Waving banners that read “No to the Front National” and “Wake up, France,” youthful demonstrators rallied on Thursday in Lyon in the east of the country, as well as in Paris, Toulouse, Rouen, Amiens, Nantes, Marseille and Bordeaux.
“We respect the result of the European elections — of democracy — but we do not accept the values of the FN,” said Silvio Philippe, one of the organisers of the Lyon rally.
“French democracy is in danger.”
The FN took top spot in a nationwide election for the first time on Sunday, beating mainstream political parties to take 24 of France’s 74 seats in the new European Parliament.
The Front National, led by Marine Le Pen, said that it wanted France to quit the euro, reinstate national border controls and repatriate the bulk of Brussels’s powers to national parliaments.
After the vote, Ms Le Pen claimed that voters had demanded “only one type of politics — a politics of the French, for the French and with the French.”
But the underlying theme of all its campaigning was racism and a reactionary nationalism which appalled the youth of the country.
Young people met in cities across the country to demonstrate their rejection of racism and bigotry.
In Paris, thousands of students assembled at the Bastille.
Police said the crowds topped 4,000, although organisers insisted that was a gross underestimate and the real total was double that figure.
Another group of students numbering around 3,000 rallied outside the European Parliament in Strasbourg carrying banners reading “We will not let fascism happen.”
While in Lyon about a thousand students met to protest against the neofascists, carrying posters that read “Lyon, capital of the resistance.”
Demonstrators shouted: “We are all the children of immigrants” as they marched in Toulouse, where another 2,000 young people gathered, displaying banners proclaiming that they were “fed up with the FN.”
The rallies were organised by student unions and Socialist, Communist and Green youth groups.