Le Pen has garnered some support from international far-right groups, but her candidacy is perhaps more interesting for revealing divisions within this emergent movement.

The American alt-right has imported some aspects of the French fascist movement. Faye is no stranger to the American scene and appears as one of the most profound influences on Richard Spencer’s white identitarianism. His Identity Bloc inspired the group Identity Evropa, led by Nathan Damigo, a fascist convicted of a hate crime and recently embroiled in controversy after punching a woman in the face during a street brawl in Berkeley. The alt-right’s attempts to move into academia follow in the footsteps of France’s far-right student groups.

It’s also easy to recognize a number of intersections between the National Front and Steve Bannon’s ideology. Not only has he suggested that reactionary Catholics look into the works of Alexander Dugin, he takes Charles Maurras — the former leader of French Action and a fascist collaborator — as a key source of inspiration. Bannon’s ideas on immigration so resemble the Front’s that he shares one of his favorite books, The Camp of the Saints, with both Le Pens.

The American far right has always tacitly supported the Le Pen family, though they prefer the vulgar patriarch over his daughter. Support for Marine came from the hope that she could “pull a Trump” and actually win the race. Le Pen’s racialist rhetoric, her scapegoating of Muslims and immigrants, and her direct connection to the fascist right make her an even more appropriate vessel for the alt-right’s vision of a global nationalist alliance. A number of alt-right Twitter trolls still have photos of Marine as their avatars or in their photo libraries.

The National Front’s youth movement has also taken cues from the alt-right, albeit with more overtly religious overtones: their memes might put Pepe next to a Crusader cross and the French tricolor flag. While supporters may not subscribe to antisemitism as much as they once did, the racialized, xenophobic rhetoric of “Islamization” remains prominent. Due to the emphasis on religious struggle rather than religion itself, whether or not the FN actually counts as a Catholic party remains open for debate.

While reciprocal, the relationship between the American and French far right is complicated by the differences between far-right and fascist ideologies. Richard Spencer only mildly supports Le Pen; during the election, he chose to focus on recent battles with antifascists in Berkeley and Auburn instead. Indeed, his revolutionary stance often separates him from democratic reformers even at home as the unceremonious end to his dalliance with Trump shows. The French “identitarian” strain he aligns with most closely does not agree with the populist National Front on every issue. While he made his support for Le Pen clear, he has bigger issues on his mind.

Alt-right commentator Patrick Le Brun made the rounds, first on Counter Currents radio and later at Red Ice, to talk about the importance of Le Pen’s first-round success. He argued that her chance of winning comes from the disaffected workers in deindustrialized areas of the country who might otherwise have voted for left-wing candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon. He also suggested that scandals around François Fillon would make the National Front appear as the real solution to late capitalism in Western Europe. Since Brexit and Trump both won on a racist campaign of financial resentment, channeling support away from capitalist institutions and toward the working class, Le Brun believed — as did many others — that Le Pen had a real shot.

This hypothesis warrants some consideration, particularly with regard to Le Pen’s call for French independence from the European Union and NATO. Mélenchon’s foreign policy criticized the European Union from the left against Macron’s neoliberalism, and some left-nationalists have moved to the right thanks to these reorientations. Dutheil de la Rochère, Philippot, Coûteaux, Garnier, and other unconventional FN members have demonstrated Le Pen’s strange allure.

Colin Liddell, the infamous editor of the New Alternative Right who famously penned articles suggesting mass genocide for black Africans, devoted a whole podcast to the election, relying on his experience in British nationalist party politics to describe the possibilities Le Pen holds for France. As usual, his rhetoric focused on the fact that her victory would create an opening for a more extreme fascist revolution. She does not represent the endgame, only the critical turn in European consciousness needed to build the rank and file of a militant racialist movement.

The alt-light, the crossover elements that helped the alt-right enter the mainstream, more uniformly celebrated Le Pen’s first-round victory. Mike Cernovich, the Men’s Right’s guru behind the DeploraBall, compared her success with Trump’s victory. Having found her own subcultural fame after leading a violent rally in Berkeley, Lauren Southern began tweeting images of Marine as Joan of Arc, evoking the FN’s typical mythologies complete with the ironic hashtag #ImWithHer.

As a result, Trump — unlike most of the Republican Party — saw Le Pen as a potential ally. Indeed, she would have been to France what Bannon’s faction of the Trump administration is to the United States. Days before the first-round vote, Trump told the Associated Press that she was the “strongest” candidate, “strongest on borders, and she’s the strongest on what’s been going on in France.” Le Pen has also been a vocal supporter of the American president, telling CNN that “Donald Trump has made possible what was presented as completely impossible.”

If we cannot properly call the National Front fascist, at least we can accept that it became precisely what its founders set out to create: an instrument to further the interests of fascism through alliances with other far-right forces. By distancing herself from the party, Le Pen signaled her leadership role in what she hopes will become an international unity of reactionary forces.

Fortunately, Le Pen soundly lost in the second round: Macron took 66 percent of the vote. So far, France’s cordon sanitaire against the fascist creep is weathering the reactionary storm. But, if Mélenchon and the Left want to beat the FN in coming years, they will have to parlay their unprecedented vote tally into victories in the legislative elections coming soon. Part of that mission requires developing a critical engagement with the European Union that clearly opposes the reactionary position of “national sovereignty.”