Right turn in the wrong direction

What lesson should Europe take from the rising popularity of French hard rightwinger Jean-Marie Le Pen? John Gaffney argues that many of his supporters are not fascists but are fed up with mainstream politicians

On Sunday, Europe's most notorious leader of the extreme right for the past 30 years, Jean-Marie Le Pen, stood against Jacques Chirac for the post of president of France, the fifth richest and most powerful country in the world, and politically the most important country in the European Union. Europe's extreme right has had several successes recently, and many feel we are witnessing the beginnings of a wave of neo-fascism breaking over democratic Europe. In Italy, in 1994, there were five National Alliance ministers, heirs to Mussolini's fascism. In 2000, half of the cabinet seats in the Austrian federal government were taken by Jörg Haider's Freedom Party. A series of recent parliamentary elections gives us an idea of the extreme right's strength across Europe: Austria 1999, per cent; Belgium 1999, 16 per cent; Denmark 1998, 12 per cent; France 1997, 15 per cent; Italy 1996 (NA and Northern League), 26 per cent; Norway 1997, 15 per cent; Switzerland 1999, 23 per cent.

While it is impossible to predict whether this trend will continue, it is possible to gain some insight into what is happening. A lot of the reaction to the recent French presidential election shows much misunderstanding. In response to Le Pen's progression into the second round of the election, France was swept up in the spirit of democracy. In itself, such a reaction among the newly politically sensitive French youth, accompanied by expressions of solidarity between whites and people of colour, was moving and, once under way, irresistible. Once such a confrontation fills the political scene, there is little choice but to take sides. And, despite the seriousness of the issues, a lot of people were having fun, reliving the spirit of 1968, if not 1936.

But if some of France's politicians had had a little less fun in the run-up to round one on April 21, if they had not put forward several candidates from each political family, often for reasons of personal ambition, and if many French voters had not voted for them and others had gone out to vote, France and Europe might not have found themselves in this mess. Politics can be dull. French politics by 2002 had become so. The French managed to make it exciting again.

The only people not playing games were those who voted for Le Pen. They voted for many reasons. Many of Le Pen's national constituency are those who have been bypassed by France's economic success; many despair at the state of things, and of politics particularly. Le Pen has votes from everywhere - in fact, from every ethnic group - but the distinguishable crescent is a swath running from the Pas de Calais across to the industrial northeast, down through the regions bordering Germany, Switzerland and Italy, and around westwards to Marseilles and down to the Spanish border. In some places, Le Pen's vote was massive, twice his national average. These are the regions where mines, factories and a host of industries have died in the past 30 years, leaving their communities stranded and a generation abandoned to what is felt as unfair competition from outside, whether from Europe or the wider world economy.

For the rest, the fun of round one has meant the shattering of the left, which was painstakingly rebuilt in the 1990s and which - tragic irony for Lionel Jospin - will go down in history, shortcomings notwithstanding, as having provided one of the best governments [1997-2002] France has ever known. The totality of the French media described the first-round election result as an "earthquake". Earthquakes have two characteristics: they are unexpected and you cannot stop them happening. It is true that few outside the council estates saw it all coming, but it was in no way inevitable.

If so many on the left had not put up their own candidates, if the French had realised what they were doing by not supporting Jospin on April 21, Le Pen might never have made it to the second round.

Although the French National Front contains a nucleus of old and new fascists, anti-Semites, Holocaust revisionists and anti-Arabs, this is dwarfed by a membership of rightwing Catholics and strong nationalists. The party can be understood only in terms of a French tradition of hard-right nationalism and a deep philosophical tradition that date back to before the 1930s. It also produces some intelligent and cultivated people such as Le Pen's lieutenant, Bruno Gollnisch. This is the background, but the central question today is why a lot of people who are not fascists voted for the extreme right.

Few of them are violent. Few would countenance violence done to others on their behalf. In fact, the "skinhead" element, as in Germany and the UK, is one of the factors minimising further support. As a group, Le Pen voters are no more racist than anyone else. They are mainly male, unemployed or in danger of being made so, of the older generations (although since 1995 there has been a marked increase in younger support) and generally less well educated. They are fed up, dispossessed, lost and shut out from the benefits created and enjoyed by their own country.

More of Le Pen's vote comes from people who wish to be included than from people who want others excluded. This is a pattern behind the rise of extremists across Europe, but in France there are other reasons why the National Front has been so successful. First, successive governments since the economic crises of the 1970s have failed to respond to the social catastrophes wrought on communities by economic change.

Second, if governing elites become too elitist, and opposing elites collaborate with one another, populist parties will emerge in response. No political elites are more capital-centric, upper middle-class, trained in the same universities (and in the same way) than France's governing elite. And the system, by forcing the left and the right to work together in government because of the constitutional shambles of "cohabitation", makes the opposing elites indistinguishable. Le Pen's political biography is the diametric opposite of this. He is an outsider in all respects, and France loves outsiders; and unlike much of the governing class today, he is perceived as at least standing for something.

Third, corruption is a major problem of government in France - enough for Transparency International to name France as one of the worst offenders and for Le Pen to channel the national disgust at the ruling elite.

Fourth is Le Pen himself. He is well known and a good politician. In fact, without his anti-Jewish remarks he would probably be even more popular. In essence, he did for the extreme right what Francois Mitterrand did for the left: federated it and gave it leadership. Whether Le Pen is "charismatic", as many claim, is debatable, but he is perceived as an exceptional figure and he has used French democracy and its ambivalences between "public" (the rule of the majority) and "private" (the protection of the minority) very skilfully. He has also played the victim and the "I-get-knocked-down-but-I-get-up-again" roles to great advantage. And in 2002, unlike in 1988 and 1995, he led a quiet, unrowdy campaign. Chirac, by shamelessly playing the law-and-order card against Jospin, did all Le Pen's work for him.

The rise of the extreme right in France, however, is no more an irresistibly rising tide than anything else in politics, and the instrumentalist view serves only the hard right; these things do not just happen. Human agency is what put Le Pen where he is, and politics is about human agency operating in and on the political culture on the one hand and the institutional configuration on the other. Le Pen said at the beginning of round two that his social politics were left, his economic policies right, and his policy on France national. To the educated ear, this sounds like national socialism; to the ordinary person, it sounds like common sense.

In the UK, there is something to be learnt about the role of an effective opposition, even if it has suffered since Labour's huge victories and the Conservative Party's corresponding internal and external weakness. But there is a second lesson about the need for politics to stand for something. Hence Labour's decision to float radical choices - on the National Health Service and crime - in the lead-up to last week's local elections. This may be a valuable lesson to learn, for it is not the push of French fascism that is driving politics but rather the failure of democrats to offer a political vision and a political morality as regards not the big picture but the small one - people's daily lives. Recent French experience should offer an opportunity to organise a proper and lasting social, civic and educated response to the politics of the extreme right in France and elsewhere.

John Gaffney is professor of French government at Aston University.