Friday, July 15, 2011

FYI France : Front National resources update, digital+

FYI France (since 1992) -- http://www.fyifrance.com/Fyarch/fy110315.htm
File 3: Ejournal & archive, by Jack Kessler, kessler@well.com -- Archive copy of an issue of the FYI France ejournal, ISSN 1071-5916, distributed via email on July 15, 2011 -- and, a little later, here on http://fyifrance.blogspot.com/, and at Facebook.

The Front National appears to be on the march again politically, and readers and their libraries digital & other, everywhere, are wondering -- "Is this a new FN?", "What happened to the old one?", "Who is leading this current FN, and is it different and if so how, and what has become of the old FN and its leadership?" -- about this Extreme Right party which repeatedly has dominated the political headlines, if not necessarily the politics, of the past quarter-century in France.

Now, once more, the Front National's national poll popularity has bulged up, into the double digits: 18%, 24% -- its new and some say even more charismatic leader, daughter of the founder, is running to become political kingmaker and perhaps even president of France.

It always has been difficult to find, and to provide, good information on the Front National phenomenon. Even within the Hexagone there has been much disagreement: diabolization, blind dismissal, also blind adoration, both the invocation of history and the ignorance of it, and much fear and great hatred on both sides -- the party has been used to conjure up terrible nightmares of the European 1940s and 1930s and before, as well as for-some the equally-terrible specters of 21st century founderings now of civil society, of culture, of family structure, of all-that-is-good.

So, a list of new books about the Front National in France follows below, here -- supplementing, for historians, the far longer list which has been assembled on the FYI France website, URL address also below here, over the years -- read!... -- most things-political get written-about before they happen, it's just that too often we don't read about them until afterward --



  • Goodliffe, Gabriel -- The Resurgence of the Radical Right in France : From Boulangisme to the Front National (2011)

  • Le Pen, Marine -- Marine Le Pen à contre flots : autobiographie (2011)

  • Fourest, Caroline ; Venner, Fiammetta -- Marine Le Pen (2011)

  • Ménard, Robert ; le Duverger, Emmanuelle -- Vive Le Pen ! (2011)

  • Kosciusko-Morizet, Nathalie -- Le front antinational (2011)

  • Simon, Jean-Marc -- Marine Le Pen, au nom du père (2011)

  • Liszkai, Làszlo -- Marine le Pen, le nouveau Front National ? (2010)

  • Petaux, Jean -- Jean-Marie Le Pen : Front national (2010)

  • Ellinas, Antonis A. -- The media and the far right in western Europe : playing the nationalist card (2010)

  • Bornschier, Simon -- Cleavage politics and the populist right : the new cultural conflict in Western Europe (2010)

  • Berezin, Mabel -- Illiberal politics in neoliberal times : culture, security and populism in the new Europe (2009)

  • Berntson, Marit -- Joan of Arc's Daughters: Women in France's National Front (2009)

  • Gautier, Jean-Paul -- Les extrèmes droites en France : de la traversée du désert à l'ascension du Front national, 1945-2008 (2009)

  • Shields, James G. -- The Extreme Right in France: From Pétain to Le Pen (Kindle, or Kindle App on Mac or PC, ebook edition!, 2009)



-- publication information and other details regarding the above, including publishers' descriptions both in French and translated into English, may be found online at,

http://www.fyifrance.com/FN/fnbks.htm

And there are additional digital resources and other information about the Front National on the website, as well: see generally,

http://www.fyifrance.com/fnind.htm

-- on all of which I would greatly appreciate some help --

Much of my data there I have neglected, and it has grown out-of-date: I myself frankly never believed -- several times now, I admit -- that the Front National ever would be back. I thought this party would dwindle and disappear along with its then-already-elderly leader, beginning 'way back in the 1980s era of his most explosive effusions.

But it seems, for reasons I do not fully understand, that for at least some of the French the appeal of the FN transcends the lifespan of its leader... the Le Pen we knew before is now aged 82+ and apparently is fully-retired, but now the FN has located another Le Pen...

Any suggestions from readers here as to updates, then --- corrections, to my current FN data, and most of all new sources -- will be gratefully received, via email to kessler@well.com .

The more we all learn about this new or at least repackaged and apparently now more user-friendly Front National of daughter Marine Le Pen the better, I believe. France still is one of the leading nations of our geopolitical world, and she has been one of the formative forces of many of our various cultures -- friends in Vietnam follow the French, as do some in Ulan Batar, Dakar, Buenos Aires... It is important to all of us to know who leads the Front National, and who influences that leadership, and how and most of all why they do.



Print libraries, digital libraries, the demise of both the bookshop and the newspaper... The perennial problem of how-to-stay-current, in a new and fascinating and still-perilous albeit now-digital world...

Bonnes vacances,



Jack Kessler, kessler@well.com