HISTORY OF A RIGHT-WING EXTREME

Jean-Marie Le Pen is not some mysterious pustule that in the 80s suddenly appeared from nowhere on the political face of France. He descends from a long lineage of the extreme right, which has been present on the French scene for over a century. The “ideology” of the front national is a hodge-podge, a mixed bag of ingredients and themes borrowed from the various families of the extreme right: an obsession vith conspiracy, a fear of “decadence” and the “loss of values”, the appeal of strong leadership, the love of liturgy, le cult of law and order, nationalism and xenophobia, racism, anti-semitism, antiparlementarism, violence and a continual bent towards facism. The film travels back and forth from yesterday to today, confronting the past with the present, and accounts for the legacy and lineage that link the main ideological streams of the far right together. To understand the present, we must examine the past.