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Scenes from the Front: France’s Front National in Power
- Dissent
- University of Pennsylvania Press
- Volume 64, Number 2, Spring 2017
- pp. 88-95
- 10.1353/dss.2017.0033
- Article
- Additional Information
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Since March 2014, the Front National (FN) has governed eleven French municipalities. The photographs here, from a two-year reporting project on three of these FN cities, offer a glimpse of what a France run by the FN might look like. They present scenes from Hénin-Beaumont, a former mining town in France’s far north, which is now the third-largest municipality governed by the FN. A leftist stronghold since the end of the Second World War, Hénin-Beaumont is now an emblem of the National Front. Mines and factories are shuttered; unemployment stands at around 20 percent; the Socialist Party is discredited by corruption scandals; the town is deep in debt; and thanks to years of militant, on-the-ground organizing, Hénin-Beaumont is now becoming a seat of national power for the party.