Inside The Radical Right Analysis

David Art claims that the success of a new party is not wholly due to external factors, but rather their navigation of developmental stages of their political life cycle (Art, “Inside the Radical Right”, 7). This is what the recent far-right has been able to do so successfully. While some external factors have been able to bolster their success in emerging and garnering attention. The European far right has been able to work their way through the stages of a new political movement, from gathering support, to establishing policy goals, to creating platforms. The far-right may only be gaining more national and international attention in the past few years, but that is not due to a lack of foresight and political planning, but rather a waiting

These are the supporters that began the wave of far-right prominence that is currently being seen, and at most times the loudest of the voices defending or explaining the right-wing. These base supporters all seem to share certain qualities that allow far-right movements to speak to them, these qualities are what determine not only if they will support the party, but the success of the party itself (Art, “Inside the Radical Right”, ix). While many of these right-wing supporters or leaders seem to believe that they are attracted to the far-right parties and ideals because they have “nothing else to lose”, many on the surface seem to have been just as likely to join center-left parties if it were not for such a strong anti-immigrant sentiment (Art, “Inside the Radical Right”, x). David Art interviewed many of these core supporters in 2011, right before the far right began to gain more mainstream support. He at first appeared to be surprised by how normal many of the supporters seemed, echoing the sentiment that they could easily be in a more mainstream party if they lost a few strongly held beliefs. However, after spending more time interviewing supporters, more of these beliefs seemed to make themselves known. Specifically, many supporters went on anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant rants, and were prone to go

The movement began with Jean-Marie LePen, he built his base by focusing on the need to defend small local businesses, their interests and traditional French values against the quickly modernizing and integrating world (Art, “Inside the Radical Right”, 1). These goals resonated well with the French, as LePen managed to not only consolidated support across his base but also with some more moderate Frenchmen and women as well. Even before the Front National experienced widespread electoral success they were shockingly good at setting the policy agenda and shifting the view of more moderate parties and candidates to the right (Brouard and Foucault, 250). This power continued for the Front National even as their electoral power waxed and waned. As even with limited representation in the national assembly they still managed to play a part in shifting president’s and ruling party’s positions farther to the right, especially when it came to immigration policy and reform. The first substantial electoral success of the Front National came in 1995, the achievements of the Front National in the 1995 election were largely focused on the local front. The party elected almost a thousand municipal councilors and gained more than 10% of the vote in more than 290 cities across the country (Brouard and Foucault, 339). This focus on local elections has