If the 2022 French election is today largely posed as a duel between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, it has also been marked by the civil war between two strands of the far right. Embodied by Marine Le Pen and Éric Zemmour, respectively, this clash opposed modernists seeking to build a “populist popular front” and traditionalists who instead sought to unite the whole political right.

As I have discussed in Jacobin, Le Pen has worked hard to silence internal opposition to her strategy within her party. In recent years, she has conducted what critics call a “purge” of the conservative wing of her Rassemblement National (RN), marginalizing key figures like her niece Marion Maréchal. While most reluctantly chose to stay in RN to keep their voices present in internal debates, others followed Maréchal’s example. In 2017, she announced she had retired from politics, and sought to develop her influence outside RN ranks.

It was thus no surprise that the biggest challenge to Le Pen’s line ultimately came from an outsider: Éric Zemmour. Running for the first time in 2022, Zemmour created his own personalistic party, and, in this sense, his candidacy was novel. But he also stands in continuity with an older traditionalist line on the far right, representing the latest embodiment of the strategy of l’union des droites (the union of the right wings), tearing down the wall between mainstream conservatism and the “frontist” far right historically inspired by Jean-Marie Le Pen.