The French National Front and the Internet: How Populists Leaders Do Politics Online

Based on ethnographic and qualitative datas collected between 2014 and 2018 (direct observations, semi-directive interviews, personal FN leader’s archives) this paper aims at understanding the professionalization of a populist political party (the french National Front) studying how its leaders organize politics online. If the National Front was stigmatized in the political field when Jean Marie Le Pen and other far right activists created it in 1972, this party can’t seem to stop gaining more voters as new election are organized since Marine Le Pen election at its head in 2011. Recruiting more allegedly competent partisans to manage the party and to run for elections, the FN has also developed and professionalized its political communication department lead by Florian Philippot (european representative) until 2017. Thus, the FN leaders are more present online than they were before: the party encourages them to intensively use Twitter, Facebook and personal blogs and web-sites. Moreover, the party has developed specific political formations in order to control and standardize their online activism. First, I will show how the party organized the growing and efficiency of its political communication department presenting the social and professional background of the leads of this department. Indeed, many of the leaders that work in the political communication of the FN (and its online politics) are former community managers or former activists that know how to do politics online. Then, I will show how the FN leaders pass on communication techniques to young leaders or activists especially during political formations. This will allow us to understand how the activists organize their online politics, what uses of retributions they hope to gain and also how their online activism is a part of their political capital used in political competition within the FN. In a nutshell this paper will present how a populist party tries to professionalize its activity in the political field using the case study of its online politics.