In an interview with Le Monde, specialists Nicolas Lebourg and Baptiste Roger-Lacan analyze the repercussions of the appeal trial of Front national assistants on Marine Le Pen's political future. They note that the Rassemblement national (RN) uses this case to strengthen its victim narrative against the justice system. This context fits into a global wave of the extreme right, explored in a special issue of the newspaper.
The appeal trial of Front national (FN) parliamentary assistants, the former name of Rassemblement national (RN), is the subject of in-depth analyses by experts. Nicolas Lebourg, historian and political scientist at the University of Montpellier, and Baptiste Roger-Lacan, PhD in history specializing in counter-revolutionary imaginaries, gave a joint interview to Le Monde on March 5, 2026.
Questioned on the impact of the trial's requisitions on Marine Le Pen, Lebourg points out that the RN has managed to have two leading figures: Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella, the latter even surpassing the first in opinion polls. He mentions Marion Maréchal's book, “Si tu te sens Le Pen” (Fayard), which repositions the author in the Le Pen dynasty, and notes that Marine Le Pen will be 63 years old in 2032, recalling that the last president elected over 60 was Jacques Chirac.
Roger-Lacan observes that the requisitions confirm an unfavorable outcome for Marine Le Pen, without stating it categorically. If an ineligibility penalty is confirmed, it would obscure her future, but the RN sees this impediment as a way to strengthen its victim narrative, portraying the party as a martyr of judges with ideological motivations. These attacks on justice are recurrent in the extreme right across Europe, serving to capture aspirations to eliminate intermediaries.
Meanwhile, a Le Monde special issue, published at the time of this trial, explores the inner workings of the RN in the context of a new age of the global extreme right. It discusses its presence in power or at the gates of power in Hungary, Italy, and potentially the United States, and in France for 2027. The issue addresses the RN's “dédiabolisation,” its penetration into the high administration, and the role of Vincent Bolloré's media in spreading nationalist ideas. The extreme right, nearly disappeared in France after Liberation, has undergone transformations due to its plasticity, with an often patchwork ideological corpus and absent internal debates leading to implosions.
