ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the factors contributed to the rise of the National Front (NF). The National Front is led by a man, Jean-Marie Le Pen, whose anti-Semitic, racist remarks have provoked outrage and condemnation, whose commitment to democracy is uncertain, and who counts among his friends and associates ex-Nazis, Vichyites, collaborators, virulent anti-Semites, and racists. The executive organs of the NF are staffed by some of these same people, many of whom yearn for the restoration of a Vichy-style authoritarianism or for the return of a rigidly hierarchical corporatism. The measure of Le Pen's success in forcing immigration to the top of France's political agenda was dramatically underlined in the 1980s when France's top political leaders began to echo the Front's argument that immigration was a "problem" that had to be "solved". In the 1980s and 1990s, the popularity of the Front's anti-immigrant message led the mainstream right to adopt some of its policies.
