Abstract
The first round of the French Presidential elections on April 21st, 2002, was a clap of thunder in the political landscape. Jean-Marie Le Pen, the candidate of "National Front", the Far Right leading party, won a staggering 16.86 % of the votes, eliminating from the run-off, the outgoing socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin and opposing in the second round the incumbent President Jacques Chirac. This political earthquake was the first dazzling success for the mounting Far Right parties in Europe since the 1970s. In this essay we shall adopt a comparative perspective to study the revival of the Far Right, considering examples and establishing similarities and differences among the Far Rights in the French Fifth Republic, and the Federal Republic of Germany and Italy. Situated on the Far Right of the political spectrum and originally opposed to the values of the democratic Revolution of 1789, this anti-mainstream political force is characterized by highly nationalist and populist stances, tough law-and-order and anti-immigration platforms and traditional moral and family values
