Discours sur la peur et contre l’Europe dans les tracts du Front National (2008-2017)

Discourse on fear and against Europe in FN flyers (2008-2017) Front National identifies in security, national prosperity, national identity, traditional values its main subjects, presenting a discourse based on fears towards all that could represent a threat for French people. Among these threats, apart from the immigrant, its traditional scapegoat, a great attention is paid to globalisation and Europe. This research deals with the analysis of thirteen flyers widespread by FN and by Marine Le Pen on their official website between 2008 and 2017, whose common denominator is the European Union as political and economic responsible for the crisis which overtaxes French people. The goal will be to identify FN discourse on fears and against Europe through visual and linguistic aspects of the flyers as far as referential strategies and argumentative structures are concerned. The theoretical approach concerns political speech, propaganda discourse and political propaganda displayed by flyers. This research would also put into evidence the path which, starting from fear’s instigation and through disillusion about present time, leads to Marine Le Pen, the “patriot” who may recover France from its problems and from EU dependency to allow French citizens to have greater importance. As a consequence, this analysis will show the characteristics by which FN is a popular, nationalist, traditionalist, anti-modern movement although attempts of “dédiabolisation” carried out by Marine Le Pen in formal, but not real, terms.