The Mainstreaming of the Extreme Right in France and Australia

A Populist Hegemony?

Aurélien Mondon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781409452607
• eBook ISBN: 9781317024996
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Ideologies
• Index: Politics & International Relations

What has led to the recent revival of the extreme right in Western democracies such as France and Australia, and what impact has their success had on mainstream politics? What shift has taken place in recent times as ideas and groups that once were considered marginal and undemocratic have come to play an important part in mainstream politics? This book addresses these key questions by examining the resurgence of the extreme right in France and Australia and explores the history of right-wing groups and their relationship with and impact on mainstream politics. This compelling study on the rise of right-wing parties in two countries with different histories but similar experiences of how mainstream parties campaigned and reacted to the changing political landscape presents a fascinating comparison of the history and political impact of ethno-exclusivist and right-wing populist politics in liberal democracies. A detailed and thorough comparative analysis of parties such as the Front National and One Nation, and the mainstreaming of their discourse by prominent leaders like John Howard and Nicolas Sarkozy, offers new insights on the rise of the contemporary extreme right and how these groups and the ideas they represent have become increasingly mainstream, and perhaps even hegemonic in the current political state.

PART I
The Contemporary Extreme Right: Definitions and Clarifications

Introduction to Part I

Herein, definitions merely provide the reader with the lens through which to read this book. The attempt here is, thus, not so much to prove or disprove theories, but to highlight flaws related to this particular subject and the understanding of it, and more importantly, to set a clear framework in order to make the main argument of this book more relevant and precise. Clearly, this project would lose relevance and interest if a term such as ‘populism’ was not precisely defined, as it has held many different, sometimes opposing, meanings and can be understood in a variety of ways.

Before defining populism, and particularly right-wing populism, it is vital to define the extreme right, the overarching category in this book. Not unlike ‘fascism’, the term ‘extreme right’ has been used to describe all manner of movements, ideas and personalities. While its understanding is commonly assumed, its misuses have rendered it either hollow or overloaded. The result is that the contemporary extreme right can be seen as comprising only marginal or mimetic neo-Nazi or neo-fascist groups; it can be thought of as all parties to the right of conservative; it can be considered all parties promoting a nationalist programme, promoting immigration cuts, promoting racist policies; for some left-wing activists, as all parties right of the centre. A politician can be tagged extreme right merely for an unfortunate, though often well-considered, sentence or for a populist comment. Like many terms which have at one time been associated with the fascist uprising of the interwar period, ‘extreme right’ has become, in common understanding, an emotional insult rather than a coherent tool for analysis. In the academic realm, while not so emotional, the extreme right remains contentious, and contradictory definitions are abundant.

The era of the Second World War, which can be considered the climax of extreme right politics, has rendered the field of research much more obscure, and this for obvious reasons. A significant element brought to this debate by the Second World War was the divorce of fascist movements from contemporary ones. Some academics such as S.J. Woolf (1981) have argued for changing the entire vocabulary of the contemporary extreme right in order to give a more precise and less emotional account of those later phenomena tainted by the fascist era. The historical limitation of these movements to the time between the inter-war period and the end of the Second World War, as promoted by many academics such as Ernst Nolte (1965), was just another reason to abandon terms such as fascism. This temporal and spatial limitation of fascism led to the search for other more appropriate terms to describe the new shapes the extreme right has taken. As a result, since the beginning of the 1980s, many academics have stressed the populist quality of organisations as diverse as the Front National and the Scandinavian anti-tax parties. This ‘populism’ became for many the most appropriate way to define a newly-emerging extreme right, different from previous fascist movements and organisations. Yet, the term populism is also highly loaded and its use often blurs more than it sharpens the analysis. Thus, by relabelling contemporary extreme right parties populist, many have made the same mistake that calling them fascist did in the first place.

Therefore, the purpose of the first part of this book is to clarify the semantic misconceptions set out above and to set a clear and precise framework for the following parts, in the hope of establishing a new way of understanding the confusing and often extremely emotional phenomenon that is the extreme right. Rather than applying a strict definition of the extreme right, this part sets a broad heuristic parent category from which more specific movements and ideologies can be defined. In the same manner as the extreme left is a concept that refers to parties, movements and organisations as diverse as communism, socialism and anarchism, the extreme right encompasses various groups without locking them into narrow understandings of their aims and ideologies.

Chapter 1
Populist, Radical or Extreme?

The Necessity of a Precise Conceptual Framework

In recent years, many academics have attempted to create frameworks that encompass the contemporary movements discussed in this book (Griffin 1998, Eatwell and Wright 1999, Hainsworth 2000b, Eatwell 2003b, Betz 2004, Dézé 2004, Kallis 2006, Mudde 2007). Clearly defining the framework of research is necessary since, as Mudde (Mudde 2007: 12) noted, in the last twenty years, parties like the Front National have been given at least twenty-three defining names by scholars, making any understanding of them highly contentious.

The first step in the clarification of the concepts central to this project is to highlight the differences between the populist, extreme and radical rights. These terms have recently led to a debate over which is most appropriate to label the contemporary movements, organisations and parties gaining momentum across Europe. Hans-Georg Betz has chosen to rely on the term ‘populist right’, and sometimes ‘radical populist right’ because

most [of these parties and movements] have cautiously left behind all forms of extremism and their advocates. The most popular parties and movements have abandoned a large part of the ideological heritage of the traditional extreme and fascist right and have instead chosen an opportunist, versatile strategy essentially turned towards the problematic, mixing verbal radicalism, symbolic politics and modern political marketing (Betz 2004: 42).

Betz sees three factors that characterise the emergence or resurgence of parties like the Front National: the ‘scope of its implantation’, its influence on ‘traditional discourse and public debate’, and the ‘significant proportion of political positions and responsibilities [these movements] have obtained’ (Betz 2004: 23). He has also argued that these new movements cannot be equated to older movements, such as fascism, since they have traded a fascist outlook for the tools of ‘verbal radicalism, political symbolism and political marketing’, and have thus become part of a new ideology (Betz 2004: 42).

In opposition to Betz’s classification, Mudde has argued for naming this family of parties ‘radical right’. His argument was constructed in order to frame his own research, rather than an attempt at settling the debate over the classification of such parties. While Mudde stresses that ‘radical’ can be employed in many different ways, he highlights that ‘in [his] study radical is defined as opposition to some key features of liberal democracy, most notably political pluralism and the constitutional protection of minorities’ (Mudde 2007: 25, emphasis added). By providing his reader with a clear definition of the terms central to his thesis, Mudde has avoided the confusion brought upon by the careless use of polemical terms such as those surrounding the present topic. Outside of its defined context though, the term ‘radical’ remains contentious for its multiple uses. Elisabeth Carter (2005: 22) has pointed out that the term ‘radical’ is often used to describe a wide variety of parties and movements such as ‘extreme conservative movements’ in the United States. One could add to this an oxymoronic use of the word ‘radical’ in France, that of a moderate centre-left party, the Parti Radical de Gauche (PRG). All these occurrences demonstrate further the need for caution in defining central terms. In a manner similar to Carter, Roger Eatwell (1989: 71) pointed out that the category ‘radical right’ has been attributed to many different political genres: from McCarthyism and Thatcherism to the Republikaner Party in Germany.

In practice it seems impossible to separate all movements and organisations on the right wing of politics into distinct categories, as ‘some individuals and movements seem to transcend the categories’ (Eatwell 1989: 75). This book will argue further that, with the resurgence of extreme right parties in the 1980s and their rise to prominence in the 1990s, the boundaries between the different kinds of right have become increasingly indistinct. Electoral hopes and raised expectations following the successes of movements from that end of the political spectrum encouraged their leaders to implement any and all tactics and strategies that could give them further strength. These blurred contours might therefore lead to different understandings: while Eatwell classified the Front National as extreme right, Paul Hainsworth has noted that, in fact, this party ‘tends to incorporate elements of the extreme, radical, reactionary and even moderate rights as categorised by Eatwell and O’Sullivan’ (Hainsworth 1992a: 3). In hindsight, Eatwell changed his definition of the extreme right and relied on four traits to define these movements and parties: anti-democracy, nationalism, racism and the strong state (Eatwell 2004).

Chapter 2
The Over-Arching Extreme Right Category

As with fascism, it has been argued that the term or category ‘extreme right’ has been polluted and is no longer relevant in analytical research (Taguieff 1994: 314). It is undeniable that the term ‘extreme right’ has often been used in denigration, rather than to provide a clear, precise and cold-headed appraisal of a situation, a movement or a party. It is therefore not surprising that contrary to their extreme left counterpart, parties traditionally considered to be part of the extreme right reject this appellation for less stigmatising ones such as national right or more recently populist right. Yet, the relegation of polemical terms to the realm of public language is an error as it fails to recognise the historical baggage and the doctrinal legacy contained within them and within their past and present forms. While it is crucial not to let emotion drive research, especially in dealing with topics as contentious as populism or racism, it is as essential not to limit the scope to ever-renewed terms and vocabulary. Replacing older terms such as ‘extreme right’ by an all-encompassing ‘populism’ has created a serious misconception around the movements and organisations which have risen in the past three decades. It has been commonly argued recently that movements such as the Front National are new and divorced from previous forms of right-wing extremism. While it is not the main aim of this book to demonstrate the inheritance of such parties and their reliance on older theories, doctrines, strategies and ideas, it is nonetheless vital to highlight the possibility of the existence of such a legacy. It is also important to note the key element of denial in the selection of populism as an all-encompassing term to describe a wide range of parties, in effect lessening the extremism of some parties and legitimising others with an imaginary link to a vague, but apparently democratic, conception of ‘the people’.

For the purpose of this book and to allow the reader a better understanding of the issues in question, I have chosen to rely on a framework which encompasses both the terms ‘extreme right’ and ‘radical right’. Contrary to Eatwell, these two forms are not studied in parallel, as exclusive categories, but rather as parent/child categories. This setting allows for a more illuminating comparison of the Australian and French contexts, as these countries have experienced very different forms of right-wing extremism in their pasts, yet have a shared core. Further, the recent resurgence of parties in France and Australia with key features in common facilitates the argument that these parties emerged from similar sources. This framework is dedicated to that issue, and designed to couch the study of the Australian and French extreme rights; it is not the aim here to find a definite framework to encompass all forms of extremism, radicalism or populism on the right side of politics. Yet, the following definitions and delimitations allow for a precise analysis and comparison of different systems and countries and their relation to the parties which have shaken the basis of many Western democracies since the 1980s.

Core-Concept Theory of the Radical Right

In order to understand the definitions of the extreme right and radical right used for this book, it is first necessary to give a brief account of Roger Griffin’s original definition of fascism inspired by Michael Freeden’s (1994) theory of ideological morphology. Griffin has attempted, in various publications, to give a counter argument to some of the most widely accepted theories on fascism, based mainly on Ernst Nolte’s Three Faces of Fascism (Griffin 2006: 30). For Griffin, the historical conceptualisation of fascism, which limits its existence to a few decades, is not only flawed, it is also dangerous: ‘as the events of the Third Reich recede into the past, the need to address them in an academically cogent and humanistically meaningful way becomes ever more pressing’ (Griffin 2006: 33). Undeniably, the era of fascist regimes was limited to the interwar period and the end of the Second World War. Yet the definition of an ideology cannot be reduced to the appearance it takes once it reaches power; many examples in the past have attested to very different forms of praxis for the same ideology. For example, while it is clear that the USSR and the People’s Republic of China were both praxes of the communist ideology, they were clearly very different types of regime.

Therefore, Griffin has argued that fascism did not disappear with the end of the Second World War, but was rather transformed into a kind of post-fascism. To demonstrate his claim, he has relied not on any intrinsic ‘truth’ in his definition, but more importantly on its being ‘heuristically useful’. The aim of such a definition was to create a distinction between the ‘ineliminable’ characteristics of fascism and those other ‘adjacent’ characteristics derived from location, historical periods and other particular concepts. Ineliminable concepts are uncontested and definitional; eliminable ones are contested and variable. This explains why ideologies survive through different times and locations, and why each concrete appearance of a given ideology is unique; only the ideological core remains the same. To prevent criticism of the minimalism of the definition, Griffin also warned that it ‘would be nonsense to imply that fascism can be adequately understood by focusing on its definitional minimum without soaking oneself in as many case-studies of the phenomenon as possible in all their empirical densities and uniqueness’ (Griffin, Loh et al. 2006: 259). Yet in order to understand fascism thoroughly, it is necessary to remove from the definition all aspects derived from epochal and spatial elements, as ‘once it is accepted that fascist ideology continued to exist after 1945 many definitional traits may come to seem less definitional’ (Griffin, Loh et al. 2006: 259).

As previously mentioned, a core-concept definition can appear inadequate for being too minimal, and Griffin himself has admitted core concepts such as nationalism, racism or even rebirth (his ‘palingenesis’) can be interpreted in various ways (conservative, restorationist or sometimes even futuristic). Therefore, only through an extensive description and analysis of the particular events studied can the real picture be drawn. This minimal definition could, henceforth, be considered as the canvas of a painting, delimiting the wider scope of the research, but leaving to the painter what makes the painting unique.¹ What is drawn from a core-concept definition of fascism are fascist-like movements rather than fascist movements, the latter being entirely abstract and unrealisable. Following this, both Mussolini’s and Hitler’s governments were fascist, but more precisely Mussolini’s was Fascist and Hitler’s Nazi. They shared a similar set of beliefs, due most notably to the epoch in which they existed, but also had substantial differences as a result of their heritage, location and many other factors.

With this in mind it becomes possible to apply the same process to the extreme right, and also the radical right, and to create a political family which can encompass both the Front National and One Nation without ignoring the important differences which have made them unique praxes of the right.

Inequality and Reaction

In studying the relevance of the extreme right category in contemporary politics, it would prove fruitless to attempt to define it as a precise doctrine or ideology like Marxism, for example. The extreme right did not emerge from one thinker, nor can it be argued to have ever reached a coherent final point as an ideology. This is not to say that some of its forms were not exhaustively theorised or that no precise doctrine has ever arisen from this end of the political spectrum: Nazism and Fascism relied on thoroughly developed doctrines, even though their practice differed greatly from their sources; France had Maurrasism; Australian secret armies during the interwar period relied on clear and precise tenets. Yet it would be counterproductive to assume a singular coherent ideological doctrine guiding these movements. On the other hand, it is possible to delineate a core concept definition of the extreme right; that is, an outline of the vital characteristics which define this category of political movements, organisations and parties. Such a definition only holds heuristic value and does not provide a practical representation of the extreme right. Its sole aim is to allow the grouping in one heading of factions sharing core beliefs, providing therefore a structure under which one can undertake a coherent comparative analysis, not divorced from a too-often ignored polemical past.

What I have identified as core or ineliminable concepts, having drawn from many different sources, ranging from historical studies of extreme right movements to contemporary cases and interpretations, are two words which embody the essence of the extreme right: inequality and reaction, or, more precisely, reaction to equality. In its broadest and most encompassing definition, the extreme right is a reaction, a reaction to the left and the extreme left, and more broadly to the Enlightenment. Defined in this manner, the extreme right is not bound to spatial and temporal changes and can embody a very wide range of movements, parties and doctrines. With this definition in mind, it can be argued that the idea of an extreme right emerged as a direct consequence of the French Revolution, not only ideologically, but also practically. On 29 August 1789, the spatial dichotomy which has since defined the Western political world was created when the delegates in the Assemblée Constituante were asked to move to one side or the other to cast their votes on the rights which should be left to the King: those who chose to grant a right of veto to the monarch were asked to stand on the right; those who denied the King this right were to stand on the left. Almost immediately, it was recognised that traditionalists and conservatives should be associated with the right and modernists with the left (Ignazi 2003: 4). In essence, those who associated themselves or were associated with the right were those who were most opposed to the changes brought upon by the Revolution and by its egalitarian ideals.

From then on, as Ariane Chebel d’Appollonia has suggested, ‘the unity of the extreme right has been essentially conceived regarding what it excludes, regarding the systematic rejection of a philosophy, a form of government, a way of life modified by spiritual emancipation’ (Chebel d’Appollonia 1996: 59). Where the extreme left theoretically holds equality as its cornerstone, the extreme right believes in differences and natural inequalities, leading to the exclusion of some groups judged unwelcome and inferior. While the left sees equality as an axiom, the right believes that inequalities are part of the natural order, ‘outside the purview of the state’ (Mudde 2007: 26). As Elisabeth Carter has noted, while the inequality assumed by the extreme right can take various forms such as ‘nationality, race, ethnic group and/or religious denomination’, and lead in turn to the use of ‘nationalism, xenophobia, racism and ethnocentrism’ as political tools, it would be wrong to assume these to be defining characteristics of the extreme right. For Carter, ‘they are mere manifestations of the principle of fundamental human inequality, which lies at the heart of right-wing extremism’ (Carter 2005: 17). It is therefore necessary to leave these elements aside in defining the extreme right category and use them only for the identification of occurrences of extreme right moveme...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Epigraph
• Introduction
• Part I The Contemporary Extreme Right: Definitions and Clarifications
• Part II Right-wing Populism as A Catalyst
• Part III The Populist Temptation in Government
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index