This description is pretty accurate. However The Front National is almost a thing of the past : the 15% share of the population it used to get has now dwindled, due to its division in two parties, the Mouvement National, and the remaining Front National. The Mouvement National was founded by Bruno Megret, basically because he wanted to take Jean-Marie Le Pen's position and couldn't. Now those two parties have much less visibility in the media, as they both have a 5% part of the voting population, and as such get much less votes.
Or so it seemed at the end of 2001, when this writeup was created. If you followed the news around May 2002, you know Jean-Marie Le Pen made a surprising result in the French 2002 Presidential Election, where he got in the second round of voting, while everyone expected Lionel Jospin.
This result, which the pollsters had not foreseen, and as such came as a surprise to everyone, was due both to a good showing of Jean-Marie Le Pen, who got slightly more votes than usual, and the dispersal of left voters, who instead voted for the candidates of the Greens, of the Communist Party, or for the extreme left-wing Trotskyists.
However The French have shown they didn't want the Front National in power, as in the second round, an 80 % voter turnout didn't mean more votes for Le Pen, who ended with 18% of the vote, hardly an increase over his first round score.
Now Jean-Marie Le Pen is getting old and preparing his succession at the head of the Front National. He is setting up his daughter, Marine Le Pen, to become its leader. Her ideas are as hateful as her father's, but her looks are quite good ; she might remind Americans of someone else
One thing the official blurb of the Front National is that it is a party that kills. In 1995, as Jean-Marie Le Pen and his partisans were celebrating Joan of Arc on the first of may, as they do each years, a couple of skinhead participating in the demonstration pushed an
Arab in the
Seine, thus killing him. In 1996, three members of the party were putting up posters in
Marseille for their beloved leaders ; a group of kids ran by, hoping to catch their bus. One of the three party members took a shot at them, killing a young
Comorian.