Chapter 9. France

Abstract

This chapter aims to uncover possible motives of the French electorate to support the right-wing populist Rassemblement National (National Rally) in the 2019 elections to the European Parliament analysing public discourse on Twitter with a view to identity construction and recontextualisation. Assuming that supporters respond differently to long-time party leader Marine Le Pen than to “France’s far-right boy wonder” (Momtaz 2019) Jordan Bardella, the lead candidate in the 2019 European elections, the qualitative analysis examines the extent to which populist supporters adapt their line of argumentation to the respective political champion based on 801 tweets that were published on Marine Le Pen’s and Jordan Bardella’s official Twitter accounts. The results for France show that even though Marine Le Pen has turned the formerly right-extremist Front National into a “modern” populist party that is also appealing to a broader electorate, the basic premisses of far-right ideology stay the same for both, populist leaders as well as supporters: There is a difference between the French and others, and the French people need to come first. What is most striking in terms of identity construction and recontextualisation is the fact that populist argumentation and rhetoric are taken up by supporters in such a way that they are no longer seen as belonging to far-right ideology, but are recontextualised as common sense.