National Rally

The Nation­al Ral­ly (Rassem­ble­ment Nation­al, RN), found­ed in 1972 as the Nation­al Front by Jean-Marie Le Pen, is France’s lead­ing far-right polit­i­cal par­ty. Orig­i­nal­ly root­ed in post-war nation­al­ist cur­rents, it rose to promi­nence in the 1980s by cam­paign­ing on immi­gra­tion, law and order, and Euroscep­ti­cism. In 2011, Marine Le Pen suc­ceed­ed her father and pur­sued a strat­e­gy of “de-demon­i­sa­tion,” soft­en­ing rhetoric and expelling con­tro­ver­sial fig­ures to broad­en main­stream appeal. In 2018, the par­ty rebrand­ed as the Nation­al Ral­ly, retain­ing its tri­colour flame logo, and has since become a dom­i­nant force in French pol­i­tics, con­sis­tent­ly strong in Euro­pean and leg­isla­tive elec­tions while main­tain­ing posi­tions favor­ing strict immi­gra­tion con­trol, nation­al sov­er­eign­ty, and eco­nom­ic pro­tec­tion­ism. The par­ty is wide­ly iden­ti­fied as part of the broad­er nation­al con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment in Europe, empha­siz­ing cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty, tra­di­tion­al val­ues, and resis­tance to supra­na­tion­al governance.

Sources

• Wikipedia – Nation­al Rally
• Ency­clopae­dia Bri­tan­ni­ca – Nation­al Rally
• The Guardian – France’s Nation­al Ral­ly History
• Amer­i­can Uni­ver­si­ty – The Nation­al Rally’s Elec­toral Success
• GIS Reports – France’s Nation­al Rally