The historian Martin Durham stated that the NF—like France's National Front and Germany's The Republicans—represented "the direct descendants of classical fascism". The NF rejected the term "fascist" to describe itself. As well as denying its leaders' previous fascist activities, it claimed that it could not be fascist because it took part in elections. The political scientist Stan Taylor argued that this claim was obsolete, for many previous fascist parties—including the British Union of Fascists, the German Nazi Party, and the Italian National Fascist Party—also stood in elections. In avoiding the "fascist" label, the NF was typical of fascist groups operating after the Second World War; these post-war fascists had to contend with the legacy of the war and the Holocaust, and thus tried to hide their intellectual pedigrees from voters. The NF's founders tried to present it as a nationalist party unconnected to historical fascism, recognising that this would be vital if it were to succeed as an electoral force.