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As well as its Vichy connections, the name was also used for a party created by Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour, an extreme-right lawyer who stood in the 1965 presidential election. Tixier-Vignancour’s election campaign was run by Jean-Marie Le Pen, Marine’s father and the FN leader from 1972 to 2011.

The conference approved a change of FN rules that stripped Jean-Marie Le Pen of his title as honorary president. He was thrown out of the party in 2015 after repeating antisemitic and racist comments for which he is notorious, but appealed against the decision. A court confirmed his expulsion last month.

The appearance of Bannon at the conference divided FN supporters. Gilbert Collard, an FN veteran, said inviting Bannon was counterproductive. “We might try to avoid giving ammunition to our enemies that they can use dishonestly against us,” he said.

“When you’ve aroused your supporters with political arguments about us versus them, they are not opponents but enemies who must be fought with all means, and it both leads to violence and makes conceding power impossible.”

In France, Marine Le Pen, head of the far-right National Rally, is expected to mount another significant challenge to President Emmanuel Macron in the 2022 election. She was firm in supporting Mr. Trump, praised his election and Brexit as precursors to populist success in France and echoed his insistence that the American election was rigged and fraudulent.

after the violence, which she said left her “very shocked,” Ms. Le Pen pulled back, condemning “any violent act that aims to disrupt the democratic process.

Thierry Baudet, another high-profile Dutch populist, has aligned himself with Mr. Trump and the anti-vaccination movement, and in the past has called the independence of the judiciary and a “phony parliament” into question.

Even if populist leaders seem shaken by the events in Washington and nervous about further violence at the inauguration on Jan. 20, there remains considerable anxiety among mainstream politicians about anti-elitist, anti-government political movements in Europe, especially amid the confusion and anxiety produced by the coronavirus pandemic.

“Now the most pressing issue is Covid-19, but it’s not at all clear how politics will play out post-pandemic,” he said. “But,” he added, “the fear of the worst helps to avoid the worst.”

If economies tank and populists gain power in France or Italy, he said, “God forbid when Europe faces the next crisis.”

In Poland, the government has been very pro-Trump and public television did not acknowledge his electoral defeat until Mr. Trump did himself, said Radoslaw Sikorski, a former foreign and defense minister who is now chairman of the European Parliament’s delegation for relations with the United States.

“With Trump’s defeat, there was an audible sound of disappointment from the populist right in Central Europe,” Mr. Sikorski said. “For them, the world will be a lonelier place.”

Similarly, Prime Minister Victor Orban of Hungary, a firm supporter of Mr. Trump, declined to comment on the riot. “We should not interfere in what is happening in America, that is America’s business, we are rooting for them and we trust that they will manage to solve their own problems,”

Enrico Letta, a former prime minister of Italy who is now dean of the Paris School of International Affairs at Sciences Po, said that Mr. Trump “gave credibility to the disruptive attitudes and approaches of populist leaders in Europe, so having him out is a big problem for them.” Then came the riot, he said, “which I think changed the map completely.”

Now, like Ms. Le Pen, Italian populist leaders have felt “obliged to cut their ties to some forms of extremism,”

“We even start to think that Brexit has been something positive for the rest of Europe, allowing a relaunch,” Mr. Letta said. “Nobody followed Britain out, and now there’s the collapse of Trump.”

These newcomers, especially Muslims, are said to be fundamentally opposed to both France and French values. Unless the country turns back the clock, and puts “real” Frenchmen in charge again, it is supposedly doomed. Islamism, Le Pen has argued, is a “totalitarianism” that aims to “subjugate France.”

France’s left rightly rejects both conspiracy theories about a “great replacement” and attempts to blame immigrants for the concentrated poverty that does persist in some French suburbs. But even as it has contested who is to blame for the current malaise, it has, in its own way, mirrored the relentless pessimism of the right.

Many of the loudest left-wing voices in France also depict life in the banlieues as bleak and dystopian.

they, too, give the impression that most immigrants and their descendants are perpetually stuck at the very lowest rungs of society.

American reality is much more hopeful than the pessimistic narratives that are now so fashionable suggest.

he difference lies in who is blamed for these dystopian conditions: The real culprits, according to more progressive pessimists, are the incessant discrimination and racism that define contemporary France.

yet, life in contemporary France is much better than the dominant discourse on either the right or the left now seems to suggest. Indeed, France has successfully managed to integrate the majority of its immigrants over the course of the past decades

Far from being stuck in poverty or welfare dependency, most immigrants are experiencing rapid social, economic, and educational mobility. According to one large study by European economists, for example, the children and grandchildren of immigrants are more likely to improve their living conditions than the children and grandchildren of similarly positioned “natives.”

Because of the failure of the French mainstream to contest the pessimistic narrative of the far right, these facts are barely known in the country

Under those circumstances, it is hardly surprising that so many voters are choosing to seek fault with outsiders rather than themselves.M

This pessimism could not have become so dominant if it did not have roots in reality.

The majority of African Americans are middle-class. Most have completed high school and about half have, if they are below the age of 40, spent some time at a community college or research university. Black Americans are more likely to work in white-collar jobs than in blue-collar ones. They are more likely to get their health insurance from their employers than to either have to purchase it on an open marketplace or be uninsured.

Black Americans are actually more likely than their white fellow citizens to “believe in the American dream” or to say that the country’s best days still lie ahead.

Immigrants fared very well, rapidly boosting their incomes from one generation to the next. And this turned out to be true irrespective of their ethnic or geographical origin. “Children of immigrants from nearly every sending country,” the economists write, “have higher rates of upward mobility than the children of the US-born.”

Uniting the far-right camp, however, is easier said than done. The deepest rift concerns the relationship with Russia.Poland’s Law and Justice is staunchly anti-Russian and has reaffirmed its ties to the West and the United States especially. In contrast, the League, National Rally, and AfD have all opposed EU sanctions on Moscow, with representatives of the three parties visiting Russian-annexed Crimea on multiple occasions. AfD delegations have repeatedly met with top Russian officials in recent months, and Le Pen even held face-to-face talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in early 2017, in what many viewed as a ringing endorsement by the Kremlin in the thick of the French presidential campaign.

Another potential obstacle is between parties that have governed and those that have only shouted from the cheap seats.To Law and Justice or Fidesz, which, despite a populist bent, have run their countries for years, leaders like Le Pen, who never has, can still appear toxic. It’s true that Le Pen has sought to rebrand her party by shedding overtly racist and anti-Semitic language of the old days. But “she is still seen as an eternal outcast, somebody who never played a government role,” said Pawel Zerka, of the European Council on Foreign Relations.

“The idea that the death penalty will deter terrorism is ridiculous, because terrorists are not afraid to die. Death is part of their ideology.”

“That appears to be a response that we see among politicians in all nations,” Robert Dunham, the executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Death Penalty Information Center, told The Daily Beast. “So when some extraordinary act of violence occurs, it is also certain that some politician somewhere will come up with a response like that.”

“Today’s politics cannot be summed up by the left-right divide. During the 2008 financial crisis, the governments and banks looked after themselves above all, they saved themselves and not the people.”

Jean-Marie Le Pen said: “It’s the big boss’s surprise. I think Bannon’s OK … but it’s not exactly the definition of de-demonising [the party] and it’s a bit of a paradox given that Steve Bannon was supposed to be Trump’s most radical adviser,” he said. “But who knows. She [Marine] may end up coming round to my way of thinking.”

“He has also been the architect of a victory, that of Donald Trump, on whom nobody would have bet, particularly European media and politicians. So he can explain how victory is possible and how to bring it about. I find it’s always interesting to hear from someone who has won an election.”

“If you leave out the anti-Semitic part of Jean Marie Le Penn’s thinking, every other element except that, you have in Nicolas Sarkozy.”

“The idea that more immigration means more unemployment, means less safety in France, more insecurity, that’s Le Penisme and Nicolas Sarkozy says that too,” Mr. Guenolé said.

with many parties moving to the right in one way or another, the best hope for the Republicans might be to cast themselves as defenders of traditional French values and a tough approach on immigration and on Islam, but as more responsible than Ms. Le Pen on economic issues,

The two regions the FN could win are Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie, where Marine Le Pen, won 40.5% of the vote, and Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, where her niece, Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, gained 40.6%. The Socialists are expected to drop out of both races

The second round takes place on 13 December between candidates who won at least 10% of the vote in the first round (but less than the 50% required to have won in a single round)

Les Républicains and its allies had a disappointing election, winning 27% of the vote. While the PS took only 23%, the party did better than polls predicted.

In Alsace-Champagne-Ardenne-Lorraine, the PS candidate, Jean-Pierre Masseret, who came third, has said he will not withdraw.

he maps below compare the results with those in 2010’s regional elections: the Socialist party (PS) and its allies are marked in pink, the far left in red, the centre right (now Les Républicains, then the UMP) and allies in light blue, and the FN in dark blue:

The FN also stands a strong chance in Bourgogne-Franche-Comté. The party came first there with 32% of the vote in the first round, while the centre right (24%) and socialist vote (23%) is split and a formal alliance is improbable.

The numbers suggest Les Républicains will comfortably win control of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and Pays de la Loire.

The Socialist party will almost certainly control Bretagne (Brittany), where the defence minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, was comfortably ahead in the first round.

Le Pen’s party and France’s two mainstream political outfits will vote when faced with a runoff contest. This will be particularly interesting with a presidential election due in 2017.

However, FN support is clearly on the rise and it is not clear where its ceiling is. Between the previous regional vote in 2010 and the 2012 presidential election, support for the party nearly tripled in terms of votes won.

FN-controlled Hénin-Beaumont has a population of 26,000. Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie has one of nearly 6 million – a different ballgame. How the responsibility and scrutiny of government plays out for the FN will go a long way in determining the shape of French politics over the next two years and beyond.

Officials of the party said the $11.7 million loan would be used to help the National Front’s coming local and regional election efforts as well as a run for the French presidency by the party leader, Marine Le Pen.

While the loan made headlines in France, only a few politicians spoke out against it. The head of the Socialist Party, Jean-Christophe Cambadélis, said: “Why is Mr. Putin playing the Marine Le Pen card? There is a very simple reason. She wants to get out of the European Union, triggering its destruction and weakening France.”

The website said the loan was from an obscure Cyprus-based holding company called Vernonsia Holdings Ltd. via a Swiss bank account. The holding belongs to Yuri Kudimov, the former K.G.B. agent, who ran another Russian bank, called VEB Capital, according to the website. That bank, the website said, was considered the financing arm of the Kremlin.

What made 30 percent of French people vote for a party whose founder thinks that Auschwitz is "a detail of history"?

If you take polls before and after the Paris attacks, I'm sure you will see a rise in attitudes of the "I'm gonna vote for the far right because of those terrorists" sort

The FN is usually described as "far right" or "extremist" by international media. Would you say this label is justified, and if so, what are some FN positions that justify it?Of course it's justified. Historically, the party was created by a guy who tortured Arab combatants during the War in Algeria: Jean-Marie Le Pen. In the 1980s, the same guy said that "gas chambers are a detail of our history." It's a party that actively fights against the building of mosques. It's a party whose demonstrations are run by skinheads.

Has the FN's ascent to power led to a polarization of French society? Is this a country versus city thing?More or less. But it's not that simple and there are many exceptions.

I don't think so, no. Everyone will vote against the FN on the second round—just like in 2002. We're not that dumb. But the real problem here, and it's hard to explain exactly how bad it is, is that Nicolas Sarkozy might become our president for the second time in 2017. You can almost smell it already. It's like having Bush again—or Reagan. A nightmare, really. And a big shame for France. Weren't we supposed to be the great nation of human rights, resistance, and literature or something?

The political rules that have governed the country for the past 25 years are being reshaped by a wave of nationalist right-wing populism familiar to voters in many other countries, not least fans of Donald J. Trump in the United States.

Just like Mr. Trump, Ms. Le Pen is shrewdly speaking to voters who feel economically strained, distant from leaders they perceive as elitist and out of touch, and angry or frightened by waves of immigration that they feel threaten their national identity and personal security.

She talks about the French “nation” and its “sovereignty” and making France once again proud of its “founding values” and “authentic Frenchness.” Such language takes aim at anyone who does not embrace assimilation into the French way of life.

“These regional elections are taking place in a context when defense and security are the primary preoccupations of the French, ahead of unemployment, for the first time in 15 years,”

Her success is rooted not just in her ability to modulate her message, cloaking some of her more xenophobic ideas in coded language.

She also had the good fortune to come to the political stage at a moment when the traditional parties are splintering, seemingly unable to address the economic woes of the middle class, stem the more negative effects of globalization on the French way of life or convince voters that they are not imperiled by immigration and extremism. Ms. Le Pen has long had proposals on these issues

Perhaps nothing better exemplifies the FN’s identity crisis than the departure of Florian Philippot, the party’s former vice president and national spokesperson. He had embodied the FN’s “de-demonization” strategy—less racism and xenophobia, more education, healthcare and progressive economics.

“They’re returning [to] an identity-based rhetoric. It’s really a step backwards,” he said. Since Philippot’s break with the FN (he insisted he was pushed out), he has co-founded a political party called “the Patriots.”

The Front’s leaders, however, insist that they don’t want to revive the FN of the 1970s and 1980s, the days of the party’s Holocaust-denying president Jean-Marie Le Pen and his obsession with immigration.

This logic animates the push for the party to pick a new name, which is expected to be announced at the FN’s “re-foundation congress” in March.

It’s difficult to see anything changing until another FN politician rises to challenge Le Pen.

To some degree, the party still operates as something of a personality cult.

“If people from the National Front are really asking themselves questions about the basics and about strategy, and they want to bring them forward, they need to run against Marine Le Pen for the presidency of the National Front,”

Perhaps the most sensitive question for the FN is that of a potential electoral alliance with the Republicans, France’s mainstream conservative party, which has struggled to differentiate itself from Macron’s La République En Marche

The results provide further evidence of the hollowing out of the French centre ground. More than half of votes went to candidates outside the political mainstream.

Mr Macron’s votes were concentrated in urban areas

By contrast, Ms Le Pen triumphed in rural areas and what Christophe Guilluy, a geographer, calls “peripheral France”—poorer, disconnected parts of the country, far removed from urban centres.

Widespread anxiety about immigration and the fear of further terrorist attacks are believed to have boosted the FN's support.Marine Le Pen stood in Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie, an economically depressed northern region that used to be a Socialist stronghold

The FN "is putting down roots, structuring itself and steadily winning the confidence of the French people"

This silence about the Nazi era has been typical of Austria for much of the 20th century, when the nation saw itself as the first victim of Hitler’s expansionist politics. In 1986, the Nazi past of former UN general secretary and presidential candidate Kurt Waldheim resulted in international pressure. Consequently, then-chancellor Franz Vranitzky acknowledged Austria’s complicity in the war and Nazi crimes in 1993.

Another far-right European party that has tried this strategy is France’s National Front. Founded in 1972 by Jean-Marie Le Pen, who made statements offensive to both Jews and Muslims, the party was taken over in 2011 by his daughter Marine Le Pen. She expelled her father from the party and gave it a facelift, publicly embracing Jews while continuing to speak negatively about Muslims. In 2014, she told French Jews, “Not only is the National Front not your enemy, but it is without a doubt the best shield to protect you. It stands at your side for the defense of our freedoms of thought and of religion against the only real enemy, Islamist fundamentalism.”

Still, the FPÖ keeps framing scandals such as the songbooks as isolated cases, in its attempt to convince people that Jews are no longer the enemy of the party. Fraternities are clearly enmeshed with the FPÖ, which means that—despite all public claims to the contrary—the party will likely keep its ties to anti-Semitism intact.

Ms. Le Pen, the leader of France’s far-right National Front party, has a similar fear, and she sees birthright citizenship as the vehicle for replacement. Although she doesn’t use the term favored by many Republicans in the United States (“anchor babies”), she insists, as she told me in an interview last May, that “we must stop creating automatic French citizens.”

Just as Mr. Trump has plenty to say about Islamic State attacks but generally has no comment about hate crimes against Indians, blacks and Muslims, the European far-right is quick to denounce any violent act committed by a Muslim but rarely feels compelled to forcefully condemn attacks on mosques or neo-Nazis marching near synagogues on Yom Kippur.

Their ideology is especially dangerous because they present themselves as natives valiantly defending the homeland. Because they look and sound like most of their co-citizens, they garner sympathy from the majority in ways that Islamists never could. White nationalism is in many ways a mirror image of radical Islamism. Both share a nostalgic obsession with a purist form of identity: for one, a medieval Islamic state; for the other, a white nation unpolluted by immigrant blood.

66.1%20,703,694 votes

10,637,120 votes33.9%

Mr. Macron racked up large margins in Brittany, where socialist voters were willing to support his centrist platform

issues that Ms. Le Pen raised are not going away. She gained twice the support that her father did when he ran for president in 2002

Ms. Le Pen was strongest in areas with high unemployment and low wages

The vote preserved a French political tradition of mainstream parties working together to bar candidates from the far right

Mr. Macron won most demographic groups over all

He won nearly 90 percent of the vote in Paris.

Mr. Macron won by a landslide in Paris and its affluent suburbs

Many French voters abstained, leading to the worst turnout since 1969

Mr. Macron will face the difficult job of healing a divided France and persuading the country to accept the European Union and a series of unpopular structural changes.

Whether or not the strategy pays off in 2022, the culture wars are fueling support for the far right today. Polls ahead of this month’s regional elections, where 17 regional presidencies are up for grabs, show the National Rally with a solid shot of capturing majority control of a region for the first time ever — while Ms. Le Pen is within striking distance of Mr. Macron in the presidential election.

t’s also striking to see the depths to which political discourse has sunk in a country that prides itself on its capacity for highbrow public debate and the spotlight it reserves for intellectuals. In the middle of a pandemic and after the country’s worst economic crisis since the end of World War II, the French news cycle isn’t led by discussion over truly universal issues like wealth inequality, the health system or climate change. Instead it’s focused on navel-gazing debates about identity, fueled by television personalities.