Is Russia the promised land for France’s far right?
Emmanuel Macron’s first trip to Russia brings into sharp focus aRussian strategyof influence that, during the 2017 French presidential campaign, appeared to have heavily relied on the far-right card.
Nicolas Lebourg, University of Montpellier
In France, the shift toward the East affects all factions of a far-right movement that has historically been fragmented but has been dominated by the National Front (FN) for more than thirty years. This movement is often portrayed as a break with the history of the far right.
The report titled “The French Far Right in Russia’s Sphere of Influence,” which we have just published for the Carnegie Council and Open Society Institute’s program on Russian soft power in France, in cooperation with the Open Society Initiative for Europe, seeks to demonstrate that the issue is not cyclical but structural.
Russia Without the Soviets
Long before the National Front’s pro-Russian leanings, various collaborationists who continued their activism after World War II (through the formationof international organizations such as the European Social Movement, the New European Order, or Young Europe) espoused an ideology aimed at overcoming divisions among Europeans in the interest of continental integration. For the most part, these movements adopted the term “European nationalism” to describe their ideology, following a formula derived from collaborationist propaganda.
Among other things, the rise of anti-Zionism in the Soviet Union following the “White Coats Conspiracy”in 1953 eventually convinced them—as well as the young activists they were training—that Russia could protect Europe from “American-Zionist imperialism,” which they believed sought to establish global governance over the world.
This attraction to socialist Russia was often interpreted as a shift within the far right—which was said to have “moved to the left”—even though it was in fact the result of adherence to the most uncompromising dogmas of the radical far right regarding the primacy of organizing the world into large ethno-cultural blocs.
A similar mistake was made when the radicals became enamored with Russia after the communist threat had been eliminated by the fall of the Berlin Wall.
It is true that the myth perpetuated by certain figures on the radical far right regarding their past involvement with the left contributes to this illusion: François Duprat, co-founder of the National Front, and his half-true, half-false Trotskyist past; essayist Alain Soral, who exaggerates his history with the French Communist Party; and so on.
During the East-West rapprochement among radical groups following the breakup of the Soviet Union, some members of the French intelligentsia imagined a “red-brown conspiracy.” This term originated in Russia in 1992 to denounce the National Salvation Front, which brought together the populist far right and conservative communists. In France, it is nothing more than a fantasy.
Above all, it was the appeal of a Russian neo-Eurasianist ideology that proposed a new organic structure for ethno-cultural societies stretching from Iceland to the Pacific.
The idea of building a political union stretching “from Reykjavik to Vladivostok” is certainly a minority utopian vision within Europe’s radical far right, but it has long existed. It was therefore reasonable for its supporters to hope that the collapse of the Soviet Union might pave the way for such a development.
It was this neo-Eurasianism that motivated some supporters of the European far right to back the war against Ukraine starting in 2014—within the French far right, the Groupe Union Défense (GUD) was one of the few organizations to support the Ukrainian side, with the National Front (FN) going so far as to sever ties with its local sister party.
Rejection of the multipolar world
In fact, support for Russia runs through all of these far-right extremist groups, from the Jewish Defense League to Égalité & Réconciliation, Alain Soral’s radical anti-Zionist movement. In fact, after Alain Soral broke with the National Front in 2009, his group’s first independent action was a pro-Putin demonstration.
Both the LDJ and Alain Soral have viewed Vladimir Putin as a geopolitical ally. This is only contradictory on the surface, as this entire dynamic is rooted in the desire to reshape the world order by creating a multipolar world with more sovereign nations, a society that is less multicultural and postmodern, and an economic structure less dictated by market forces alone.
However, these are ideas that strike at the very ideological core of the far right.
Russia, a bulwark against multiculturalism
In response to the global transnationalization they reject, right-wing extremists therefore rationally advocate for the transnationalization of politics. After a period—from the fall of the Third Reich to the war in the former Yugoslavia—during which European far-right groups had reorganized themselves withinthe transatlantic sphere, their focus has shifted toward Moscow.
In particular, it was following the Kosovo War in 1999 that arguments began to spread within France’s far-right circles portraying Islamism as a tool in a U.S. plot to secure its dominance.
The phenomenon is amplified by the split within the National Front and the European elections taking place that same year: radical activists are introducing the Serbian narrative—which portrays Islamist totalitarianism as a threat to Europe—into far-right discourse to justify breaking away from a National Front that allegedly fails to recognize the continuity between “Arab delinquency” and the “Iranian threat.”
This is a crucial moment for understanding France’s fascination with Russia, which is now seen as the only country capable of providing a bulwark against both unipolar globalization under American domination and Islamism. Emerging from the fringes, these various themes have, step by step, found their way into the public sphere.
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A phenomenon in the making
In this regard, Marine Le Pen has played a significant role. Her own geopolitical views owe a great deal to one of her former speechwriters, the Eurasianist activist Emmanuel Leroy, who is now politically involved in the Donbas and Moldova through his humanitarian organization, the hosting of conferences, and other activities.
There is certainly no shortage of hope for a boost in political or financial capital. When Marine Le Pen visited the Duma in May 2015 to express her support for Russia’s policy toward Ukraine, a Sputnik dispatch—published in Russian and not translated by the French branch—noted that the meeting also involved negotiations for a loan, even though the FN had already received 11 million euros in Russian funds in the preceding months.
But this attraction to the East cannot be reduced to financial considerations alone: there is no doubt that illiberal democracy, as embodied by the model in Eastern Europe, corresponds to the way the institutions of theFifth Republic are run—a model that the far right promotes in France.
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Moreover, just as the shift to the right has been a transatlantic phenomenon, the possibility of a new form of authoritarian governance is amplifying this turn toward the East.
This polarization is therefore not merely a temporary phenomenon. The current realignment within the French far right does not break with the dynamic of internal interactions and shifts that characterizes this political space, thereby allowing individuals and small groups to maneuver within it and advance their principles and interests within a party that now has a chance of reaching the second round of elections.
Nicolas Lebourg, Research Associate at CEPEL (Center for Political Studies of Latin Europe), University of Montpellier
The original version of this article was published on The Conversation.