The far-Right, Venner now believed, had to forsake violence if it was serious about one day implementing its violent project. Drawing on Lenin, he argued that revolution was “less about seizing power than about using it to build a new society”. To do that, the movement needed to develop a coherent ideology and create an organisation to spread that ideology in society.
But — and this is the most important part — the far-Right couldn’t be transparent about its ideology. The reason: ordinary people were brainwashed. “Through permanent one-way propaganda, to which everyone is subjected from childhood,” Venner wrote, “the regime, in its many forms, intoxicates the French people.” The far-Right had to outwit the regime. “A revolutionary struggle, a fight to the death against an all-powerful, wily, experienced adversary, must be fought with ideas and cunning rather than force.”
As such, it was necessary for the far-Right to hide its true nature. People weren’t ready for it. Instead, without abandoning its core tenets, it should adapt its appearance. In Dély’s pithy phrase, the far-Right should “know how to change its attire to better reassure and seduce”.
“It was necessary for the far-Right to hide its true nature. People weren’t ready for it.”
Venner had been mulling this strategy for a while. Back in 1959, when he had founded the Nationalist Party, a violent group which would soon be dissolved, Venner had told new recruits that they should be careful about what they said in public. “Never discuss subjects that may shock newcomers by the way you present them,” he had warned them. “For example, the métèque problem must never in a presentation or a conversation be approached with the perspectives of the crematorium or the soap dish.” In other words, never say that you ultimately want to exterminate all métèques. When you are a fascist, you can kiss but you can never tell.
Shortly after leaving jail in 1962, Venner published his pamphlet. Titled Pour une critique positive (Towards a Positive Criticism), it became a self-help manual for generations of French far-Right activists, for whom Venner is the closest thing they have to an Antonio Gramsci. With his bold, iconoclastic text, he laid the ideological groundwork for the National Rally to become the most popular party in France. And he pioneered the strategy of dédiabolisation that has been at the heart of Marine Le Pen’s political career.
For years now, commentators have marvelled at how Le Pen detoxified the party she inherited from her father, Jean-Marie, a convicted Holocaust denier. In 2015, she even expelled him from the party for making antisemitic comments. Since then, Le Pen has worked hard to soften her rhetoric. For instance, she doesn’t use the loaded term “Great Replacement” anymore; instead, she talks about “mass immigration”. And unlike her erstwhile rival Eric Zemmour, she doesn’t limit herself to talking about the threat of “Islamic extremism”. She has spent considerable time talking about economic issues.
Le Pen has also nurtured a new generation of far-Right leaders who don’t raise their voices or go off-script. With their tailored suits, they look like respectable politicians. Jordan Bardella, the National Rally’s 28-year-old president, is the prototype. Tipped to become prime minister if the party wins this Sunday, Bardella is the face of dédiabolisation. He smiles so much his face is frozen in a rictus. It should come as no surprise that his speechwriter, Pierre-Romain Thionnet, is a Venner devotee.
But it would be a mistake to assume that Le Pen and Bardella are the first to put dédiabolisation into action. In fact, the strategy’s use can be traced to the presidential campaign of far-Right candidate Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour in 1965. A lawyer for the OAS, his candidacy marked a turning point for the nationalist camp: for the first time since the Second World War, they were seeking power at the ballot box. That, in and of itself, was an act of dédiabolisation. Vignancour was advised by — you guessed it — Venner. And his campaign director was none other than Jean-Marie Le Pen.
Vignancour won only 5% of the vote, but a seed had been planted. It blossomed in 1972 when the National Front — as the National Rally used to be called — was founded. The party was the brainchild of François Duprat, another far-Right activist who was influenced by Venner. Jean-Marie Le Pen was picked to lead it because he was seen as a far-Right moderate. That might be hard to believe today, but, in his day, Le Pen too contributed to dédiabolisation. A charismatic speaker, he helped popularise far-Right ideas in French society. In the space of 30 years, he united the movement and brought it to the second round of the presidential elections in 2002.
This was no accident. A National Front memo from 1985 shows that dédiabolisation is baked in the DNA of the party. It reads: “We are surrounded by hostile forces… In public, we must only evoke what our propaganda lets appear of the tip of the iceberg… We cannot impose on the masses outside the movement just any ideas. We must always start from a pre-existing mental substratum and blend it with our own key ideas.” Venner couldn’t have phrased it any better. And Marine Le Pen couldn’t have implemented it any better.
Over the past decade, Le Pen has not only ditched her father but also her most extreme positions. Gone are the calls for Frexit. Even in the last few weeks, whenever its programme came under scrutiny, the National Rally has moderated its policies or pushed back their eventual enactment. Banning the veil worn by Muslim women, for instance, would only happen in 2027 at the earliest. The end goal is obvious: to assuage fears and appeal to moderate voters.
And yet, despite the National Rally’s softening, it would be unwise to forget Venner’s influence on the movement. This was a man who was willing to sacrifice himself for his mission — a man who understood the power of the long game.
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SubscribeThis is a madly infuriating article, trying to darkly insinuate RN has some secret agenda waiting to be implemented if the party wins. But the truth is less alarming. In most cases, when formerly extreme and radical parties become mass parties, they mellow their rhetoric and goals. This happened with the Eurocommunist parties in the 1970s and is happening now, at the opposite political pole, with Le Pen. The RN is a center-right nationalist party, not “far right.”
I’d say they’re a centre-left party, given their public spending commitments.
National Socialists and International Socialists don’t have much in common, apart from their Socialism.
They are Socialist in their economics .
As opposed to the self-labeled imposter Socialists of Hitler’s National Socialist Workers Party….that were threatened to death by the confusion over whether Communism was any form of Socialism or not. In the end loyalty to der Fuhrer, NAZI PARTY and their Corporate Captains of Industry became their on-the-ground brand. No need for pesky press conferences explaining any internal contradictions……Remember that to our sleeping masses here in the United States of Amnesia (others recall Gore Vidal coining the phrase on his never-ending lecture circuit, even more exciting than Dylan’s Never Ending Tour)…..Our masses long ago came to expect the News Biz to be Show Biz (another insight of Hitler’s inner circle). Now investigative news or long-form coverage with context has so fallen out of favor, not only with once activist wings of our Duopoly politics…Now Identity comes first, cast out all doubts about MAGA and the infallibility of our LEADER.
As the admittedly never very dogged in their struggle to retain relevancy amongst the hard-working wage stagnating Food Stamp Nation who were looking for pizza and circuses or professional wrestling with their before-bedtime beers as early to rise and get on the punch clock framed survival on our hamster wheels of the most productive work force in industrialized history. No time for the long-view of the privileged classes who like Obama-Biden’s Secretary of Treasury prep school brat Timothy Geithner periodically reminded those nattering nabobs of negativism who called for trials of CEO and Board Chairs insisting on investigations and prosecutions of the criminality of High Finance and High Tech bid-net models, “PLAN BEATS NO PLAN.”
https://www.chronicle.com/article/larry-summers-and-the-subversion-of-economics/
Noam Chomsky likes the phrases “DISTRACTION INDUSTRY” and “WEAPONS OF MASS DISTRACTION that the packed guest lecture halls on campuses across the nation were continuing to fill as health allowed Noam to tour widely and his mostly youthful and engaged activist audiences bring along with their indie published texts that Chomsky so often references and keeps him off the corporate-captured broadcast Pay2Play quaint system of ours, which has been referred to as THE GOLDEN ROLODEX OF MAINSTREAM MEDIA NORMALIZING FAR FLUNG WARS AND DOMESTIC HOMELESSNESS.
These kids and their elders have dipped into their Chomsky aphorisms on the Role of the Intellectual In Propaganda Systems of the Free World and come up tagging the MSM circa Duopoly support for the Iraq invasion and Afghani bankruptcy of U.S. Infrastructure plans while Hercules jumbo cargo jets loaded with freshly printed U.S. currency was being looted by one Daddy Warbucks and Security State ally and straw soldier apparatus after another beyond any view by the dba mainstream media. Even as The Distraction Industry dba Daddy Warbucks purveying the Weapons of Mass Distraction as well as the U.S. armaments the Islamists and their crooked scoundrels competing for rule over Opium Markets (flooding U.S. streets as low-cost Afghani processed heroin for decades to the consternation of Police Chiefs of major U.S. cities) harvested each new season off the last U.S. industrial production lines to survive Neo-Liberal E-CON policies fully embraced by our Duopoly as well as Britain’s (number 2 in weapons and high tech exports behind US. Ever wonder why Sudan isn’t much named as the Humanitarian Crisis that dwarfs tiny Israel Palestine Gaza? Before the Chinese, Russians and Iranians took over the weapons pipelines to Sudan’s competing War Lords and their armies we never much questioned Daddy Warbucks smashing investor returns.
Where was the money being laundered? In London, Wall Street, the Treasure Islands, Liechtenstein, Zurich and various other HQ’s of Real Estate as the last inflation resistant safe harbor for the Global Capital Investor class….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6juSABUfnUg
PUSH – ( some excerpts from the documentary )https://yt3.ggpht.com/U5ClNC39NMVxsKRtU0R5X9z-OJwdeeqTjsVnxMgZrvJC9cTXkyTdcIfHinzHhF_99Tv8d0hd=s48-c-k-c0x00ffffff-no-rj
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Producers: Fredrik Gertten, Margarete Jangard Director: Fredrik Gertten From Knowledge Network Aired Feb. 2, 2021
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This generation of the Le Pen family aren’t really keeping anything secret in terms of their modern national socialism.
They are already proposing the deportation of dual nationals. From there, were they to take the Elysee, then Marine would certainly seek to realise her father’s plan to deport non-white French nationals.
And you know this…how?
In a democracy, any radical party must practice some form of dédiabolisation to win over a sufficiency of voters, given that habit and inertia are the main factors determining how a large proportion of us vote. Marxists, for example, have been practicing dédiabolisation for decades. I find nothing suspicious or underhand about this. Without it, our democracy would be even more moribund.
Mr Venner was not married himself. Nor did he leave any kids.
Could he not have furthered his cause better, by frequent & merry f*****g, siring ruddy-cheeked healthy infants all over & generally having a cheery and spermy life ?
Absent any personal life of his own, his act does seem ostentatious and absurd.
Much as been made about the homoerotic undertones of his hero, Mishima Yukio’s work. Perhaps Venner was in search of a more personal dediabolision as well.
A great man!
Europe will be saved when the dictatorship of ‘The Center’ (Right and Left) is finally toppled. The Crnter flooded Europe with third world immigration and made it subordinate to the United States.
Europe has been subordinate to the USA since 1945, and will be so long as it depends on the USA for its defence. It really needs to grow up but won’t. It is much happier producing endless rules and regulations and pretending to be of consequence in the world. It isn’t.
The right/left analysis just isn’t working any more.
The RN is as someone else here has just said, very protectionist and a believer in state spending on one side but on the other is nationalistic and anti Islamist.
I haven’t met anyone who would be a ‘Vennerist’ but many who vote RN.
For an Anglo example of de-diabolisation we need look no further than recent events on this side of the Channel. The Labour Party manifesto revealed very little of the party’s plans and intentions, we await a series of great reveals.
Some will, but many will prefer to watch Strictly or MotD.
An interesting article, but…
That’s taking it into the realms of imaginative fiction, quite unnecessarily. The act required no embellishment.
Another article, albeit well written, but essentially slanderous propaganda exercise, veiled as a pseudo-philosophical treatise on the subject of erroneous minds of the third of the French electorate fed by double speak evil doers from RN. If that is a likeminded journalism this publication promotes on the regular basis, I think, I would consider cancelling my recent subscription. Thankfully, your writing about my country (US) is a lot more pragmatic. Really was hoping for a better perspective of European affairs from such an advantageous close perch. But this and most of the adulatory articles about the ghosts of Tony Bliar coming to power are quite disappointing.
UNHERD provides all political sides and opinions. Let’s keep it for that very reason. I for one don’t want you to sensor the articles I read and I’m sure you wouldn’t appreciate me censoring the articles you read.
The word “far-right” appears in the article as if a record were skipping. If one fills all space with that word, then there is no room for the word”far-left.” Yet, “far-left” is primary, “far-right” secondary. The one is an action, the other a reaction. Still, he’s right about the reaction. To put his piece in order, he need only point that out.
Sensationalist and disinforming load of rubbish.
I don’t know Venner but I know a hit piece when I see it.
Demonic to commit suicide in a church.
Well, I think I better order my copy of For a Positive Critique that the writer just mentioned with a link, bless his heart.
I think that lefty writers should stop using the “far-right” pejorative. Why not say “far-white” and live a little?
How accurate is this, I wonder?
I had never heard of Dominique Venner. A revelation.
He believed that the war to preserve the Algerian colony was morally correct because Algeria was French “by right of conquest”. You can look at Mussolini’s description of Fascism and find such an opinion.
He abandoned violence because it did not work. Instead he proposed to win power democratically and realised that to do this it would be necessary to conceal his true ideology.
Two things stand out for me. First the similarity with the far Left in US which, after failure of the violence of the late 1960s and 1970s, sought instead capture power by “a long march through the institutions”. Yascha Mounk in his book “The Identity Trap” identified French influence as being key to this movement, but does not mention Venner.
Second I understand why Le Pen likes Putin, for he is doing in Ukraine what Venner believed France should have done in Algeria, and she praises Venner. Though the modern Far Right is not militaristic, deep down there is still a sympathy for colonial wars like Russia’s. Putin pretends to stand for traditional values and, I think, he does. The values of the 1930s Fascists.
I notice that the writer offers no concrete evidence at all that Marine Le Pen herself is a devotee of Venner’s philosophy. Rather, we are invited to assume that she must be.
Actually, that’s a very good point!
Yes, apparently she posted some very brief and formal respects after his death, that seems to be the sum total of it.
All political epithets need to be understood in the context of the ever-sliding Overton window. Ideas that were in the centrist mainstream a couple of decades ago are now “far right” in the minds of left-wing commentators.
For instance, she doesn’t use the loaded term “Great Replacement” anymore; instead, she talks about “mass immigration”.
Does watering down language change the reality of a situation, and seriously, THIS is the author’s evidence of what “far-right” looks like? Also, it’s mass illegal immigration, a necessary distinction that people work hard to ignore. Again, calling something by a different name does not change what it actually is.
By the way, remind me who is behind actual violence in France these days. Not the Le Pen people. We heard the same shrill talk in the US after Meloni was elected, the same hand-wringing about the echoes her party used to include.
By that token, the Democrat Party is suspect, by definition, as the party that ushered in the Jim Crow era of govt-sponsored discrimination and is now the same party pushing the DEI agenda of both govt- and corporate-sponsored discrimination.
Stupid article. The French establishment could pull the rug from under Le Pen by simply ending mass immigration. On economic issues she’s a mainstream leftist and statist.
Those mouthing off “far right” to all and sundry should learn what it really looks like. UK has been subjected to the same insidious brainwashing, but from the far left. This elitist social engineering has to stop. In addition if anything proves that UK is not part of Europe, this article does. Britain has not had the land frontiered history and wars of Europe. We are not given, as a nation, to extremism, left or right. It has never taken hold because it takes extreme conditions for a seed to germinate. However, Islam is extreme and is far right. So do we fight fire with fire?
Perhaps the question of whether Le Pen and Bardella are “sincere” in their de-toxified public discourse should not be our central concern. They may indeed be talking this new way in recent years largely to lure the more centrist voters needed to win elections. But since when is sincerity the primary virtue in political leadership? The same political constraints forcing them to revise their public rhetoric will very likely also constrain what, once in power, they will attempt and succeed in doing. If they prove to be wolves in sheep’s clothing, the democratic process in France—including parliamentary votes of “no confidence”—is surely strong enough to eject them when time comes.
Perhaps the question of whether Le Pen and Bardella are “sincere” in their de-toxified public discourse should not be our central concern. They may indeed be talking this new way in recent years largely to garner the centrist voters needed to win elections. But since when is sincerity the primary virtue in political leadership? The same political constraints forcing them to revise their public rhetoric will very likely also constrain what, once in power, they will attempt and succeed in doing. If they prove to be wolves in sheep’s clothing, the democratic process in France—including parliamentary votes of “no confidence”—is surely strong enough to eject them when time comes.
Interesting article presenting background root development of the far right organizations in France. Nevertheless, it doesn’t present the whole picture of political and social developments in France and Europe. This was off course a legitimate choice by the author. I would though prefer a presentation of a wider spectrum of events. To give an example, how and why have mainstream French governing elites moved from being a colonialist force into a multiculti one, in similar “behind the scene” procedures..? Moreover how has the left processed throughout its history in reshaping a utopian revolution into a coalition with every submerged (in reality or fantasy) group of people..? Etc etc..!
Well, Theo, the unveneered truth (see what I did there) is that there is mass immigration and there is Islamic extremism. Mr Bardella does have a smart suit but it’s quite respectable to point out the truth.
Pathetic smear tactics. I’ve been rethinking my Unherd sub for a while, unfortunately I just paid it again for another month but I think I’m finally out of there.
So you mean to tell me that a group of people seeking control over the apparatus of state violence are willing to countenance violence?! Sacre Bleu! There’s a first time for everything, non?
Despite the pearl clutching rhetoric, this was an interesting article. For me Venner’s very un-christian suicide disqualified his incoherent neopagan ideology. But alas, whether one turns left or right, incoherent neopaganisms seem to be the only ideologies in demand these days.
Pervasively in media one finds the terms “left’, “far left”, “progressive”, and “centrist” to describe everything from the center leftward. But only one term ever appears for anything on the other half of the spectrum: “far right”. The term itself implies there should be something less right than the far right, but such a group is never, ever mentioned. Anything to the right of center is called “far right”. That implies you can only go towards the right in your thinking as far as the center; any more than that and you are Hitler.
The French have never digested 1789 so no wonder they have not digested Vichy either. De-demonisation isn’t the answer (hiding your real agenda as European federalists have been doing since before the EEC was founded in 1957). The answer is to set out your stall in a reasonable, democratic fashion and to make your case to the people. Given the grip elites/federalists, etc. have on the mass media, through which they control the narrative and therefore the people, taking them on is an enormous task but that’s the job.