François Duprat

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François Duprat (1941-1978) was French historian, educator, and negationist writer. He was known also for being founder member and part of the leadership of the "far right" Front National party until his assassination in 1978.

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[edit] Biography

François Duprat was born on October 26, 1941, in Ajaccio, Corsica, and was educated in Bayonne, Toulouse, at the prestigious Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris. He graduated in history at the Sorbonne, earning a diploma of higher studies in history in 1963[1].

A Trotskyist in his teenage years[1], François Duprat moved to the far right and became a member of the Jeune Nation wing of the French nationalist students' federation (Fédération des étudiants nationalistes FEN). Strongly opposed to Algerian independence during the Algerian War (1954-62), Duprat later supported Arab states as an anti-Zionist. After the March 1962 Evian agreements granting independence to Algeria, he traveled to Katanga, supporting the secession led by Moise Tshombe. He became Tshome's Director of Propaganda on Radio-Katanga.

Thereafter, he returned to France, where he became a member of Occident, which carried out street brawls against the Maoists and other left-wing students. However, he was excluded in 1967, accused of being a police informant [2]. Duprat then took part in the neo-Nazi Ordre Nouveau movement (New Order), and became the editor of L'Action européenne (European Action) and of the Revue d’histoire du fascisme (History Review of Fascism), which introduced in France Holocaust denial thesis supported by far right circles in the English-world [3].

In 1972, François Duprat co-founded the National Front (FN) headed by Jean-Marie Le Pen, and was part of its political bureau until his death in 1978. He represented the hard-liners of the party, and directed the Groupes nationalistes révolutionnaires (National Revolutionary Groups), alongside Alain Renault.

[edit] Revisionism writings

His efforts to rehabilitate Fascism were reflected in his writings. Thess included an attempt to rehabilitate Nazi war criminal Joachim Peiper, one of the Officers involved in the Malmedy massacre, referring to him as an "irreproachable and courageous soldier [4]". François Duprat conceived of history as a political weapon, stating in May 1976:

"We must not let to our opponents, Marxists and régimistes [5], the monopole of the historical representation of men, facts and ideas. Because History is a wonderful war instrument, and it would be useless to deny that one of the important reasons of our political hardships resides in the historical exploitation and the systemic deformation of the nationalist experiences of the past... It is in order to answer these needs... that a team of intellectuals, professors and nationalists have created the Revue d'histoire du fascisme." [6]

Duprat wrote a book on far right movements in France from 1940 to 1944, during the Collaborationist regime of Vichy. He also created a number of magazines and political reviews, including the Cahiers d'histoire du fascisme (History Notebooks on Fascism) and the Cahiers Européens-Notre Europe (European Notebooks - Our Europe), which also diffused negationist books or far right literature exalting the Third Reich.

[edit] Violent death

Duprat was killed on March 18, 1978, in a car-bomb explosion. His wife Jeanine was also victim of the attack, and lost the use of her legs. He was finishing a book titled Argent et politique (Money and Politics) treating of the funding of right-wing and far-right political parties.

A Jewish "Remembrance Commando" and a "Jewish Revolutionary Group" claimed responsibility for the murder. The perpetrators of the bombing were never found, while Jean-Pierre Bloch, director of the LICRA anti-racist NGO, condemned the killing.

In Génération Occident: de l'extrême droite à la droite, Frédéric Charpier alleged that the assassination would have been commanded by a rival far right organisation. He recalled that Duprat had been excluded in 1967 from Occident on allegations that he was a police informant.

[edit] Legacy

Le National, a far right political review, honoured him in April 1978 as one of the French leader of "the 'revisionist' historical school" who had introduced in France "one of the most explosive booklet" of Richard Harwood. [7]," member of the British National Front and author of the negationist pamphlet "Did Six Million Really Die?". The Cahiers européens - Notre Europe diffused this pamphlet starting in February 1976. The anonym author of this text had been identified by Pierre-André Taguieff as likely being Jean-Marie Le Pen [8].

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b Francis Bergeron, Philippe Vilgier, De Le Pen à Le Pen. Une histoire des nationaux et des nationalistes sous la Ve République, Dominique Martin Morin editions, 1986, p.155
  2. ^ Frédéric Charpier, Génération Occident : de l'extrême droite à la droite
  3. ^ Henry Rousso, "Les habits neufs du négationniste," in L'Histoire n°318, March 2007, pp.26-28 (French)
  4. ^ Speech given to a meeting of neo-nazis in Cologne, 11 September 1976
  5. ^ This is a neologism, which is not in the Petit Robert dictionnary. Probably alludes to legalist supporters of the Republic (as "régime" means "regime" or "political regime"
  6. ^ « Front historique », Année Zéro, May 1976. French: « Nous ne devons pas laisser à nos adversaires, marxistes et régimistes, le monopole de la présentation historique des hommes, des faits et des idées. Car l'Histoire est un merveilleux instrument de combat et il serait vain de nier qu'une des raisons importantes de nos difficultés politiques réside dans l'exploitation historique et la déformation systématique des expériences nationalistes du passé. (...) C'est pour répondre à ce besoin (...) qu'une équipe d'intellectuels, de professeurs, de nationalistes a créé la Revue d'Histoire du fascisme."
  7. ^ Hommage à François Duprat, Le National, April 1978, p. 9-11
  8. ^ Interview of Pierre-André Taguieff by Valérie Igounet, Paris, 2 avril 1993, quoted by Valérie Igounet, in Histoire du négationnisme en France, Le Seuil, 2000.

[edit] Further reading

  • Chebel d'Appollonia, A., L'Extrême Droite en France: De Maurras à Le Pen. Éditions Complexe, Brussels, 2nd edition, 1996. ISBN 2-87027-573-0
  • Duprat, François. L'Internationale étudiante révolutionnaire (Revolutionary Student International), N.E.L., 1968.
  • Igounet, Valérie, Histoire du négationnisme en France. Éditions du Seuil, Paris, 2000. ISBN 2-02-035492-6 (in particular the chapter L'extrême droite diffuse les thèses négationnistes / François Duprat, un passeur idéologique, p.161 to 180).
  • Lebourg, Nicolas. François Duprat: Idéologies, Combats, Souvenirs, Perpignan 2000.
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