Major Gains Seen for French Rightist Le Pen : Elections: With Socialists’ support falling and anti-immigrant bias high, radical National Front soars in polls.

“Long live Nice, city of victory!”

With these words and the soaring strains of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” France’s right-wing political leader Jean-Marie Le Pen ended an emotional three-hour election rally recently in this major resort and retirement city on the French Riviera.

Polls show Le Pen’s National Front party, Europe’s most powerful extreme right-wing movement since World War II, poised for its best showing ever in Sunday’s regional elections across France. With the Socialist Party of President Francois Mitterrand and other mainstream parties in decline, the main beneficiaries are anti-Establishment movements such as the virulently anti-immigrant National Front and two rival environmental parties.

Nice and the surrounding region of France--port of entry for North African immigrants and home of the ultraconservative former Algerian colonialists, the pieds noirs --is a particular stronghold for the National Front. A nationalistic political movement with a long record of racism and anti-Semitism, the National Front in the last 10 years has emerged from the shadows to become an important force in French politics, with national support estimated at about 15% of the population.

By exploiting tensions between Arab immigrants and local populations, moribund local economies and public fears of crime, the National Front has fared especially well here in Nice and the Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur region that stretches along the Mediterranean coast between the Italian border and the Rhone River delta. The extremist party leads polls in both Nice and Marseilles, the two main cities in the region.

Everything about the National Front stresses urgency, impatience with the established political order. The party slogan is “Le Pen, Fast!”

“The destiny of our country needs to be decided before the end of the century,” Le Pen asserted in his stirring, apocalyptic speech before a hushed, overflow crowd in Nice. The meeting site in a large tent at the edge of the sea gave it the air of an American-style revival. Like the American evangelists he imitates, Le Pen roamed the stage with a remote microphone clipped to his lapel, gesturing dramatically to make his points about “floods” of unwanted immigrants, AIDS carriers and drug addicts invading France.

He called on his followers, most numerous among the young and the elderly, to go out into the streets as “missionaries of the truth” to organize for Sunday’s elections.

“What we are fighting for,” he said, pausing gravely, “is the very survival of France.”

Violent demonstrations have erupted during the Front’s campaign in some regions of France, the latest major one occurring at midweek in Paris where police clashed with youths who went on a rampage during a march by 2,000 to 3,000 protesters strongly opposed to Le Pen. Nine people were injured and eight were arrested, authorities said.

In Marseilles on Friday, an anti-Le Pen protester was shot and wounded by an unidentified gunman.

The National Front, sensing its best chance ever to gain a geographical toehold in France, has concentrated its campaign efforts in wooing the Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur region’s 4.2 million inhabitants.

Unlike the carefree, bucolic image of the region presented in the best-selling books by British author Peter Mayle, “A Year in Provence” and “Toujours Provence,” the Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur is a troubled place, torn by racial divisions, crime and high unemployment. It is France’s second-most-urbanized region, surpassed only by the Ile de France region that includes Paris.

Since 1946, the region has absorbed 2 million new residents, including 1 million from overseas, mainly from North Africa. The region’s 300,000 pieds noirs , still unable to accept France’s loss of its Algerian colony, along with 210,000 immigrants from North Africa and a huge, conservative retired community, create a volatile mix. The new populations have created an urban sprawl that climbs up the barren, chalky hills pressing against the coast, creating pollution and snarled traffic.

High unemployment in the main cities, including 19% in Marseilles, has caused petty crime to escalate, spreading fear in the retirement community.

In retiree-dominated Nice, crime has become the No. 1 issue and helps fire the National Front’s anti-immigrant stand, according to Pierre Dany, editor of Nice-Matin, the local newspaper.

“All you have to do is look at what happens day to day in the newspaper,” said Dany, referring to the paper’s daily crime blotter listing the names of people arrested. “Most . . . are North African, so it is easy to use them to smear the Arab populations. Little by little, people get the impression that the Maghrebians (natives of Arab North Africa) are given to petty crime.”

The combination of racial tensions, crime and economic disparities has created an ideal atmosphere for spreading the hatred preached by Le Pen and the National Front.

“The National Front is a vote of hate exacerbated by economic conditions,” said Pierre Bonneric, an official with the Marseilles city government. “It can be seen as a vote of desperation, an expression that people are fed up with mainstream political parties. What we are experiencing today is a little bit like the mood that existed between 1936 and 1938 in Germany.”

The widespread political malaise in the French south explains why Le Pen, a native of faraway Brittany, is a candidate for the regional council in Nice, where recent polls show him in the lead with 30% of the population supporting him.

Because of the proportional voting system used in the election, it is unlikely that the National Front can wrest majority control of the regional government, which is responsible for building roads and schools, even if it wins a plurality of the vote.

However, the Front is almost certain to win enough seats in the 123-member regional council to block any funding it opposes. And if it wins a plurality in either Nice or Marseilles, where the party’s No. 2 figure, Bruno Megret, is the candidate, it will have demonstrated its potential for local leadership. Le Pen, 63, is thought to covet the job of mayor of Nice, a high-profile position in France.

The once-every-six-years elections in France’s 22 domestic regions is not normally a big event in political life. But several factors have combined to make Sunday’s vote especially significant.

On one level, this first nationwide vote since 1989 is seen as a measure of the fallen state of Mitterrand’s governing Socialist Party. In the last regional elections in 1986, the Socialists won 30% of the vote. Today most polls show them under 20%, in many places trailing the National Front.

A particularly bad showing by the Socialists could force Mitterrand to dismiss his extremely unpopular prime minister, Edith Cresson, who, one recent poll indicated, has a popular approval rating of only 19%, the lowest ever for a person in her post.

The polls indicate that many former Socialist voters, frustrated by allegations of corruption and inefficiency in the government, plan to vote for two emerging environmental parties, the Greens and Generation Ecologie. About equal in numbers of supporters, the rival environmental parties are credited with a combined total of about 12% of the vote.

Also, Sunday’s vote will give Le Pen and his National Front a chance to demonstrate its strength as Europe’s most powerful extreme-right political movement since the National Socialist and Fascist movements in pre-World War II Germany and Italy.

But the rapid rise of the National Front in France has caused even the Roman Catholic Church to take sides. In a letter to French Catholics, Cardinal Albert Decourtray, archbishop of Lyon, urged church members to vote. Although he did not specifically mention the National Front, the cardinal left no doubt about his stand. “Don’t forget,” wrote Decourtray, “Hitler swept into power by democratic elections.”

Extremists Thrive Along French Riviera

France’s harshly anti-immigrant National Front is seeking a geographical toehold in Sunday’s regional elections. The party has fared best in the Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur region, an area hit by economic troubles and a tide of immigration. The Election: The once-every-six-years vote to elect leadership for France’s 22 domestic regions. Its Significance: The extreme right-wing National Front party is poised to have its best showing ever. The first national vote since 1989 also is viewed as a measure of the fallen state of President Francois Mitterrand’s governing Socialist Party. About the National Front: Led by Jean-Marie Le Pen, the party is Europe’s most powerful extreme right political movement since the National Socialist and fascist movements in pre-World War II Germany and Italy. It has exploited tensions over immigration, unemployment and crime to become an important force in French politics. The Polls: The extremist party leads polls in both Nice and Marseille, the two main cities in region.