Daughter, Mother, Captain: Marine Le Pen, Gender

Daughter, Mother, Captain: Marine Le Pen, Gender, and Populism in the French National Front Dorit Geva

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This article analyzes members of the French National Front, and their leader Marine Le Pen, to understand how gendered symbolism and performances structure populism. Populist stylistic repertoires are structured by hegemonic masculinity and femininity, and tie populism to radical-right ideologies. Analysis of Marine Le Pen and her followers clarifies the relationship between populism, gendered symbolism, and the radical right; points to how populism is a performance of hegemonic masculinity which women leaders can enact if combined with performances of hegemonic femininity; and points to limitations imposed by such gendered repertoires.

Introduction As Marine Le Pen (MLP) delivered her campaign speech at the end of the 2-day convention in Lyon launching her 2017 French presidential candidacy, the populist campaign slogan, “In the name of the people,” hovered high above the podium. The slogan was bracketed on each side by two enormous blue roses. Once the radical-right leader’s speech came to an end, Front National (FN) luminaries joined her on stage, and MLP was handed a solitary blue rose while the audience roared in applause.1 The blue rose was to be her 2017 campaign symbol, and blue-rose paraphernalia, such as mouse pads and temporary tattoos, were on sale at the campaign convention center. Although the blue rose was unique to MLP’s 2017 campaign, this paper analyzes the FN party2 to understand how gendered symbolism, performances, and discourses are constituent features of populism. I argue that this relationship has not been sufficiently understood by scholars of populism for two closely related reasons. The first is the analytical and empirical conflation between the radical right and populism.3 Since the European radical right has

Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary *[email protected] socpol: Social Politics, Summer 2018 pp. 1–26 doi:10.1093/sp/jxy039 # The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected]

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become increasingly populist scholars have lost sight of distinctions between populism and the radical right. The European radical right is ideologically anchored in nativist, racist, anti-immigrant ideologies (Eger and Valdez 2015). Populism, by contrast, is best viewed as a political style. This political style shapes populist politicians’ performative repertoires, sowing seeds of identification, or dis-identification, among everyday citizens. Such repertoires can be closely linked to radical right-wing ideologies, but populism in itself is nonaligned as a left/right signifier. Empirical analysis of populism ought to center less on explicit ideological platforms, and more on observation of political performances and symbolic repertoires employed by politicians and by political actors on the ground. The second reason the relationship between populism and gender therefore remains unclear is that rather than analyzing how gender relates to populist performances, scholarship which purports to study gender and the populist radical right tends to analyze the relationship between gender and radicalright ideologies. I am careful to distinguish between populism and radical-right ideologies within the “populist radical right,” and argue that contemporary populism is deeply gendered. Additionally, the gendered symbolism and performances structuring contemporary populism help tie together nativist radical-right ideologies to populism. I draw from Moffitt and Tormey (2014), who argue that populism is a political style, with substantive claims that center on leaders’ claims to represent “the people,” and anti-elitism. However, despite Moffitt and Tormey’s emphasis upon populism as a performative style, their conceptualization of populism gives little consideration to gendered performances and symbolic repertoires. I present the strengths of their framework of populism-as-style, and offer a corrective to their work by noting the pervasive gendering of populist leaders’ self-presentation through analysis of MLP’s image at FN offices and events; and the gendered language and identifications populist followers portray when they describe their attraction to MLP. Following Schippers’ (2007) sociological account of hegemonic gender, I examine how idealized features of masculinity and femininity as complementary and hierarchical provide a rationale for social relations at all levels of social organization from the self, to interaction, to institutional structures, to global relations of domination. (Schippers 2007, 91) Through qualitative observations conducted from spring 2013 until July 2017, and with a view of hegemonic gender as providing a rationale for all levels of social—and political—organization, I propose that gender hegemony needs to be understood as deeply structuring of populism. In the following, I first review existing scholarship on gender and the populist radical right, and argue that we need to isolate the populist features of radical-right populist parties, and then can also identify how hegemonic


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masculinity and femininity act as a glue symbolically tethering the radical right to populism. I maintain that qualitative observations and interview methods are ideal for deciphering this relationship. I then move to the empirical heart of the paper. I identify three gendered themes which permeated FN discourse and its symbolic ecology. The first two themes emphasized MLP’s feminine virtues, whereas the third emphasized her masculine virtues. The first theme is of MLP as a political daughter. She was seen as carrying the history of France, and the history of the party, in her very being. However, others rather saw MLP as a symbol of the future. The second theme therefore highlights how FN supporters identified with MLP as a “matriarchal avant-garde.” Finally, the third theme shows how FN supporters admired MLP for her masculine virtues, in her physicality, her “authority,” and even her “virility.” MLP thus simultaneously symbolized feminized and masculinized virtues. This fertile gendered symbolic ecology was not only produced by the party, but also provided a framework through which FN supporters articulated their political critique, and expressed emotional attachments to their leader. This gendered populist repertoire, especially the themes which emphasized her role as a mother caring for her people, and her masculine virility, tied radical-right nativism with populist repertoires. Finally, I briefly suggest that if a populist leader is seen as failing to actualize repertoires of gender hegemony, that leader is also criticized for doing so. Gendered political imagery and performances therefore anchor populism and tether it to radical-right ideologies. However, it is a thin tightrope to walk, and failure to perform these scripts can disenchant followers.

Disentangling the Radical Right and Populism Research explaining patterns of support for populist radical-right parties in Europe, and the current crisis in European party politics, has largely focused on economic crisis and immigration as possible explanations for voter support of radical right-wing parties in Europe (e.g. Arzheimer 2009). Some scholars note how economic crisis can breed antipathy to immigrants (e.g. Rydgren 2008), and can result in citizens losing trust in government and political elites (Norris 2005). Mobilizing grievances against immigration is the only issue shared by all radical right-wing parties in Europe (Ivarsflaten 2008). Others rather focus on the dynamics of party competition (e.g. Meguid 2005; Stockemer 2014), noting that radical-right parties’ success is relative to that of other parties. Within this work, voters’ sex is considered important in predicting support for radical-right parties. Men have long been shown to be more likely to support radical right parties (e.g. Givens 2004; Harteveld et al. 2015). Some have compared cross-national voting behavior, however, and have concluded that


Members of the French National Front

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the extent of the gender gap, wherein men are reportedly more likely to vote for populist radical-right parties, has been overstated, with a closing gender gap unfolding (e.g. Mayer 2013, 2015; Spierings and Zaslove 2015). Some similarly examine gender as predictive of active membership in populist radical-right parties, noting an ongoing gender gap in terms of men’s higher membership in populist radical-right parties (see Mudde 2007 for a review). Like work on the gender gap in support of radical-right parties, this work importantly surveys overall trends and transformations in party membership. Nonetheless, much of this scholarship does not analyze populism. Rather, it identifies the relationship between sex of voters or party members, and their attraction to, or dislike of, radical-right nativist ideologies. Furthermore, “gender” is often treated in minimalist terms. Gender is defined as a dichotomous variable specifying the sex of voters or party members, avoiding the challenge of considering how masculinities and femininities “interact in organizations, institutions and processes” (Lovenduski 1998, 339). Feminist scholars who have studied the radical right argue that gender ideologies are a central feature of radical-right parties. They therefore focus on the ideological content of populist right-wing parties and their relationship to the politics of gender and sexuality, and employ a thicker conception of gender. By analyzing party manifestoes or politicians’ speeches, they trace how some populist radical-right parties in Western Europe now claim to promote gender and sexual equality as a European value (e.g. Akkerman 2015; Alduy and Wahnich 2015; de Lange and Mu¨gge 2015; Farris 2017; Mayer, Ajanovic, and Sauer 2014; Meret and Siim 2013). Others note how “traditional” gender roles are promoted by several populist parties in Western Europe (Vieten 2016), and in populist radical-right parties in former state-socialist countries (Norocel 2016). This research importantly shows how gender ideologies are central features of radical-right parties. Yet, with this work too, analysis focuses on the relationship between gender ideologies and the European radical right, rather than on the relationship between gender ideologies and populism. Such an emphasis on explicit ideological content of radical-right parties does not capture how gender relations structure the performative/symbolic components of populists. Finding the Populist Within the “Populist Radical Right”

There is today broad consensus that populism entails a combination of anti-establishment rhetoric, personalized political leadership, and strong identification between a political leader and “the people” (e.g. Berezin 2009; Canovan 1999; Jagerns and Walgrave 2007; Jansen 2011; Mudde 2007; Weyland 2001). Populism therefore contains a floating two-pronged substance that centers on representing “the people” and being against elites, and this substance can belong to either left or right populism.


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Moffitt and Tormey (2014, 387) furthermore argue that populism is best viewed as a political style (see also Jagerns and Walgrave 2007). They claim that the wide variation in social structures coalescing to support populists, and the wide variation in populist ideology, discourses, and political strategies, shows that definitions of populism which try to focus on such factors fail to capture populism’s specificity. Rather, they emphasize that populism should be understood as a political style, wherein “the performances of those involved influence the relationship between the populist leader and ‘the people,’ and vice versa” (italics in original). Moffitt and Tormey emphasize that populism is especially effective in creating political identifications. Populism’s stylistic intensity, through exaggerated performance and aesthetic saturation can produce symbolic repertoires which everyday citizens take up and make their own. Furthermore, Moffitt and Tormey contextualize contemporary populism within the increased mediation of politics, and the intensification of politics as spectacle. They identify three key features of populism-as-style: (i) an appeal to “the people” in contrast to “elites”; (ii) “going low,” including employment of what is otherwise considered “bad manners” on the part of populist actors; and (iii) constant evocation of crisis and epochal breakdown (Moffitt and Tormey 2014; see also Moffitt 2016). Moffitt and Tormey say nothing, however, about the place of gendered repertoires in populist style. Some go even further and claim that gender analysis is not helpful in understanding populism. Mudde and Kaltwasser, for example, survey four populist leaders, and conclude that, “populists do not hold a strong position on gender issues. Gender issues feature explicitly relatively seldom in populist programs and propaganda, irrespective of accompanying ideology and geographical region. . .” (2015, 35). Although Mudde and Kaltwasser (2015, 35) correctly note that there is no universal commitment to specific gender-related policies within populist movements across country cases, their method focuses on discursive analysis of texts, and jumps to the conclusion that “gender issues and roles” are not important to populism. Content analysis of populist platforms and speeches illustrate wide variation in specific parties’ and leaders’ ideological positions with regards to gender and sexual equality. However, this approach errs in examining ideological platforms in trying to isolate the relationship between gender relations and populism, and does not capture the amplified performance of masculinity and/or femininity in populists’ self-presentation, and how citizens can be attracted to, or repulsed by, such figures’ performances. Although surprisingly few scholars have seriously considered the relationship between populist performances and gendered performative styles, existing work on populism can provide insights into this link. Benjamin Moffitt’s more developed secondary survey of populism provides numerous examples of male populist leaders exuding macho bravado for “going low,” and to signal that one is anti-elitist and of the people (see Moffitt 2016).



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Scholars of Latin American populism have a keener awareness of the relationship between gendered performances and populism, even if they too have failed to notice that populism is a gendered performative repertoire. They have shown how masculine imagery cultivated by populist leaders, such as the ladies’ man, the Catholic savior, and the father of the nation, cultivates populist support (see Kampwirth 2010 for a review). Argentina’s Evita Peroń, wife of Juan Peroń, stands as the female populist leader of note in this research. A charismatic leader in her own right, Evita would speak of her love for her husband and for “the people” as a wedge against the political oligarchy (Navarro 1982). This work points to the rich symbolic repertoire of gendered performances employed by populist leaders, and how they are intimately taken up by populist supporters (see Auyero 2001). Tying It All Together: Gender and Radical Rightwing Populism

If populism is mainly a style, with a floating two-pronged substance that centers on representing “the people” and vanquishing elites; and if nationalism, nativism, and racism provide the harder ideological substance of radicalright parties, then populist radical-right politics embody both this style and substance. The key overlap between this style and substance within the populist radical right is in how populist leaders are viewed as representing “the people,” where the people denotes a race-based conception of the national body (see Scrinzi 2017). This is true for both male and female radical-right populist leaders. However, female populists can embody a potent fusion between both style and substance. Scholarship on gender and political communication illustrates how political power is equated with masculinity. Women politicians are often caught in a double bind. When they try to represent masculine styles of power and leadership, they can be perceived as too aggressive (Jamieson 1995). Women leaders, including populist leaders such as MLP, are themselves active in constructing images which try to straddle the double bind (Meret, Siim, and Pingaud 2016). Analyzed through the lens of sociological scholarship on hegemonic masculinity (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005) and hegemonic femininity (Schippers 2007), we can identify more clearly how some female leaders have tried to overcome this double bind. Schippers argues that hegemonic femininity is an intersectional performance of femininity and of heterosexuality, where women who perform hegemonic femininity reproduce hierarchies of race, sexuality, gender, and class; and, at the same time, reproduce masculine domination over women. The double bind of women’s political leadership identified by political science scholars is the outcome of this intersectional layering of hegemonic masculinity and femininity. Women leaders try to enact hegemonic masculinity in order to project power and leadership, yet are then punished electorally and


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within their own political parties by transgressing into what Schippers calls pariah femininity. Pariah femininity is a performance of femininity which contains the quality contents of hegemonic masculinity, and which contaminates the putatively natural relationship between masculinity and femininity as complementary, heterosexual, and hierarchical. One strategy for managing the double bind is the performance of the “iron lady” perfected by the United Kingdom’s Margaret Thatcher (Childs and Webb 2012). This entails embodying hegemonic femininity through physical appearance, while embracing personality traits associated with hegemonic masculinity, such as “toughness” or “straight-talking.” Another strategy identified by Campus (2013) is the performance of being “mother of the nation,” employed by an assortment of women political leaders globally. Adding Schippers’ framework to Campus’s analysis of the mother of the nation, we can identify how through this role a woman leader can embody a wider range of acceptable physical attributes, and can mingle “feminine” caring with the “masculine” trait of protective toughness and power. Failure to balance hegemonic femininity and masculinity is fatal for women leaders. The United States’ Hillary Clinton and Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff were not perceived as successfully embodying hegemonic gender. Neither “maternal enough” in character, nor “feminine enough” in physical appearance, they could not successfully appeal to the cathectic dimension of hegemonic masculinity and femininity—that is, how desire and affect, including political desire and affect, are organized (see Connell 1995). Populist women, however, can play the role of mother of the nation to great effect, invoking strongly cathectic dimensions among supporters. As feminists have long argued, nationalist projects focus on women as symbols of national belonging and reproduction (see Korteweg and Yurdakal 2014; Scrinzi 2017; Yuval-Davis 1997). Historian Joan B. Landes (2003) argues that French political culture at the time of the French Revolution was permeated with visual imagery equating the French nation with an eroticized, nubile, female body. The figure of Marianne, symbol of the French Republic, continues to be mobilized as a representation of “secular France,” evoked in arguments against French Muslim women’s headscarves (Mukherjee 2015). In her role as mother of the nation, a female populist leader can be viewed as embodying radical-right nationalist ideals, and at the same time can represent a populist ideal of representing “the people.” Additionally, women populists can turn to familial, caregiving, imagery to signal their identification with the people. Women populists can “go intimate” to “go low.” Since populists structure themselves as contrary to professional political elites, whose rational-bureaucratic credentials are the source of their political legitimacy, populism relies even more heavily on hegemonic masculinity and femininity compared with other political styles in democratic party politics. Heightened hegemonic masculinity is essential to the performance of populism as a contrast to “effeminate” political elites, and with a tendency towards



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emulating military masculinity. Within populist discourse, “the people” thus also has a masculine valence. Historian George L. Mosse (1996) traced how national conscript armies in Europe, formed in the nation-building nineteenth century, became schools of “heroic virility,” merging militaristic ethics of virile masculinity with nationalist projects. Military virility became embedded in ideals of formation of masculine character and national citizenship. Male populist leaders across the political spectrum emphasize such military virility in distinguishing themselves from effeminate, or feminine, technocratic elites, and in representing the people. Yet, it is not only male populists who can embody these ideals of masculinity. Right-wing women populists embody masculine and feminine nationalist virtues in their claim to be of the people. Nationalist symbols of women as the past and future of the volk, and women populists’ ability to occupy the sign (see Adams and Padamsee 2001) of national masculine virility, merge forcefully with populist tropes of representing the people and battling technocratic elites. Gendered symbolism acts as a glue linking populist repertoires to radicalright ideologies (see Diagram A1). The United States’ Sarah Palin is an example of a figure who cultivated the image of a gun-toting “mama grizzly” in playing the role of political outsider (Deckman 2016; Larson and Porpora 2011), merging masculinity and femininity. Israel’s Miri Regev, the far-right current Minister of Culture who is a rising star in Israeli politics, and who caught the attention of global media when wearing a dress with the city of Jerusalem imprinted on it to the Cannes Film Festival in spring 2017, is another such figure. A former military officer, she blends vulgar straight talk with maternal care and canny sartorial choices, and has even dared to express her ambition to be Defense Minister, an Israeli cabinet post often reserved for former military generals. Meret (2015) has argued that former radical-right Danish leader Pia Kjærsgaard appealed to maternal imagery, but also to an image of the ruthless disciplinarian, in establishing her own form of political charisma. Sarah Palin, Pia Kjærsgaard, Miri Regev, and MLP employ familial imagery in dissolving technobureaucratic distance between them and the people. They proclaim their personal moral authority and a caring ethic as mothers, sisters, wives, widows, or daughters, for the purposes of accentuating their devotion to the people. This is combined, at the same time, by their masculine representation of antielitism and representations of the people. Populism is thus thin in meaning (Laclau 2005), and becomes more meaningful once filled with ideological content from right-wing (or left-wing) ideologies. Populist performances furthermore link style to substance, through the enactment of hegemonic gender. The “mother of the nation” can perform hegemonic masculinity and hegemonic femininity; and the very same repertoire enables the female populist to embody the ethno-national “people” against foreign powers, internal enemies, and technocratic elites. The


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metaphoric, and sometimes literal, military general enacts masculine virility, while also representing the people’s will against effeminate bureaucratic elites. As with all enactments of hegemonic gender, populism perpetuates intersectional hierarchies, and masculine domination. Populism, whether on the left or the right, is a stylistic repertoire which not only represents the people against elites, but also represents pervasive gender ideologies. Populist repertoires are therefore enactments of gender ideologies, but not in ways conventionally understood in debates around whether or not populism is an ideology or a style.

Methods and Data I spent six continuous months observing FN milieux in the southeast of France, focusing on the town of Carpentras, towns around Avignon, and in and around the city of Nice. I also attended FN events in the Rhoˆne-Alpes region, especially in and around the city of Lyon. With the aid of three research assistants, and over 4 years (2013–2017), I and my assistants interviewed 50 FN politicians and activists (see table A1 for a summary). Interviews were solicited through “cold calling” local party chapters, by attending local headquarters and meeting activists and politicians in person, and through snowball methods. Twenty-six interviews were with mostly older petty bourgeois FN adherents, most of whom were geographically located in the FN’s traditional base in France’s southeast. Twenty-four interviews were conducted with young members of the Front National de la Jeunesse (FNJ), the FN youth wing. Four of these FNJ members were also elected FN politicians. FNJ members were more diverse in class and geographic location. This generational comparison made it possible to capture how older adherents viewed the leadership transition from father to daughter, and in comprehending how young activists, some of whom might have once voted center-right, have become FN supporters and activists, their attitudes towards contemporary politics and gender politics, and why they are attracted to a populist leader at a time of intense mediatization of politics. Within an organization with more men than women (Mayer 2015), the interviewee sample includes more men than women. Observations and interviews enabled me to identify the production of gendered populist repertoires beyond national party media production, and to observe how these repertoires were interpreted and made meaningful by those I observed (see Chabal and Daloz 2006; Girard 2013; Schatz 2009).

MLP and Gendered Populist Repertoires The Political Daughter

FN members interpreted MLP as embodying the past and the future, as both the political daughter and the maternal caretaker of France’s future.



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Pauline,4 an advisor to MLP on national education from outside of Avignon, and who had once been a left-wing activist until she was personally recruited into the FN by Jean-Marie Le Pen (JMLP), captured the essence of how her party leader could represent the party’s history. She invited me to her home in the spring of 2013, where she described to me her view of how the party’s national political bureau was composed of two types of politicians. The first were the more professionalized politicians who operated on the temporal horizon of the present and immediate future. At the other side of the spectrum stood FN politicians who were fighting an historic “civilizational fight.” In Pauline’s view, MLP could embrace both positions, since she “carries the party’s history in her guts.”5 MLP’s ability to represent the party’s history is related to the party’s habit of being “a family affair” (Perrineau 2014, 61). Numerous members of the Le Pen clan have worked within the party. The party was founded in 1972 out of a charged ideological and organizational battle among multiple radical-right groups. JMLP emerged victorious as the political leader who could maintain a balance of power between several factions, while concentrating leadership in his hands. The result has been a deep personalization of leadership within the party (see Lebourg 2015). Marine, JMLP’s youngest daughter of three, worked to “normalize” the party since the early 2000s. She ran for office for the first time at the age of 24, and was elected party president in 2011, when the party introduced primaries for selection of its new party leader after JMLP’s retirement. Pascal Perrineau also notes that MLP’s first two husbands were implicated with the FN, and her romantic partner, Louis Aliot, is a long-time FN politician. The party’s patrimonial leadership structure prevents it from developing party apparatchiks, and the family disputes have even been dramatized as a dynastic soap opera featured in gossip magazines (Campus 2017), aiding in the party’s “banalization” (Matonti 2017). MLP’s much mediatized niece, Marion Marećhal-Le Pen, who recently dropped “Le Pen” from her last name, was elected to the National Assembly in 2012 at the age of 22, the youngest member of parliament in French history. Although she has now taken a leave from politics, she could receive a standing ovation by merely walking into a party event. The feeling of being part of a family extended outside FN political leadership. Despite fissures in the party, a highly educated 27-year-old male attache´ to an FN Member of the European Parliament, who represented the more technocratic and socially liberal arm of the party, proudly told me at an FN gala dinner, “We’re like one big family here. I’m pretty sure Les Re´publicains [the center-right party] don’t have galas like this.”6 MLP’s position as the political daughter translated into a sign that she was a woman personally born for politics. As opposed to professional politicians who live “off politics” (Weber 1946), she was constructed as a woman for whom politics go even further than a calling. Politics, and the FN specifically,


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were woven into her personal history, and her own personal history was linked in civilizational terms to the longue dureé. Older FN adherents in the south-east would simply refer to MLP as “Marine.” Each claimed that they had met Marine as a little girl, highlighting their loyalty to the party throughout—and despite—its generational transformations. Even after JMLP’s expulsion from the party in August 2015, interviewees claimed that they remained committed to MLP and understood the “political necessity” of having taken this action.7 Although JMLP’s forced departure did cause some life-long loyalists to break rank and leave the party, Ernest, an 85-year-old FN member and retired engineer in Lyon, explained to me that he did not hold it against MLP. As much as he had been an FN supporter for decades under JMLP’s leadership, he understood that the Le Pen father (and grandfather) had become a political liability: The “divorce” was difficult. Jean-Marie was too tempestuous. He took positions which were too divisive. I’m the same generation as him, but we needed change. Most people agreed with Marine.8 Before the summer of 2015, FN party theatrics proudly staged a narrative of dynastic continuity at the heart of the party. At its once-annual May 1 rally in Paris in 2013, the event was crowned by MLP’s closing speech. She was placed front and center as she delivered her speech, with her father proudly seated on the stage next to her. Father and daughter were wearing matching black suits, with MLP wearing a powder blue scarf and JMLP in a powder blue tie (see Image A1). A student in her early 20s who was a member of the FNJ national bureau, and whose parents met at an FN meeting in the 1980s, explained, “The FN was the only party to maintain, over decades, its political coherence, and Marine Le Pen, like Jean-Marie Le Pen, is committed to this coherence [. . .] All these years he sowed the seeds for her to take power.”9 MLP also ties herself to Joan of Arc, the fifteenth-century heroine who was canonized in 1920. The FN has long capitalized on Joan of Arc symbolism, a bricolage combining an implicitly Catholic reference, and a message of national grandeur, as embodied through a female warrior heroine (Lecoeur 2003). The May 1 FN parade used to traditionally finish at Joan of Arc Square in Paris. In addition to parading the party’s multi-generational heritage at the 2013 May 1 Paris march, MLP’s speech was delivered in Joan of Arc Square and in front of a mammoth Joan of Arc billboard (see Image A1).10 This imagery was reproduced within FN members’ discourse. A member of the National Assembly explicitly compared MLP with Joan of Arc: In France we are used to strong women who lead. Our emblem, after all, is Joan of Arc, who saved France from occupying English forces and who enabled the monarchy to be restored. So we have a connection to the warrior woman who is very strong.11



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A working-class male FNJ member whose parents are Sunni Moroccan immigrants to France, likewise stated, “If you asked me to compare her to another woman, I’d compare her to Joan of Arc.”12 In addition to representing the history of the party, the history of her family, and the history of France, MLP was linked to French blood. A wine produced in the southern Rhoˆne valley, and sold at the FN’s 2013 summer university, vividly captured this connection. The white and ro!se wine bottles on sale depicted MLP’s image, and the wine was labeled “The People’s Blood.” MLP performed the role of political daughter, and party events and discourse presented an image of the party as a large political family. This enveloped both the populist trope of being “of the people,” and therefore distinct from professional political elites, while resonating with radical-right preoccupation with race-based national belonging. The Matriarchal Avant-Garde

The overlap between populism’s emphasis on being “of the people” and against elite professional politicians, and radical-right nationalist and nativist ideologies emphasizing blood-based kinship, could also be harnessed to situate MLP as not just representing the past, but also as taking care of the future as a modern woman with a maternal ethic of care. This point of view was especially present among the FNJ, the FN youth. The FN has been actively recruiting young new members, with the FNJ acting as a key recruitment organ, encouraging them to join the FN municipal electoral lists. This strategy hoped to secure the FN’s future, and enabled the party to maintain its image as the daring anti-establishment party. At the same time as young adherents claimed to see MLP as symbolizing French grandeur and the history of the party, they also saw MLP as a break from the past. Some perceived her as representing a woman of the times, and even leading the way to the future. Young activists could express appreciation of JMLP’s contributions, and especially respected that he was 28-years old at the time of his first election to the National Assembly in 1956. The party, in their eyes, had therefore always been the party by and for the young. JMLP, however, was a political figure who had passed into irrelevancy. One young male FNJ leader explained: Jean-Marie Le Pen is a man of the twentieth century, who participated in the Algerian war, who participated in the war in Indochina. He is marked by his times, even if he was open to modern problems. But someone who is modern, who is young like Mrs. Marine Le Pen, is by definition more up-to-date with what is going on today.13 FNJ members expressed the sentiment that MLP uniquely understood their troubles, describing MLP as bearing a maternal caring ethic. Nathalie, an activist in her 20s who had joined the FNJ at the age of 16, and who selfidentified as working class, believed that MLP brought change to the party. As


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a young woman who could barely make a living as a salesperson in a jewelry shop, she believed that MLP understood her difficulties: There are a lot of young people looking for work, and who have a hard time finding work. I could identify myself in her discourse [. . .] Compared to her father, it’s not at all the same discourse. She is . . . more human, one could say.14 Young interviewees believed that MLP’s relative youth set her apart from the political establishment. This youthful contrast was not only set against the French political establishment, but against the “old age” of the European Union. Madeleine tied MLP’s age to the FN’s overall forward-looking orientation in contrast to the stodgy old European Union: She’s a relatively young woman compared to other candidates, and ultimately the FN program is quite modern. The return to the nation is something which I find modern. Against these treaties, these old European treaties dating from the 1950s, and which aren’t made for our world anymore.15 At an FN evening party in Lyon, Nicole, an FN politician who is MLP’s age and is a leading party figure in the Lyon area, explained to me that she had never been politically active until MLP became FN president. She recounted how she had studied law, but became a full-time caregiver to her children and was always active in her children’s school associations. When she was a young law student a male professor had told her that politics was a man’s world. She had therefore never considered entering politics until MLP was elected FN leader. MLP had given Nicole the confidence to become active in politics, and helped her realize that her commitments and experience as a mother could prepare her for politics. Nicole rapidly moved up the party ranks, taking on regional and national leadership roles. She teased some of the young men in the FN who would argue over whether they were more Gaullist or Bonapartist. To them, she would say, “Why all these old references to the past? I am Marinist!”16 Daniel, an FNJ activist who claimed a personal devotion to MLP, articulated a strong belief that MLP represented a matriarchal, caring ethic: Our president is a pre´sidente. Marine Le Pen basically embodies this image of a woman who is a mother and who has succeeded politically. She engages politically, and, to change things, she isn’t a man, but gives a new image to politics, a matriarchal image. That’s it, she’s a matriarch, she’s a mother. She’s the one who takes care of her children, little French people, and who wants to put them all on the right path.17 A leader of the FNJ similarly articulated the maternal closeness he felt to MLP: “Marine Le Pen could be our mom, whereas Jean-Marie Le Pen, he’s our grandfather. By definition one is closer to one’s mother than one’s



grandfather.”18 An openly gay 30-year-old man, who was a personal attache´ to MLP, described his party leader as pure in her devotion to her country: “She is a woman who is profoundly disinterested. She has nothing but love for her country and the desire to fix it.”19 Young supporters also claimed to find MLP easy to relate to, as a regular, “modern” woman. Nathalie, the young accessory shop-seller, described MLP as a realistic model for strong, liberated women: The last time I met her we spoke about animals, really “average joe” discussions [. . .] She’s a modern woman because she isn’t the only one who cooks. It’s Aliot [her romantic partner] who’s in charge of that. We aren’t stuck like we used to be in the kitchen, cooking or cleaning. Marine Le Pen is a good example.20 MLP’s perceived youth could even translate, on occasion, to her sexualization. This broke from her maternal image, and rather cast her as a seductress. Claudine, an FNJ activist in her early 20s, playfully compared her with other politicians: “I find her livelier. Actually, more sinful than others!”21 Gilbert Collard, a member of the National Assembly, joked in his speech at MLP’s presidential campaign convention in Lyon in February 2017, that when MLP had asked him to join her campaign advisory committee, he thought about it all night, and it was “the most beautiful night of my life, with Marine.” The crowd, and MLP too, giggled in delight. Whereas for other women political figures, sexualization undermines their political authority (Campus 2013), such rare moments of sexualization for MLP rather helped soften her image. MLP was symbolically structured by the party as a corrective to the mostly male professional politicians who are barely distinguishable from one another across party lines (see Image A2). Among adherents, she was a daughter, mother, even seductress, and was positioned as manifesting a caring, sometimes sensual, ethic. In all these roles, she was not merely a professional politician living off politics, but a daughter and modern mother of the people, occasionally the femme fatale, personally devoted to party and country. A Woman in a Captain’s Suit

As much as MLP’s femininity was mobilized as both a marker of historical continuity, and as a sign of generational rupture, several FN supporters also saw their party president as bearing distinctly masculine virtues (see also Boudillon 2005). Nicole, the Rhoˆne-Alpes politician, commended MLP for not sexualizing herself, and applauded her for her masculine attire. She compared MLP with the Socialist party’s Se´gole`ne Royal, who in 2007 was the Socialist party’s first female presidential candidate. Royal, in Nicole’s view, had made the error of excessively sexualizing herself during her 2007 presidential campaign. Yet, despite MLP’s “great legs,” Nicole pointed to how MLP would usually cover her legs and was careful to wear a masculine, black suit at major political events.22 Nicole’s own campaign video clip for the 2017


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legislative elections showcased her wearing full leather gear as she drove a powerful motorcycle through the city of Lyon. Interviews with FNJ members illustrated how they admired MLP’s masculine virtues (see also Matonti 2017). A 30-year-old man from northern Burgundy plainly stated, “She’s a woman who does politics like a man.”23 Hajir saw MLP as masculine in her taste for risk-taking: “Her profession involves power [. . .] She goes sailing, she likes intense sensations. Historically, women didn’t like to take risks, and sports involve taking risks.”24 For Madeleine, MLP’s virility set her apart from other women politicians: There are few woman. . . who display, I dare say, as virile a force as her [. . .] It’s always nice to see a woman who can lead a great political movement, France’s premier party, like a man. With force, with conviction, with righteousness, with honor. These are qualities which are “masculine.”25 A male 20-year old law student went so far as to claim that MLP transcended gender identity: “I don’t see Marine as either a woman or a man. She’s something more. She’s a leader. It goes beyond the question of sexual identity.26 MLP could also be viewed as especially authoritative, representing the firmness of a figure like General de Gaulle, more so than other prominent male politicians: She has that verve, that strong fist, which makes her a real head of state. In the Fifth Republic’s constitution, General de Gaulle dictated the constitution so that the head of state would be a captain [. . .] I absolutely see Marine Le Pen in this captain’s suit. Whereas someone like [former president] François Hollande or [former president] Nicolas Sarkozy—for me this isn’t a suit tailored for them. I see Marine Le Pen as someone who is more capable of fulfilling the functions of head of state compared to the others.27 Similarly, according to a male FN Member of the European Parliament: Many French people now miss General de Gaulle, who was a man of great conviction. I feel that, with Marine Le Pen, we finally have found someone who has the authority General de Gaulle had.28 A military ethic is maintained within the FN (see Cre´pon 2015). A former professional soldier in his early 40s, who worked alongside Marion MarećhalLe Pen in her Carpentras headquarters, lamented to me that it was a pity that national service was a thing of the past. During his time in the army he had commanded soldiers from immigrant families, and some of them were “great patriots.” He believed that military service “establishes hierarchy. It teaches you to get up in the morning and shave yourself.”29 At MLP’s presidential campaign launch in Lyon, I observed how FN supporters displayed respect for their party’s rules and their leader’s authority.



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Just prior to MLP’s 2017 presidential campaign kickoff speech, I sat in the auditorium next to two working-class men from the Avignon area who had brought a pole with American and French flags attached to it. They had intended to wave both flags throughout MLP’s speech, a gesture of solidarity with Donald Trump’s presidential election in the United States several months earlier. The FN’s private security personnel approached them and asked them to remove the U.S. flag. The men were visibly upset and quickly hid it. They complained that the security guards should have told them earlier, since journalists might have already photographed them waving the two flags, and the image could appear in media around the world. They did not, for example, insist on their right to freedom of expression, but were troubled that they had not been disciplined earlier.30 At the end of MLP’s speech, I lingered in the hall and had a lengthy exchange with an economics student in his early 20s who is the head of the FN student group at a university near the French Alps. Suddenly we realized MLP was marching by us with a phalanx of journalists surrounding her. He stopped mid-sentence, and announced, “We must follow Madame La Pre´sidente!” He and the FN adherents remaining in the hall fell into formation behind her as she swiftly strode on. FN members knew to follow an implicit set of rules about appropriate comportment and discipline in the company of their party commander.

Conclusion MLP’s failed 2017 presidential bid highlighted the success, and of no less importance, the limitations, of her populist strategy. Qualitative observation shows how this strategy entailed gendered imagery and performances drawing from hegemonic gender. Additionally, this research shows how FN members made sense of politics at large, and of their political leader specifically, through this symbolic repertoire. MLP was all at once seen as daughter, mother, warrior, maiden, seductress, captain, and commander; Joan of Arc, Napoleon Bonaparte and Charles de Gaulle. This symbolic multivalence furnished the means through which she was seen as representing “the people,” and as counter-posing elites. These themes were highly gendered repertoires through which FN members could express identification with MLP, and through which they articulated their socio-political critique. By analyzing MLP’s symbolic repertoires at the height of her populist success, we can learn five lessons about gender and the populist radical right. The first is that if we disentangle “radical right” from “populism,” we find that gender holds a distinct place within each category; while it also helps tether the two together. Within the radical right, one can locate explicitly articulated ideologies regarding sexual and gender equality. On the populist side, gendered


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symbolism structures conceptions of “the people” and anti-elitism. Hegemonic masculinity and femininity provide the content for the symbolism and performative repertoires through which populists claim to represent the people and fight elites. These symbols and repertoires chain populism to the radical right, and are also taken up and personalized by rank-and-file supporters. Symbolic repertoires of the leader as, for example, mother or father of the nation are the glue which helps bind the radical right to populism. These repertoires bind style to substance. In MLP’s case, through the feminine sign of mother to young adherents, and daughter to older adherents, she could embody being of the people and not merely a professional politician (the populist tropes), and could be seen as embodying French history and blood (the radical-right tropes). With the masculine sign of captain, she could battle to defend the nation (the radical-right trope), with militaristic repertoires that signified her distinction from elites and her anti-technocratic leadership style (the populist trope). Second, given that populism is a gendered performative style structured by hegemonic masculinity and femininity, populism does contain ideological content, but not in ways typically presumed or debated within political science scholarship. The ideological content represented within populism lies in populist repertoires which establish that ultimate political power is represented by hegemonic masculinity, a sign so powerful that a woman populist running for office must occupy it in order to be an effective populist. Political power is equated with masculinity, more so than ever (see Achin and Le´veˆque 2017), and populism is especially so. Marion Marećhal-Le Pen, MLP’s niece, is perhaps aiming to be a major FN leader. But for now, she is not as populist as her aunt, and shuns embodying hegemonic masculinity. She is a radical rightwing variant of the iron lady, physically embodying white hegemonic femininity, while claiming to be tough and iron-willed. In her own words to me, she benefits from “doing politics more delicately, with less virility.”31 Her emphasized femininity runs closer to her social conservatism, where “men are men,” and “women are women.” Thirdly, this analysis reveals two features particular to female populists running for electoral office. Following from the previous point, female populists can embody a kind of political androgyny. MLP could occupy a masculine sign, such as the military general. She was compared with General de Gaulle and Napoleon Bonaparte, and supporters informally reproduced ritual displays of military discipline at party events. On the left of American politics, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren also approaches populist androgyny. It is questionable whether male populists can represent feminine-typed virtues at the same time as they perform exaggerated masculinity. Arguably, performing feminine virtues pollutes their hegemonic masculinity. Additionally, women populists “go intimate” to “go low.” They perform a familial caring ethic for connecting to “the people,” and for distinguishing themselves from



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professional politicians. With the intensification of politics as spectacle, these features translate into a strong feeling of political relationality on the part of populist supporters. Fourth, this research suggests that despite providing the glue that binds the radical right to populism, gendered symbolic repertoires are narrow straights within which a female radical-right populist can operate. Populism is uniquely capable of enabling women leaders to enact hegemonic masculinity, at the same time as they enact hegemonic femininity. However, when their leader was seen as neither commanding general, nor caring mother nor daughter, FN supporters expressed disenchantment. MLP’s pugnacious performance in a high-stakes televised debate with rival presidential candidate, Emmanuel Macron, on May 3, 2017, led to supporters complaining that she had been too “aggressive” and that she was losing control.32 MLP’s performance and personality were widely criticized, more so than the ideological content of her claims. Structured more purely by hegemonic masculinity and femininity, as opposed to rational-bureaucratic credentials, populist performances allow little room for maneuver, with deviations from gendered repertoires coming at a high political cost to populist politicians. MLP and the FN have been struggling since the 2017 elections, and a year later have tried to re-brand with a new party name, the Rassemblement National. Finally, political scientists and sociologists are justifiably seeking to understand the recent electoral success of populist leaders and parties globally given contemporary political trends. However, some of the questions exploring these transformations need to be enriched. To the question of why citizens are voting for radical-right populist parties, we must also add the question of why hegemonic gender is seen as the answer to contemporary socio-political troubles? The current crisis in democratic party politics is not only about increased influenced of the radical right, and not only about personalization of politics relative to the decline of twentieth-century party blocs. The contemporary crisis in democratic party politics is also crucially about the amplification of hegemonic masculinity and femininity in an already radically masculine domain.


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Appendix

Diagram A1. Radical-right nativist ideologies and populist performative repertoires, tethered by gendered symbolism

Image A1. MLP and Jean-Marie Le Pen in matching outfits in front of a Joan of Arc banner, May 1 FN rally in Paris, 2013



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Image A2. “Another Voice”: A 2012 presidential campaign poster, with MLP at the center, and the all-male roster of colorless male presidential competitors.


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Table A1. Summary of interviewees Party

Sex

Age Location

Occupation

FNJ 1 2 3

M M M

20 24 24

Student Student Banker

4 5 6 7 8 9

M M M F M M

20 24 19 21 22 22

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

M M F F F M M F

24 26 25 23 17 20 26 23

18 19 20 FN and FNJ 1 2 3

M M F

24 25 23

Nantes (Loire-Atlantique) Paris Boulogne-Billancourt (Iˆle-de France) Paris Chambe´ry (Savoie) Paris Paris Val-de-Marne (Iˆle-de-France) Boulogne-Billancourt (Iˆle-de France) Val-de-Marne (Iˆle-de-France) Bourges (Loire Valley) Bourges (Loire valley) Paris Paris Paris Lyon (Rhoˆne) Vaires-sur-Marne (Iˆle-de-France) Grenoble (Ise`re) Calais (Pas-de-Calais) Houilles (Iˆle-de-France)

M F F

23 21 24

Normandy Strasbourg (Bas-Rhin) Arceuil (Iˆle-de-France)

4 FN 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

M

27

Toulouse (Haute-Garonne)

Member of Municipal Council Member of Municipal Council Legal aid; Member of Municipal Council Member of Regional Council

M M M M M M M M

67 24 30 29 23 30 29 39

Paris Val-de-Marne (Iˆle-de-France) Burgundy L’Oise (Northern France) Cannes (Alpes-Maritimes) Arceuil (Iˆle-de-France) Nice (Alpes-Maritimes) Carpentras (Vaucluse)

Student Student Baker Media (radio PR) Student Caregiver Student Baker Shop-seller Student Student Student Student Nurse; and Student Student Insurance broker Unemployed

Lawyer, Politician Electrician Aid to MLP Student Realtor IT; Politician Politician Parliamentary assistant; Former soldier Continued



Party

Sex

Age Location

Occupation

9 10 11 12 13 14

F F M F F M

23 60 85 44 70 55

Politician Politician Retiree Educator, Politician Retiree Politician

15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

M F F M F F M M M F M M

73 72 85 49 48 45 73 52 75 73 53 57

Carpentras (Vaucluse) Nice (Alpes-Maritimes) Lyon (Rhoˆne) Bouches-du-Rhoˆne Antibes (Alpes-Maritimes) La Colle-sur-Loup (Alpes-Maritimes) Nice (Alpes-Maritimes) Antibes (Alpes-Maritimes) Antibes (Alpes-Maritimes) Villeurbanne (Rhoˆne) Lyon (Rhoˆne) Lyon (Rhoˆne) Saint-Marcellin (Ise`re) Val d’Oise (Iˆle-de France) Antibes (Alpes-Maritimes) Pyreńeés-Atlantiques Paris Seine-Maritime (Normandy)

Retiree Retiree Retiree Politician Politician Hairdresser Retiree Culture industry, politician Retiree Retiree Unemployed Professor, Politician

Notes Dorit Geva is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, Central European University. She is currently studying right-wing politics in Europe and globally. 1. 2.

Observed February 5, 2017 In May 2018 the party voted to change its name to the Rassemblement National, the National Rally. 3. See also Bonikowski (2017) on the need to carefully distinguish between the radical right, populism, and authoritarianism. 4. I mostly use pseudonyms throughout the paper when referring to specific informants. 5. Discussion from July 18, 2013 6. February 4, 2017. 7. Informants who remained party activists after JMLP’s expulsion were likely to find his dismissal politically justifiable. 8. Interviewed November 9, 2016. 9. Interviewed June 30, 2014 10. The annual march has since been suspended because of its association with JMLP’s leadership. 11. Interviewed July 19, 2015


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12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

23

Interviewed April 3, 2016 Interviewed April 23, 2014 Interviewed February 10, 2016 Interviewed February 25, 2016 Discussion from November 23, 2016 Interviewed May 2, 2016 Interviewed April 23, 2014 Interviewed August 19, 2015 Interviewed February 10, 2016 Interviewed April 29, 2016 Discussion from November 23, 2016. MLP’s legs were a frequent topic of discussion. Interviewed August 19, 2015 Interviewed April 3, 2016 Interviewed February 25, 2016 Interviewed February 16, 2016 Interviewed February 5, 2016 Interviewed July 20, 2015 Interviewed June 23, 2013 Observed February 5, 2017 Interviewed July 5, 2013. She asked not to be anonymized. See, for example, https://www.lci.fr/elections/presidentielle-2017-des-par tisans-de-marine-le-pen-ne-cachent-pas-leur-deception-apres-le-debatdu-second-tour-fn-2050911.html

Acknowledgements This work was supported by a European Commission Marie Curie Career Integration Grant, number PCIG11-GA-2012-322365, and a EURIAS fellowship at the Collegium de Lyon. Research assistance was provided by Craita Curteanu, Marion Bottero, and Adrienn Nyircsa´k; and grant management at CEU was undertaken by Noe´mi Kovacs, Lila Nagy, and Annamaria Preisz. Thanks to Kimberly Morgan, Lis Clemens, Ann Orloff, Alexandra Kowalski, Anna Korteweg, Jean-Louis Fabiani, and Herve´ Joly for their support. Special thanks to the Social Politics editorial team and Rianne Mahone in particular, and three blind reviewers for their thoughtful direction. The author does not agree with opinions expressed by informants, but is grateful for the time they took to share their thoughts for this research.

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