Abstract/Summary

This article systematises the framing of the terrorism issue in the programmatic agenda of the FN by focusing on nationalism. We argue that the FN’s position on terrorism constitutes part of its strategy to justify its anti-immigrant agenda by offering ideological rather than biological rationalisations for national belonging. To test our argument empirically we operationalize four categories of nationalism, including ethno-racial, cultural, political-civic and economic, and code official FN materials published in reaction to seven terrorist attacks on French soil during the period 1986-2015. We find that while older documents draw on all four categories, Marine Le Pen documents draw almost exclusively on the cultural and political-civic categories, confirming our argument. Building on the ‘normalization’ or ‘de-demonization’ approach, our nationalism framework presents a distinct theoretical advantage by allowing us to conceptualise the shift in the party’s programmatic agenda.