Online zealotry: la France du peuple virtuel

The Front National, a far-Right French political party which had long been ostracized and criticized by the mainstream media, was among the first to adopt a presence on the web as a means to publicize its goals. This article outlines the party’s growth, disaffection with traditional media and its online strategy using discursive analysis of the web site over five years. The article analyzes the internet as a site of cultural negotiation between the national discourse governed by dominant political parties and the more marginalized Front National. France, a centralized government, anxious about the cultural imperialism of English, at first resisted the introduction of the internet, but later promoted it to ensure the presence of French content. The Front National contested the more mainstream notions of French citizenship and nationhood and employed the internet as a catalyst and outlet for its ‘counter-knowledge’.