Mainstreaming, Gender, and Communication in France

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Heightened preoccupation with the image and function of masculinity in the family, society, and politics is characteristic of far-right ideology. This trait is not exclusive to France and is cornerstone to the “new” right ideologies: “Notwithstanding national differences across Europe, gender and sexuality have for a long time been important pillars of radical right-wing ideologies – like a gender binary which is perceived as natural and is combined with a traditional gendered division of labour in the heterosexual model of the male breadwinner and the woman as mother.” (Sauer, 2019, p. 173). Contemporary far-right political parties and activists follow the same course: “recent right-wing populist mobilization is a gendered movement, which fosters masculinist identity politics at the intersection of gender, class, religion, ethnicity, and sexuality” (Sauer, 2020, p. 23). Moreover, masculinist discourse makes for a significant part of their agenda: “Already at first glance the importance of gender relations seems to be indicated by the right-wingers’ obsession with gender, i.e. their mobilization against the concept of gender for the last ten years, their construction of an endangered masculinity, and their framing of a ‘crisis of masculinity’” (Sauer, 2020, p. 24). Highlighting masculinist ideology has turned out to be a successful strategy to attract audiences disenchanted with the “fundamental neoliberal transformations of gender regimes, especially in Western bread-winner-oriented societies” (Sauer, 2020, p. 29).The French case is particularly revealing of the role masculinist discourse plays in the far-right agenda and is instructive for comparative analysis of far-right platforms elsewhere. In recent decades, France has seen the development of a “right-wing ideology inspiring ultra-conservative, nationalist, racist, and neo-Nazi organizations and parties in many countries.” The French far-right political parties and organisations, such as the National Rally (Rassemblement National, formerly known as Front National) or La Manif pour tous (a political organisation opposing same-sex marriage and adoption by same-sex couples, which later became a political party) make conscious “strategic use of sexual politics,” which in turn has “a significant impact on political changes in France regarding a normalization of anti-immigrant” politics that lead “to a mainstreaming of their political views and values” (Möser and Reimers, 2022, p. 98). Despite their adherence to misogynist norms, far-right movements in France have managed to close what is known as the “Radical Right Gender Gap” and find support among women. The major success in attracting female voters was achieved by Marine Le Pen, who replaced her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, at the head of the Front National party. While “gender was the second-best predictor of […] electoral support, after education, in every presidential election where [Jean-Marie Le Pen] was candidate from 1988 to 2007,” Marine Le Pen “managed to garner the same level of support in her male and female constituencies” for three consecutive presidential elections (in 2012, 2017, and 2022) (Mayer, 2015, p. 396, 2022a).This report provides empirical evidence to masculinist gender representations with an aim to contribute to the study of the relationship between mediated hegemonic gender representations and violence and extremism in an age of changing gender norms. It examines the online drivers of radicalisation and of deradicalisation in France. First, the report critically engages with how three public and political agents of radicalisation use social media platforms with the aim of understanding how extreme narratives revolving around misogyny, homophobia, sexism, and transphobia are expressed online using visual and other communicative tools. This part shows how these collective agents disseminate their messages on social networking sites, how they attempt to recruit participants and how their audiences respond to them. Marine Le Pen, whose sophisticated public image of a “Daughter, Mother, Captain” embodies both feminine and masculine virtues (Geva, 2020), is the first radicalisation object of our study. Her steadily growing success makes her the most prominent and sophisticated contemporary political leader on the far-right, and an important radicalisation stakeholder. Advancing the strategy of “de-demonisation” of her political party and aiming to “replace the right” in France (Mestre, 2022), Le Pen won second place in the first round of the 2022 presidential elections and gained more than 41% of the votes in the second. The second stakeholder of radicalisation studied in this report is Éric Zemmour, another presidential candidate in the 2022 elections. While failing to attract large audiences to his far-right platform (finishing fourth in the first round with 7.1% of votes), Zemmour led a more radical campaign than Le Pen, and is generally known as an “ultra conservative with regard to gender and sexuality issues, and is even openly sexist and misogynist at times” (Mayer, 2022b). Finally, the third source of radicalisation analysed in the report is Papacito, an extreme-right social media influencer, self-described as a ‘professional polemicist’ and ‘humorist’, who “displays sympathy for the ideas of Jean-Marie Le Pen and Éric Zemmour” (Boursier, 2021). Papacito is known for his “fascist far-right antifeminist” humour and has been accused of expressing sexist, homophobic, and racist views. He is among “the most visible right-wing video influencers affiliated” with the popular culture subpart of the French “fachosphère”, a set of online sites and social media accounts engaged in extreme right activism (Vey and Perrier, 2022; La Depeche, 2021). One study concludes that Papacito represents “a discourse of crisis of masculinity aligned with fascist ideology in which gender is not an accessory element but is central and fundamental: the feminisation of society is the starting point of the peril of the nation that calls for ethno-racial purification” (Vey and Perrier, 2022, p. 81).Second, the report examines three collective stakeholders of deradicalisation who offer counter-narratives and strategies online against forms and pathways of radicalisation. It studies how organisations involved in deradicalisation respond to hegemonic gender presentations. Finally, we also analyse “citizen communication” against hegemonic gender representations. This analysis examines ordinary users’ practices and digital cultures against hegemonic gender representations underpinning, harnessing, and foregrounding radicalisation, and looks at their do-it-yourself media production and circulation on social media platforms. Civil society activists, NGOs and even unorganized individuals “all have a potential role to play in challenging hate speech and forms of extremism that misinformation operations around elections promote” (Davey, Saltman and Birdwell, 2018). The three collective stakeholders of deradicalisation chosen for our study are the association Osez le féminisme ! (“Dare feminism!”) promoting “gender equality and on the fight to eliminate all forms of male violence against girls and women”; the association Inter-LGBT, active against homophobic and transphobic discrimination; and the Féministes Insoumis·es (“Feminists Unbowed”) the feminist activist subgroup of the French left party, La France Insoumise. Finally, the concluding part uses the I-GAP framework to reflect on the ways in which the circulation and consumption of the chosen media objects bolster or decrease alienation, othering, polarisation, and grievance.The main social media platform used to study radicalising and deradicalising speech on social media is Twitter. This medium was chosen because of its role “as a stage for dissemination, interaction, mobilisation and building the personality of influencer/leaders and as a strategic tool for the selection of issues and for propaganda and fake news” (Pérez-Curiel, 2020). It has been observed that “the presence and activity of the main political leaders on Twitter are increasing exponentially and the topics that they address in their tweets are being virally shared by digital users and making it to the home pages of the digital press. The use that politicians like Marine Le Pen [make of] Twitter is allowing these influencer/leaders to circumvent the traditional media and to engage their followers in a much more direct fashion” (Pérez-Curiel, 2020). But the dissemination of deradicalising content on Twitter was also shown to be effective. It has been, for instance, empirically demonstrated that “[c]itizen-generated counter speech is a promising way to fight hate speech and promote peaceful, non-polarized discourse” and that organised counter speech “may help curb hateful rhetoric in online discourse” (Garland et al., 2022). However, to study the masculinist gender representations published by Papacito this report uses his posts on the Telegram platform. While still present on some mainstream online platforms, Papacito’s Twitter account was suspended in January 2021 (Six choses à savoir sur Ugo Gil Jimenez, alias Papacito, youtubeur et ‘influenceur’ d’extrême droite, 2021), and his most hateful content inciting to violence is published on less popular or non-strictly moderated social media.