No more baseball bats: National Front no
longer taboo for French youth
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[March 14, 2017]
By Ingrid Melander
PARIS/LYON (Reuters) - Just a few years
ago, it was hard to find students willing to admit to being National
Front cardholders. When a journalist went looking for members of the FNJ
youth movement during the last presidential election campaign, most
would agree to speak only if their names were withheld.
Five years on, young activists supporting Marine Le Pen's election bid
say they no longer have anything to hide, as she cruises to an expected
first place showing in the first round next month.
"It just provides for lively discussions," said 21-year-old economics
student Corentin Corcelette, who, far from keeping his views secret,
says he talks about the rollercoaster presidential election with friends
of all political persuasions on campus.
Sitting in the same car as they drove around Lyon to put up "Marine
President" posters, 20-year old biology student Remi Berthoux was also
happy to give a reporter his name. He joined the FN two years ago, he
said proudly, "to defend France's values".
Once consigned mainly to the shadows, young National Front supporters
have come out into the open, as voters their age have lined up behind Le
Pen. Daily polls by firm Ifop consistently show her earning nearly a
third of the youth vote in the first round, easily beating any of her
opponents, although she is still forecast to lose in a second-round
run-off in May.
She fares better among voters under 25 than she does among the
population at large, often by a margin as high as 7 percentage points.
That is a big reversal from her first bid for the presidency five years
ago, when her 15 percent share of the youth vote was around 3 points
below her overall tally.
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DETOXIFYING BRAND
Winning over young voters has been an achievement for Le Pen's campaign
to detoxify the National Front brand.
In the past, when the Front's FNJ youth wing put up posters, "they would
do so in the middle of the night," said Sylvain Crepon, a researcher at
the University of Tours who studies the French far right.
"They carried baseball bats to protect themselves and would often be
with skinheads," he said. "Now they can do it in broad daylight, which
shows people have grown more accustomed to the FN. It's become more
acceptable."
There was not a baseball bat or skinhead in sight on the early evening
last month when a group of nine clean-cut young men including Corcelette
and Berthoux put up Le Pen posters in the streets of Lyon and on its
university campus.
"We absolutely don't see ourselves as far right, but as patriots who are
disappointed with other parties," said David Sedoff, a 26-year old
warehouse worker.
Demographics are a major difference between the far right surge on the
European continent and last year's rise of populists in Britain and the
United States.
U.S. President Donald Trump and the campaign to withdraw Britain from
the EU both lost badly among young voters, on their way to victories won
with overwhelming support from pensioners.
For Le Pen, the demographics are almost exactly reversed. She performs
well among all categories of younger voters: those under 25, under 35
and under 45. Her worst results are among pensioners: the over 65's are
only age group where she consistently trails her rivals in polling for
the first round.
Unlike their Anglo-Saxon cousins, continental populist politicians like
Le Pen, the Netherlands' Geert Wilders and Italy's Beppe Grillo have
turned young voters into their key constituencies. They feed on the
resentment of a generation with little seeming hope of matching its
parents' standard of living.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2017/Mar/14/images/ads/current/ldn_business_directory_small_2016.png)
In France, nearly a quarter of workers under 25 are unemployed, compared
to a national jobless rate of about 10 percent, according to last year's
official statistics.
And those young people lucky enough to find jobs often work under far
less generous conditions than previous generations. More than half of
workers 24 and under have only temporary contracts or agency positions
which come with few guarantees or rights, compared to 85 percent of
French workers who enjoy full time contracts with strong worker
protections.
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![](../images/031417pics/news_s31.jpg)
Members of the National Front youths put up posters of Marine Le
Pen, French National Front (FN) political party leader and candidate
for the French 2017 presidential election, ahead of a 2-day FN
political rally to launch the presidential campaign in Lyon, France,
February 2, 2017. REUTERS/Robert Pratta/File Photo
![](../images/ads/current/richardson_lda_090916.png)
While Le Pen's theme of dramatic change appeals to many young
voters, their grandparents benefit from the generous pensions of the
status quo and worry that her plan to abandon the EU and its euro
common currency would hurt their savings.
Young voters are also less likely to associate the National Front
with its founder, Marine Le Pen's father Jean-Marie Le Pen, who
topped out at 17.8 percent of the vote in his repeated quests for
the presidency and never crossed into the mainstream.
He was convicted repeatedly for inciting racial hatred before his
daughter banned him from the party.
MAKEOVER
Since then, Marine Le Pen has carefully reconstructed the party's
image and distanced herself from her father. She is referred to as
"Marine" -- without her surname -- on her official campaign website
and posters, and eschews the FN's torch symbol for a new logo of a
blue rose.
She tends to emphasize economic issues, portraying the FN as
guardians of working class voters left behind in the decade since
the global financial crisis, and blaming the EU in general and the
euro in particular for making France less competitive.
But hostility towards immigration and suspicion of Islam are still
central tenets for the party. In a country that has Europe's biggest
Muslim minority and has been hit by a succession of Islamist
militant attacks in the past two years, the FN's xenophobia is no
longer the barrier to attracting young voters that it once was.
The FNJ youth movement's website proudly declares: "100 percent
National Front! Zero percent migrants!"
"Europe, immigration, I'm against all that," said Eric Barbosa, a 20
year-old baker, at a meeting of the FNJ's Paris branch.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2017/Mar/14/images/ads/current/lcu_lda_EDUCATION_2017.png)
Its relatively recent arrival as a successful election force also
gives the National Front an advantage over traditional parties in
attracting young activists seeking political careers.
It offers more opportunities for ambitious youth to make their mark
than the main post-war parties of the center-left and center-right,
where vacancies for posts are blocked by older incumbents and
veterans.
FN candidates in local and regional elections are routinely the
youngest in the field, often in their 20s or early 30s.
That means a quick path into frontline politics for people like
23-year-old Victor Birra, a business student who joined the FNJ
youth movement five years ago and is now its head in the Lyon
region.
He describes the youth movement as the "academy for FN cadres",
comparing it to the grand public institutes that traditionally
produce many of France's politicians.
But future ambitions depend first on getting out the vote for Le
Pen, he said. "We're fighting to win the presidentials."
(Additional reporting by Chine Labbe in Paris; editing by Peter
Graff)
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