I almost always refer to them as a far-right party or 'right-wing populist' party (although I usually dislike that terminology in general). Although I enjoy calling them 'fascists', the reality is that the FN is not a fascist party (trigger warning: effortpost)
That being said, at its base, the FN had a large unambiguously fascist/neo-fascist wing as it emerged from Ordre nouveau, and therefore included a lot of very unpleasant guys with clear roots in fascism or collaboration (Pierre Bousquet, ex-SS Division Charlemagne). On the other hand, Jean-Marie Le Pen - whose faction would quickly take full control of the party and turn it into the family business - came from a different ideological tradition: Poujadisme, CNIP, Algérie française, Tixier in 1965. I would classify this ideological tradition as nationalist, traditionalist, reactionary/conservative, virulently anti-communist, anti-intellectual; what René Rémond called the
légitimiste right (counterrevolutionary right) and the Action française tradition (although mostly the nationalism and anti-parliamentarism, Le Pen never cared much for Catholic traditionalism although the FN included many, and early FN ideology was very right-wing on economic issues). Le Pen has no strong roots in any of the neo-fascist movements which existed in France after 1945, although he had indirect ties to them and he has maintained political and personal ties to many people with clear neo-fascist or collabo pasts.
The goal of ON when it created the FN was to mimic the Italian MSI by integrating 'nationalists' and other traditionalist conservatives into their movement. The original FN (which changed very quickly) therefore included ON, former OAS members (Roger Holeindre), ex-GUD, neo-Nazis, anti-Semites (François Duprat) and even briefly more mainstream centre-right people like Georges Bidault who had broken with the parliamentary right over Algeria. ON made the mistake of recruiting Le Pen to be the FN's president, given that he quickly marginalized ON within the FN and put his hands on the FN.
It is highly important to remember that, in the FN's first years, there was a very sharp internal conflict in the party which led to a significant split and weakened the FN until 1981. The conflict boiled down to the '
nationalistes-révolutionnaires' (mostly ON) and the
nationaux (Le Pen, ex-Poujadistes, traditional French nationalism). The nationalist-revolutionaries was closely tied to neo-fascism (third way between capitalism and communism, anti-liberalism) and distinguished from narrow, traditionalist French nationalism by its racist/ethnocentric vision of a united (white) European civilization (nowadays, they're mostly psychopaths who have boners for Bashar al-Assad, Ahmadinejad, Chávez, Nasser, Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi for anti-imperialism or hating the Jews). The government dissolved ON in 1973, leading to a first split in the FN as several ex-ON members (Alain Robert, François Brigneau) created a dissident FN which would eventually become the
Parti des forces nouvelles (PFN), the FN's main rival for control of the far-right until 1981/1983, and a more neo-fascist party. Once again, things are not as clear-cut as some would make it out: after the first ON split in 1973, many neo-fascist/nationalist-revolutionaries/assorted collabo scum remained in the FN, including Pierre Bousquet and François Duprat (who returned to the FN in 1974). Additionally, Jean-Pierre Stirbois, who came from a faction of nationalist-revolutionaries called
solidaristes, joined the FN in 1977 and became one of the young FN's most important leaders in the 1980s. Nationalist-revolutionaries gradually left the FN or lost influence in the late 1970s/early 1980s (Alain Renault left in 1980,
Militant left in 1983, Bousquet left in 1983).
It was with the EP elections of 1984 that the FN took its more familiar fully
lepéniste form, with names like Stirbois (and his wife), Martine Lehideux, Dominique Chaboche, Jean-Marie Le Chevallier and later joined by Bruno Mégret, Bernard Antony (a Catholic traditionalist who formed the FN's religious/Catholic traditionalist wing after 1985), Carl Lang, Bruno Gollnisch, Jacques Bompard, Jacques Peyrat and Fernand Le Rachinel. Many of these 'old guard' figures would later become the most prominent opponents of Panzergirl.
Bruno Mégret and eventually the FN/MNR split of 1998 is also an interesting case study. Mégret is a highly-educated technocrat (École polytechnique, technocrat in ministries for a time) who began his political activism in the
Club de l'horloge - a bridge between the RPR and FN, strongly defending economic liberalism, political nationalism and national identity (national-liberalism) - and the RPR. He was pushed towards the FN by anti-socialism and the young FN's strong support for economic liberalism (a past strangely forgotten by Panzergirl
). Mégret rose through the ranks very quickly, and in the early 1990s he was one of the FN's key players and something of an ideological/strategic theorist within the FN.
The Mégret split of 1998 was largely caused by personal rivalries (it's obvious that Panzerdaddy didn't like Mégret's ambitions and talents) but there were also ideological and strategic differences: Mégret was more moderate and favourable towards alliances with the RPR/UDF, while Le Pen was (since 1995) moving towards Samuel Maréchal's
ni gauche-ni droite; Mégret and his allies were still more favourable towards economic liberalism than Le Pen, who was moving away from it since the late 1980s; arguably, Mégret was ambitious and wanted to win power while Le Pen was/is only interested in the FN being a protest party with no real ambitions to actually govern.
A good argument can be made that the MNR was closer to a neo-fascist party than the FN (but it is a tenuous argument and I wouldn't call the MNR a fascist party), because several of its members came from a more 'fascist' trajectory - Jean-Yves Le Gallou and Yvan Blot were both members of the GRECE, Le Gallou adhered to '
ethno-différencialisme' (neo-racism) and nonsense about the 'superiority of European civilization', Pierre Vial was a '
racialiste' in GRECE and is unambiguously neo-fascist/white supremacist (also weird neo-paganism).
Finally, Panzergirl has made a real effort to kick out embarrassing whackos (or at least those intent on airing their Nazi, fascist or racist nonsense) to sanitize the façade of the party and a lot of the hardliners/traditionalists/old guard within the FN either are internal opponents or have left the party (mostly for Carl Lang's Parti de la France or various other far-right groupings, factions and parties). Panzerdaddy has always had far more tolerance for crazies in party ranks since he's a crazy motormouth himself, so Panzerdaddy has often been displeased with Panzergirl's expulsion of the crazies (most famously Alexandre Gabriac in 2011). The undeniable reality, however, is that the FN's rank-and-file/general membership still includes plenty of neo-fascists (admitted or closeted) and racist morons, who will be quite welcome in the party unless they run in an election and the media finds some Facebook post/tweet of theirs (usually involving a Hitler salute, a Nazi flag, World War II memorabilia or racist comments).
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