came first among working class voters, a
fact that must worry the parties on the left.
But these statistical insights offer little in the way of
an explanation. Ethnography should be of help here but
comes up against a number of difficulties: potentially xenophobic
nationalists are a particularly unpleasant research
topic for social scientists. The few who have ventured
into that terrain have met with tremendous complications
when trying to position themselves (Bizeul 2003). Gaining
access is a problem that can be solved rather easily as long
as one is interested in working with party members and
officials who by definition have taken a public stance in
favour of Front National ideas (Crépon 2012). However,
more than 98 % of Front National voters do not belong
to this category. Far-right thinking is laden with taboo in
France and cannot even be disclosed to family and friends
in many cases. So how is one to understand who really
votes on the far right and why?
An increasing number of extreme right voters reveal
their political opinions anonymously on certain internet
sites, often all the more vigorously as they have to keep
their views under wraps in ‘normal’ life. One internet site
in particular contains a wealth of life-stories written by
scores of people attracted to far-right ideas. Hundreds have
answered a call there to tell their personal story about what
led them to change their worldview and start voting on
the far right.2
This collection of personal accounts provides
a unique insight into experiences, perceptions and
argumentations that cannot be gained by any other means.
Although this material has obvious limitations when compared
to traditional in-depth ethnography, many of these
narratives are particularly interesting because they illustrate
the thinking of new, shifting and even potential future
voters. The variety of experiences told and views given is
remarkable. No single all-explanatory factor or particular
socio-economic background stands out. Some general
observations can be made however.
Awakenings
The ‘opinion turn’towards the far right can be very sudden.
Voters compare such brutal ‘awakenings’ to a ‘slap in the
face’. For others, the process is slow and progressive, a
‘long maturation’ which may come about in several ‘acts’.
In both cases, contributors use the same metaphor to
account for their ‘turn’ to the right: something or someone
‘opened their eyes’; they – slowly or suddenly – realized
that they had been ‘blind’before; one day they decided not
to keep their ‘eyes closed’any longer, to ‘stop burying their
heads in the sand’. They lifted their eyes and ‘saw the sunlight’
while many of their compatriots still ‘wear blinkers’
and need to be ‘woken up’ in their turn. These images
bring Plato’s allegory of the cave to mind. Changing one’s
political opinion is portrayed as a cognitive liberation, an
irreversible step onto a new level of knowledge. Some
compare the experience of emerging into a parallel reality
to the 1999 science fiction film The Matrix in which some
humans manage to disconnect themselves from an artificial
thought world the rest of mankind is being forcefully
kept in.
So what makes people ‘see the truth’, gradually or all of
a sudden? There seem to be three major contributing factors.
In some cases, the conversion to the political extreme
right is the result of an intellectual itinerary. Many contributors
to the forum give examples of readings that influenced
them. Several confess a love for French history,
which often reaches back to childhood. Books on Celts,
Romans, the Bourbon kings, Napoleon, great Frenchmen
Liberté, égalité, fraternité?
Views from the far-right fringe in France
Fig. 1. Marine Le Pen’s
presidential campaign poster,
April 2012.
FRONTNATIONAL
ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 28 NO 6, DECEMBER 2012	 13
and Frenchwomen are cited as inspirations. Reading
about French history is quoted as having various effects:
some say that this traditional kind of historical knowledge
‘vaccinated’ them against modern day reinterpretations;
others noticed the discrepancy between the France
of yore and that of now through their readings. Oft-quoted
literary authors include Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821),
Léon Bloy (1846-1917), Maurice Barrès (1862-1923),
Charles Maurras (1868-1952), Georges Bernanos (1888-
1948), Céline (1894-1961), Michel Houellebecq (born
1956), Maurice G. Dantec (born 1958), and Philippe
Muray (1965-2006), some of them distinctly counter-revolutionary,
royalist, racist, anti-Semitic or anti-Islamic,
others less so.
Additional influences are writers and radio broadcasters
Alain Finkielkraut and Eric Zemmour, the independent
right-wing radio station Radio Courtoisie, nationalistic
periodicals Le Présent or Rivarol, internet sites such as
www.fdesouche.com, ripostelaique.com or fr.novopress.
info, often chanced upon while searching for information
about a particular incident, or recommended by a
friend. Purely ‘intellectual’ conversions to the extreme
right are rare, however; other factors usually enter into
the equation.
A new look at recent history
Amajority of contributors mention events in recent history
that made them think and ‘turn’ towards the far right. In
chronological order, these events include the election of
socialist President François Mitterrand in 1981; the subsequent
decline of the steel and mining industry; an antiracism
campaign orchestrated by the pro-socialist NGO
SOS-Racisme in the mid-1980s, seen as ‘anti-French’,
hypocritical and unwarranted for. While such earlier
events left their mark on those aged 40 and above, a great
number of contributors of all ages (from 15 to over 70)
were shocked by 9/11 and some inappropriate reactions
in France: they remember that students of North African
origin refused to hold a minute of silence at school and that
some French Muslims reportedly said the USA deserved
to be attacked. They also allege to have witnessed celebrations
in some Parisian suburbs on that day.
A number of forum contributors recall the infamous
football match pitting France against Algeria on 6 October
2001, when several thousand French citizens of presumably
Algerian origin booed the French anthem in the presence
of the French Prime Minister and eventually invaded
the pitch. Spectators hurled various objects at the presidential
stand. Two female ministers were injured. Some
months later, the 2002 elections saw Jean-Marie Le Pen,
the then president of the Front National, at the second
round, set against the centre-right candidate Jacques
Chirac; half a million Parisians demonstrated against
this undesired result (thus, against democracy, far-right
militants would say). North African flags were waved at
Chirac’s victory party.
Many were stunned by the 2005 riots in several French
towns with what they perceived as biased media coverage,
a weak response of the state and no outright public
condemnation by immigrant community leaders. Blazing
libraries, kindergartens and schools were a particularly
shocking sight. When Parisian students demonstrated
against a new precarious form of work contracts in the
spring of 2006, some were assaulted by young people
from the suburbs. Recently, streets have regularly been
cordoned off during open-air Friday prayers in Paris
(due to lack of space in the mosques that are few and far
between in the French capital). One might also include
in this somewhat eclectic list the unruly behaviour of the
French football team during the world championships in
South Africa, culminating in the Knysna training ground
mutiny on 20 June 2010, which was seen as a national
disgrace by some.
This string of events is taken to reveal the existence of a
culturally different, hostile and potentially dangerous community
on French soil, its increasing influence condoned
by governing elites and the media who simultaneously
restrain the expression of critical viewpoints. Naturally, a
similarly selective, ‘politically correct’ rewriting of recent
history could prove exactly the opposite. The important
point here is that incidents occurring every day – petty
crime, judicial decisions, certain political statements – are
constantly being relayed by a number of self-appointed
‘internet news agencies’ or ‘current affairs blogs’ which
back up this essentially xenophobic reinterpretation of
recent history. Websites play an active role in sustaining a
far-right vision of current affairs, with every hand-picked
and highlighted news item feeding into this alternative
version of truth.
Living together
However, hardly anybody turns to the far right without
having some personal experiences which justify such a
change of mind in their eyes.
In some cases, people go as far back as to remember
childhood events. When he was a little boy, one person,
for example, on asking why an adopted girl was black,
was slapped in the face by his grandmother, exposed as
a ‘racist’ and humiliated in front of the entire family. A
gang of youths stole ‘Dewie’s’ yoyo when he was 10
years old, but instead of helping their son, his parents
reprimanded him for referring to them as ‘Arabs’ and
said that ‘the poor boys don’t have any yoyos of their
own’.3
Just as for accounts of religious conversions, it
is rather impossible to separate ‘preconversion crisis
and events from their postconversion reconstruction’
(Cucchiari 1988: 429). Childhood anecdotes such as
these gain a political significance only at the moment
when they are recalled and inserted into a narrative.
These kinds of memories tend to feature candid, wellmeaning
children or youngsters, and unfair authority figures.
Thus, many contributors to the discussion thread
list experiences and observations made at school: pupils
of African origin rule in the courtyard and the classroom,
deal drugs, harass white girls and bully white boys; they
may even set the teachers’ staffroom on fire, according
to some accounts.
‘Anti-French racism’ is reported to be frequent. Many
are retrospectively shocked at their teachers’ attitude: they
did not protect students, found excuses for violent and
offensive behaviour, accepted ‘you dirty Frenchman’, but
sanctioned ‘dirty Arab’ as an insult, their former students
say. When ‘50 Arabs’ reportedly knocked a white boy
unconscious in front of a school, no teacher intervened;
a social worker explained to a 15-year-old that he needed
Fig. 2. The Fdesouche
webpage displays clichéd
symbols of Frenchness.
FDESOUCHE
14	 ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 28 NO 6, DECEMBER 2012
1. Nicolas Sarkozy
wagered on this hypothesis
between the two rounds of
the presidential elections,
inflecting his discourse
towards the right. This
strategy did not pay off;
only a few far-right voters
switched their allegiance.
2. These stories feature
under the heading ‘opinion
turns’ (‘virages d’opinion’) on
the website www.fdesouche.
com. This site is ideologically
close to the Front National,
but is not officially sponsored
by the party. ‘François de
Souche’ is a pun on the rather
untranslatable ‘Français de
souche’, i.e. a ‘native of old
French stock’, a term that
is deemed racist. The site is
frequently subject to cyber
attacks. A part of the stories
quoted have been lost in
one such attack and cannot
be accessed anymore, but
can be obtained from the
author on demand. More
than 500 accounts of various
lengths have been published
from 2008 to June 2012.
Fdesouche.com belongs to
the 700 most visited websites
in France, with more than 81
million visits by June 2012
and about 2 million visits per
month.
3. ‘Rascar capac’,
testimony on 5 September
2008; ‘Dewie’, 1 September
2008.
4. ‘Thomas’, 1 September
2008; ‘Luciux’, 28 September
2009; ‘Charles Lesage’, 1
December 2009.
5. ‘Dlfr’, 2 November
2008; ‘Lulla’, 4 February
2010; ‘Wotan’, 8 April 2012;
‘Natacha3’, 14 April 2012.
6. For the 2012
presidential elections,
Marine Le Pen’s programme
advocated a stronger authority
of the state and its civil
servants; support for French
farming, commerce and
crafts; reindustrialization; a
‘Europe of nations’ including
Russia and Switzerland, but
without Turkey; returning
to a national currency;
leaving NATO; political
pluralism, transparency,
freedom of the press; and,
perhaps most significantly,
stopping legal and illegal
immigration, combatting
communitarianism, as well as
ending positive discrimination
schemes (www.frontnational.
com).
to understand that he was being punched and beaten by
young people of immigrant origin simply because ‘they
are bored’.4
In these stories, state schools are represented
as a microcosm of society, with white students suffering
at the hands of a minority of violent ruffians and authority
figures failing to protect them.
In another typical kind of narrative, certain forum members
moved from the countryside to the capital to earn a
university degree or to start their first job. That is when
they discovered the Parisian ‘jungle’: attacks, attempted or
actual rape, anti-French graffiti on the walls, helpless police
officers who try to push offenders beyond the city limits.
Likewise, many people describe how they perceive the
everyday reality of living with immigrant neighbours,
mentioning disturbances such as unpleasant smells (emanating
from a petrol-fuelled barbecue in a courtyard, for
example), dirt, spitting, vandalism, and cruelty against
animals. Usually, an accumulation of real or perceived
problems, rather than an isolated incident, provokes people’s
turns to the right. ‘Dlfr’s’ lower middle-class parents
educated him to respect minority groups, and taught him
the values of work and family, he says. At age 9, he started
having brawls with ‘Arab’ youngsters, one of whom stole
hisWalkman.Oneofhisblond-hairedfriendswasassaulted
because he had spoken to the girlfriend of another youngster.
His ‘blond-haired, blue-eyed’ cousin eloped with a
certain Mouloud and regretted it later. A friend of his sister
was reportedly raped and disfigured by an illegal immigrant.
One of his girlfriends told him that she was raped
by ‘three Arabs and two Blacks’ at age 13. He could write
‘novels’ full of more observations like these.
‘Lulla’, a 24-year-old lawyer, says that she is being
insulted every day (‘French slut’, ‘White’). Her family
moved out of a difficult multi-ethnic neighbourhood in
1980, having suffered from numerous acts of violence
(spitting, theft, vandalism, the killing of their cat). People
throw stones at her husband and his team of professional
firefighters when they intervene to save lives. Her best
friend was assaulted in her car while she was pregnant,
she then lost the baby.
‘Wotan’ was ‘tortured’ by a gang during an entire afternoon
and left for dead when he was 8 years old; he had
ventured onto ‘their’ territory of the neighbourhood. An
ex-girlfriend of his was gang-raped, but the police refused
to take her statement because she had been drunk. His present
partner works at a public primary school where halal
food is allegedly being served to all pupils, Muslim or not.
Two ‘Arabs’ stole the scooter of his best friend. They beat
her up and knocked some of her teeth out when she tried
to get it back.
‘Natacha’ used to be a socialist, but her nephew was
brutally assaulted by three ‘North Africans’, which made
her change her mind. She has been insulted several times
herself. When her sister asked a young ‘North African’ to
keep his dog on a leash, a Molotov cocktail was thrown on
her balcony, people repeatedly spat at her front door, and
her car tyres were slashed. The police could not protect her
and she eventually had to leave the neighbourhood.5
Long lists of grievances such as these convey the
impression that the danger of being attacked is permanent
and ubiquitous. If one takes these narratives at face value,
fear and distress seem to be significant driving forces for
the opinion turn to the extreme right.
A country at the crossroads
Once these people have ‘opened their eyes’, be it under
the influence of readings, by following current affairs,
or having first-hand experience of violence or anti-social
behaviour of sorts, what do they ‘see’?
It would be naïve to assume that Front National voters
agreed with 100 % of the tenets included in the official
party programme.6
Some of the contributors to the website
even express their scepticism about Front National
policies, criticizing anti-European, xenophobic or homophobic
tendencies within the far-right movement.
However, a rather coherent world view emerges from
these political life-stories. Far-right voters perceive time
and space in specific ways. They tend to display a nostalgic
vision of the past, in particular of 1960s and 1970s
France, when doors could be left unlocked and children
walked to school on their own, as far as they or their
parents can remember. This kind of social cohesion is
thought to have disappeared on account of massive immigration
in France. Today, as opposed to a mythical past,
people living on French soil do not share the same values
anymore and are unable to live together in peace, as some
comments written in a neo-Durkheimian vein suggest.
Present-day France is seen as a country at the crossroads.
About 40 out of more than 500 contributors even refer
to an ‘invasion’ of France. According to far-right sympathizers,
the French territory has been ‘abandoned’ to
strangers, France is being ‘colonized’. In a more intellectual
variant, France, the country of the Enlightenment, is
threatened by ‘obscurantism’ (i.e. Islam); its ‘civilization’
is being ‘assassinated’. Another oft-quoted set phrase is
the ‘cultural and ethnic genocide by population replacement’,
supposedly most advanced in the northern suburbs
of Marseille and Paris but potentially threatening all of
France (13 occurrences).7
As a consequence, the impression of being outnumbered
by strangers is a recurrent motif in the far-right narratives
and underscores these otherwise relatively abstract
viewpoints. Some complain about being the ‘last White’
in their apartment block. Several people realize all of a
sudden that they are the only white person at certain metro
stations (Châtelet, Gare du Nord, Stade de France) or in
buses serving the suburbs. Others see ethnically different
women with pushchairs ‘everywhere’ or are disheartened
at reading the list of mostly ‘foreign’ names given to newborns
that the local maternity ward publishes. Pessimistic
extrapolations about the demographic future of France
spring from these types of observations.
Martial metaphors abound in the ‘opinion turn’ narratives;
a ‘civil war’ is allegedly about to break out or has
already started. There seem to be many parallels with the
1940s: the French live on ‘occupied territory’, some ‘collaborate’
with the ‘enemies’, while others join the ranks of
the ‘resistance’.8
Resistance vs. collaboration
This analogy calls for further explanation as it sheds some
light on far-right views on society and politics in presentday
France. Among the ‘collaborators’, three groups are
singled out in particular: teachers, journalists, and mainstream
politicians.
The Ministry of National Education coordinates the
French school system; contributors to the site usually
rename it ‘anti-national’ or ‘pseudo-national education’.
Supposedly ‘neo-Marxist’ teachers tell ‘lies’ in class; they
‘brainwash’ students, presenting a prejudiced view of
French history and culture, while extolling the contributions
of immigrants to French society. Students allegedly
need to quote Marx, Sade and set out anti-racist ideas to
obtain good grades. While it is true that teachers tend to
lean to the political left,9
it is hardly possible to gauge
what impact these political orientations have on classroom
practice.
All mainstream media are also accused of conveying
‘la pensée unique’, the supposedly only acceptable way
of thinking, i.e. intellectual conformism and political
correctness. Journalists allegedly do not listen to (white)
victims and shield perpetrators. According to far-right
ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 28 NO 6, DECEMBER 2012	 15
7. This expression was
forged by poet and politician
Aimé Césaire in the late
1970s in an anticolonial
context. The far right hijacked
the turn of phrase in the
2010s.
8. Marine Le Pen herself
likened Muslim street prayers
to an ‘occupation’ in a
speech in Lyons in December
2010. Unsurprisingly, the
comparison was unanimously
condemned in the media.
9. More than 60 % of
the circa 800,000 French
teachers voted for left-wing
presidential candidates in
the 2002, 2007, and 2012
elections; 79 % had the
intention to vote for François
Hollande in 2012. He
obtained 51.64 % of the vote,
which amounts to a difference
of almost 30 percentage
points between teachers
and the general population
(Fourquet & Kraus 2012).
10. Far-right forum
contributors regularly come
up with ruses such as slightly
different spelling, spaces
or dots in the middle of an
‘offensive’ word that would
otherwise be blocked by a
programme that checks new
contributions automatically.
Irony is another means for
circumventing censorship:
‘the Swedish’ instead of
‘Arabs’, or ‘CPF’ (meaning a
chance pour la France, i.e. an
‘opportunity for France’) for
‘immigrant’.
11. ‘FSK’, 28
October 2010; ‘Le
Burcosier’, 24 April 2011;
‘WilliamDuffWallace’, 6
September 2011; ‘Chère
Rasade’, 30 September 2008;
‘Marie.rie’, 2 March 2009;
‘Valar’, 9 October 2009;
‘Franek’, 30 October 2009.
12. For a family with
five children, child benefit
would not exceed 1000 euros
per month (about €620 if
none is older than 14). The
state owns all churches and
pays for their preservation.
Mosque constructions are
funded by Muslim believers
and sometimes foreign donors
such as the Gulf states.
13. On criminal statistics
concerning youth offenders,
cf. Lagrange (2010).
14. ‘Busi’, 1 September
2008; ‘Lorenzo’, 10
December 2008; ‘zoo’, 6
March 2009; ‘Le blond’, 22
June 2009.
15. According to official
figures, about 5.5 million, i.e.
9 % of the population, had
neither French nor European
citizenship in 2008. 21 % of
babies born on French soil
had at least one non-European
parent, 7 % had two nonEuropean
parents in 2010
(www.insee.fr).
voters, ethnic aspects are systematically silenced in the
media; journalists partake in ‘intellectual terrorism’,
spread ‘propaganda’ and tell ‘lies’. National newspapers
such as Le Monde or Le Figaro do actually have a policy
of not mentioning names with ethnic connotations in
reports on criminal incidents (Alidières 2006), but Front
National politicians have ample opportunity to voice their
views, at least during election campaigns when the same
amount of broadcasting time is allotted to each party.
Nonetheless, mainstream media outlets are repeatedly
accused of censoring ‘nationalist’speakers, texts or forum
contributions.10
While increased access to the traditional media has
arguably granted the Front National a modicum of respectability
and above all a great amount of publicity since
the early 1980s (Ellinas 2010: 176-177), the internet has
recently made it possible to spread an alternative worldview
rather easily. Some sites like fdesouche.com apply the
principle of so-called ‘re-information’ (as opposed to ‘disinformation’
in the traditional media), i.e. they selectively
compile all national and international news that confirm
the hypothesis of an immigrant threat: crimes committed
by immigrants or their descendants, public support or tolerance
of Muslim customs, vandalism in churches, public
figures’ remarks in favour or against immigration and a
multicultural society. These sites are perceived as the ‘last
hiding place of European thought’, one of the ‘rare democratic
spaces in a totalitarian country’, an ‘oxygen supply’
without which people would ‘suffocate’. Interestingly,
community advocates also complain about the unfair
media portrayal of the difficult neighbourhoods they live
in. Mainstream media, and TV channels in particular, do
probably content themselves with pandering to perceived
stereotypes so as to remain ‘neutral’ for commercial reasons
(Bourdieu et al. 1993: 107, 208).
Apart from teachers and journalists, the governing élites
are also counted among the ‘collaborators’. Politicians and
many better-off French citizens are believed to ignore the
real problems of real people living in the suburbs because
they can afford housing in upmarket neighbourhoods and
send their children to exclusive private schools. The two
main parties, UMP and PS, are supposed to basically have
the same interests and discourse on immigration, that is
why they are merged into a single entity, the ‘UMPS’, in
true Front National jargon. Mainstream politicians are
touted as ‘internationalists’, ‘accomplices’ in the attacks
against ‘French culture’. Supposedly, immigration has
been encouraged for decades because it produces a cheap
labour force and keeps salaries down, which benefits the
socio-economic élites.
The voters criticize ordinary French citizens too:
according to forum contributors, these ‘useful idiots’,
‘brain-washed by propaganda’, repeat always the same
formula about the social and cultural enrichment brought
about by immigrants, which flies in the face of the evidence.
Thus, the far right has the impression that they
need to fight on two fronts: against an outer and an inner
‘enemy’, immigration from the African continent and its
fifth column at home, i.e. probably the majority of the
French population, the media, and successive French
governments.
Incidentally, far-right thinking does not only try to align
itself with the concept of ‘resistance’, but also with the
equally prestigious idea of Republicanism. This emerges
from a number of emblematic stories intended to illustrate
injustice and unequal treatment: ‘FSK’s’ girlfriend is
searched intensively at the airport, while a woman wearing
a headscarf is hardly being touched; another storyteller
had to do his military service, while he knew of young
Frenchmen with an immigrant background who found an
excuse and were exempted.
Some express the view that there is only a limited
amount of ‘goods’ to be distributed in society, and are
angered at losing out. ‘Le Burcosier’did not get a place on
a Master’s degree programme, but the French state generously
funds foreign students, he says. White women prefer
immigrants to ‘WilliamDuffWallace’, still single. Social
housing is built for women wearing Muslim clothing and
having lots of children, while ‘Chère Rasade’ had to limit
herself to one single child; now she cannot leave the neighbourhood
as her apartment lost value on account of the
area becoming ever more ‘ethnic’.
Some stories are even more exaggerated than others:
French families have to live in caravans while immigrants
get decent housing, says ‘marie.rie’; in addition, she once
had to wait two hours at the post office ‘while 20 salaries
were being transferred to Africa’. ‘Valar’ alleges that his
immigrant neighbours receive 2000 to 2500 euros worth
of child benefit each month, enjoy a two-month summer
holiday in their home country, drive a BMW car and fill
it with smoked salmon and other luxury food they get
for free at a charity. The French state supposedly builds
mosques after closing down churches.11
As overstated and despicable as these accounts may be,
they do pay lip-service to the Republican core value of
equality, mistakenly accusing the state of granting preferential
treatment to some citizens or population groups (that
are portrayed as less deserving). It goes without saying
that most militants get their facts utterly wrong.12
Pseudo-anthropological bricolage
It has been noted before that Front National officials like
to delve into the anthropological toolkit to justify some of
their ideas (Crépon 2001). This pick-and-choose approach
is also noticeable in many voters’ narratives.
A lot of the grievances voiced concern over anti-social
behaviour and petty crime. Contributors to the right-wing
discussion forum expressly refute ‘sociological’ explanations
for these acts. They argue that poor living conditions
and discrimination do not necessarily lead to criminal
behaviour, as many counter-examples are supposed to
show, especially those concerning Armenian, Indian,
Italian, Polish, Portuguese or Vietnamese immigrants and
their well-integrated descendants.
If social and economic deprivation may not explain
deviant behaviour, ‘culture’ supposedly can. In the narratives
quoted above, the offenders are perceived as being
Fig. 3. The values of the
Republic, chiselled on a
French town hall façade.
ANNEFRIEDERIKEDELOUIS
16	 ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 28 NO 6, DECEMBER 2012
Alidières, B. 2006.
Géopolitique de
l’insécurité et du Front
National. Paris: Armand
Colin.
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Muslim and/or of African origin. Using an argumentative
shortcut, many Front National sympathizers impute
deviant or criminal propensities to certain foreign cultures.
They believe that they are justified in generalizing from
some youth offenders to entire communities.13
The seemingly logical conclusion drawn from these
observations is that multiculturalism has failed as an
experiment. Some ‘cultures’ are thought to be incompatible,
in particular Muslim communities and their west
European host societies, as illustrated by second or thirdgeneration
immigrants who ‘hate France’, are ungrateful
and ‘bite the hand that feeds them’.14
Other arguments draw on popular anthropology, too: the
feeling of belonging to a community is part of human needs
and should be respected (mainly where the ‘indigenous’
majority is concerned, of course). The ‘autochthonous
population’ of France is believed to be endangered. Some
argue that each ethnic group, as defined by its traditions
and heritage, should live on ‘its own territory’: Africans
in Africa, the French in France. This use of outdated or
bogus sociological and anthropological ideas is selective
and contradictory. Far-right voters do ascribe some agency
to individuals: trying to assimilate or turning against the
host society is described as a personal choice, but some
‘cultures’ are supposed to predispose men (hardly ever
women) to hostile and violent behaviour. In these ‘opinion
turn’ narratives, social thought is meant to legitimate
views which their authors consequently take to be simple
assertions of facts instead of the racist perceptions that
they really are.
Undoubtedly, the partial hijacking of the legacy of the
Resistance movement, of Republican values such as liberty
and equality, and of sociological or anthropological
concepts broadens the appeal of far-right policies. This
development chimes with Marine Le Pen’s recent strategy
of whitewashing the Front National, trying to refashion
it as an ‘acceptable’ party by distancing herself from
her father’s controversial statements and softening some
stances that had repelled important voter groups such as
women or homosexual people.
What does the future hold?
If France’s traditional political right, currently numbed
by defeat and mired in a leadership conflict after Nicolas
Sarkozy’s departure, re-emerges as a credible party that
appeals to voters scattered all over the broad spectrum of
the right, there will be little chance that the Front National
willcrossthe20%markinthefuture.Frenchparliamentary
elections operate according to a first-past-the-post system
which disadvantages any but the two largest parties. As a
result, 13 % of votes for the Front National translated into
only two seats out of 577 in the lower house (Assemblée
nationale) after the elections in June. It remains to be seen
to what extent these two MPs make their voices heard.
In the five years leading to the next presidential and parliamentary
elections, the far-right party can only hope for
success in local elections or expect to exploit some scandals
or incidents so as to bring its views across.
In order to influence anyone beyond its 75,000-strong
membership, and with a view to repeating, if not surpassing,
its electoral success of this year, the party thus has to rely
almost entirely on the media. However, as discussed above,
the far-right movement entertains an ambivalent relationship
with the main media outlets, accused of systematically
downplaying immigration issues and vilifying the Front
National.
In this atmosphere of general distrust, the internet plays
a cathartic role. Emotional outpourings are common on
sites such as fdesouche.com: many thank other contributors
to the discussion thread for the stories they shared. The
contributions to this site reveal the astonishing diversity of
Front National supporters. Far from the stereotype of disenfranchised,
poorly educated ‘losers’ in today’s France,
some have obtained prestigious university degrees, earn
a comfortable living, travel to foreign countries and write
rather witty prose. Some declare themselves to be firmly
on the political left; they want to defend the heritage of
the French revolution, have anti-capitalist views or uphold
feminist values.
Reading through the host of ‘opinion turn’ narratives as
well as the other debates on fdesouche.com, one cannot
help but notice that the argumentation moves in circles.
Every new incident – from minor altercations with colleagues
or neighbours to horror episodes such as the
killing of soldiers and Jewish children in Toulouse in
March 2012 – seems to confirm what is already taken for
granted: France cannot welcome that many immigrants.15
Information to the contrary (for instance, on offenders of
European origin, or successful integration of immigrants
and their descendants) is simply not taken into account.
If this two-tier information society is left to develop, a
sphere of unchecked information and debate, freed from
the fetters of political correctness, is likely to expand even
more at the expense of mainstream media. The life-stories
under consideration clearly demonstrate the growing
attractiveness of far-right ideas for citizens who used to
situate themselves on the political left or were previously
apolitical.
Instead of ignoring, minimizing or discrediting experiences,
observations, perceptions of the kind described
above entirely, they should at least partially be dealt with
and thus subjected to critical analysis in public debate.
Exclusion has proven to be a less efficient strategy
in dealing with far-right discourse than engagement
(Goodwin 2011). Underneath intolerably racist and verbally
violent remarks, some unpleasant questions may be
hidden: why is there so much distrust towards political
élites? Are globalization, ethnic diversity and multiculturalism
unquestionably positive values? Are discrimination
and racism the only obstacles to ‘integration’, however
defined? Would ethnic statistics (largely non-existent in
France) help to demystify prejudices against certain immigrant
communities?
Dismissing these interrogations would confirm the
far-right sympathizers’ view that conventional media,
researchers and politicians refuse to ‘see reality’, and
bring about further radicalization and withdrawal from
the public sphere into virtual shelters like fdesouche.com
where their opinions go unchallenged.
The views expressed by these voters touch on issues
that are at the heart of anthropology’s concerns: culture,
society, justice, ethnicity, identity, tradition. Social scientists
have a part to play in setting the record straight and
drawing them back into public debate. l
Fig. 4. Far-right supporters
at the Front National May
Day rally in Paris.
Fig. 5. The number of female
far-right voters is rising.
ANNEFRIEDERIKEDELOUIS
ANNEFRIEDERIKEDELOUIS
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