Background
The FN springs from a far-right tradition in France that dates back to the French Revolution of 1789, and the party rejects both the revolution and its legacy. One of the primary progenitors of the party was the Action Française, founded at the end of the nineteenth century, and its descendants in the Restauration Nationale, a pro-monarchy group that supports the claim of the Count of Paris to the French throne. More recently, the party drew from the Poujadism of the 1950s, which started out as an anti-tax movement without relations to the far-right; included among its parliamentary deputies, however, were "proto-nationalists" such as Jean-Marie Le Pen. Another conflict that is part of the party's background was the Algerian War (many frontistes, including Le Pen, were directly involved in the war), and the far-right dismay over the decision by French President Charles de Gaulle to abandon his promise of holding on to French Algeria. In the 1965 presidential election, Le Pen unsuccessfully attempted to consolidate the far-right vote around the far-right presidential candidate Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, the French far-right consisted mainly of small extreme movements such as Occident, Groupe Union Défense (GUD), and the Ordre Nouveau (ON).
Read more about this topic: National Front (France)
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