History of far right movements in France

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The far-right tradition in France founds its origins, as the distinction of left and right in politics itself, to the 1789 French Revolution.

Contents

[edit] Counter-revolutionaries and Legitimists

The first representants of this tendency were the counter-revolutionaries (Louis de Bonald, Joseph de Maistre, etc.), whose ideology would be politically translated in the Ultra-royalist movement, which imposed the White Terror after the Restauration. The Chambre introuvable dominated by them, and then Villèle's Chambre retrouvée, which voted the 1830 Anti-Sacrilege Act, belong to this ultra group, "more monarchist than the king" (plus royaliste que le roi). After the 1830 July Revolution, they would be represented by the Legitimists.

[edit] The Third Republic from 1871 to 1914

Further information: Third Republic

The Dreyfus Affair was a turning point in the political history of France and in the Third Republic (1871-1940), established after the 1870 Franco-Prussian War and the 1871 Paris Commune.

[edit] The May 16, 1877 crisis

Main article: May 16, 1877 crisis

Following the defeat of the Commune, the elections had brought upon a monarchist majority, divided into Legitimists and Orleanists, which conceived the republican institutions created by the fall of Napoleon III in 1870 as a transitory state. Until the May 16, 1877 crisis, the royalist movement dominated the legislature, thus creating the paradox of a Republic led by anti-republicans. The royalist deputies supported Marshall MacMahon, a declared monarchist of the legitimist party, as president of the Republic. His term was set to seven years - the time to find a compromise between the two rival royalist families.

In 1873, a plan to reset Henri, comte de Chambord, head of the Bourbon branch supported by Legitimists, back on the throne had failed over the comte's intransigency. President MacMahon was supposed to lead him to the National Assembly and have him acclaimed as King. However, the Comte de Chambord rejected this plan by the white flag manifest of July 5, 1871, reiterated by an October 23, 1873 letter, in which he explained that under no case would he abandon the white flag, symbol of the monarchy (with its fleur-de-lis), in exchange of the republican tricolor. Chambord's decision thus ruined the hopes of a quick restoration of the monarchy.

In 1875, the Orleanist Adolphe Thiers, known as the "repressor of the Commune," pragmatically rallied the Republic, and voted with the moderate Republicans (Opportunist Republicans) Jules Ferry and Léon Gambetta the Constitutional laws of the regime. The next year, the elections gave a large majority to the Republicans in the Assembly, but a one-vote majority to the monarchists in the Senate. With a royalist President, the conflict was inevitable.

The May 16, 1877 crisis was triggered by the royalist president MacMahon who dismissed the moderate Republican and president of the Council Jules Simon, leading to a conflict between the executive power and the legislative on one hand, and on the other hand between the advocates of a return to the Ancien régime and the Republicans. MacMahon dismissed the Assembly, but the new elections gave a crushing majority to the Republicans. The president resigned in 1879: the Republicans had won, while the parliamentary nature of the regime had been established. This was confirmed by Cardinal Lavigerie's toast in favour of the Rallying to the Republic of the Catholics.

A few years later, the Jules Ferry laws of 1881-82 implemented free, mandatory and laic education. These public education laws were a crucial step in firmly establishing the Third Republic. In 1883, the Comte de Chambord died, leading several Orleanists to follow on Adolphe Thiers' step and rally the Republic. Hereafter, only the Legitimists remained in the anti-Republican opposition.

[edit] The Dreyfus Affair and the foundation of the Action française

Main articles: Dreyfus Affair , Action française , and French far-right leagues

However, a few years later, a Jewish officer, Alfred Dreyfus, was arrested (in 1894), accused of treason and of intelligence with the German Empire. The Dreyfus Affair provided one of the political division line of France. Nationalism, which had been before the Dreyfus Affair a left-wing and Republican ideology, turned after that to be a main trait of the right-wing and, moreover, of the far right [1].

Emile Zola entered the political scene as the first "intellectual" of history, while left and right-wing opposed themselves, mainly over the questions of militarism, nationalism, justice and human rights. Until then, nationalism was a Republican, left-wing ideology, related to the French Revolution and the Revolutionary Wars. It was a liberal nationalism, formulated by Ernest Renan's definition of the nation as a "daily plebiscite" and as formed by the subjective "will to live together." Related to "revanchism", the belligerent will to take revenge against Germany and retake control of Alsace-Lorraine, nationalism could then be sometimes opposed to imperialism. In the 1880s, a debate thus opposed those who opposed the "colonial lobby", such as Georges Clemenceau (Radical), who declared that colonialism diverted France from the "blue line of the Vosges" (referring to Alsace-Lorraine), Jean Jaurès (Socialist) and Maurice Barrès (nationalist), against Jules Ferry (moderate republican), Léon Gambetta (republican) and Eugène Etienne, the president of the parliamentary colonial group.

But in the midst of the Dreyfus Affair, a new right emerged, and nationalism was reappropriated by the far-right who turned it into a form of ethnic nationalism, itself blended with anti-Semitism, xenophoby, anti-Protestantism and anti-Masonry. Charles Maurras (1868-1952), founder of "integralism" (or "integral nationalism"), created the term "Anti-France" to stigmatize "internal foreigners", or the "four confederate states of Protestants, Jews, Freemasons and foreigners" (his actual word for the latter being the far less polite métèques). A few years later, Maurras would join the monarchist Action française, created by Maurice Pujo and Henri Vaugeois in 1898. Maurras, who was an agnostic, spearheaded a monarchist and Catholic revival. He pragmatically conceived of religion as an ideology useful to unify the nation. Most Catholics were conservatives, a trait which continues to exist today. On the other hand, most Protestants, Jews and atheists belonged to the left-wing. Henceforth, the Republicans' conception was, to the contrary, that only state secularism could pacifically gather the diversity of religious and philosophial tendencies, and avoid any return to the Wars of Religion. Furthermore, Catholic priests were seen as a major, reactionary force by the Republicans, among which anti-clericalism became a common spread. The Ferry laws on public education had been a first step for the Republic in rooting out the clerics' influence ; they would be completed by the 1905 law on the separation of Church and State.

The Action française, first founded as a review, was the matrix of a new type of counter-revolutionary right-wing, and continues to exist today. The Action française was quite influent in the 1930s, in particular through its youth organization, the Camelots du Roy, founded in 1908, and which engaged in many street brawls, etc. The Camelots du Roy included such figures as Catholic writer Georges Bernanos or Jean de Barrau, member of the directing committee of the National Federation, and particular secretary of the duc d'Orléans (1869-1926), the son of the Orleanist count of Paris (1838-1894) and hence Orleanist heir to the throne of France. Many members of the OAS terrorist group during the Algerian War (1954-62) were part of the monarchist movement. Jean Ousset, Maurras' personal secretary, created the Cité catholique Catholic fundamentalist organization, which would include OAS members and founded a branch in Argentina in the 1960s.

Apart from the Action française, several far-right leagues were created during the Dreyfus Affair. Mostly anti-Semitic, they also represented a new right-wing tendency, sharing common traits such as anti-parliamentarism, militarism, nationalism, and often engaged in street brawls. Thus, the nationalist poet Paul Déroulède created in 1882 the anti-semitic Ligue des patriotes (Patriot's League), which at first focused on advocating 'revanche' (revenge) for the French defeat during the Franco-Prussian War. Along with Jules Guérin, the journalist Edouard Drumont created the Antisemitic League of France in 1889. Also anti-masonry, the League became at the turn of the century the Grand Occident de France, a name chosen in reaction against the masonic lodge of the Grand Orient de France.

[edit] The Boulangiste crisis

During the Boulangisme crisis, Déroulède co-opted the ligue to support the general, alienating many Republican members. After Boulanger's exile in 1889 the Ligue was suppressed by the French government. Most of the far-right leagues of the Dreyfus Affair disappeared during before World War I, but would return on the scene in the interwar period.

[edit] The interwarperiod

During the interwar period, the Action française (AF) and its youth militia, the Camelots du Roi, were very active, in particular in the Quartier Latin of Paris. Apart of the AF, various far-right leagues were formed and opposed both Cartel des gauches (Left-wings coalition) governments. Pierre Taittinger thus formed the Jeunesses Patriotes in 1924, which imitated Fascism style although it remained a more traditional authoritarian movement. The following year, Georges Valois created Le Faisceau, heavily inspired by Mussolini's Fascism. Finally, in 1933, the year Hitler gained power, the wealthy perfumer François Coty founded Solidarité française and Marcel Bucard formed the Francisme, which was subsided by Mussolini. Another important league was François de la Rocque's Croix de Feu, which formed the base for the Parti Social Français (PSF), the first mass party of the French right-wing.

Apart of the leagues, a group of Neosocialists (Marcel Déat, Pierre Renaudel, etc.) were excluded in November 1933 from the SFIO socialist party because of their revisionist stances and admiration for fascism. Déat would become one of the most ardent Collaborationists during World War II.

Others important figures of the 1930s include Xavier Vallat, who would become General Commissionner for Jewish Affairs under Vichy, members of the Cagoule terrorist group (Eugène Deloncle, Eugène Schueller, the founder of L'Oréal cosmetic firm, Jacques Corrèze, Joseph Darnand, latter founded of the Service d'ordre légionnaire militia during Vichy, etc.).

[edit] 6 February 1934

Main article: February 6, 1934 riots

Far right leagues organized these riots which led to the fall of the Second Cartel des gauches. These leagues were then dissolved on 18 January 1936 by the Popular Front.

[edit] Vichy

Further information: Vichy France  and Révolution nationale

[edit] Fourth Republic and the Algerian War

The Organisation de l'armée secrète (OAS) was created in Madrid by French military opposed to the independence of Algeria. Many of its members would later join various anti-communist struggles around the world. Some, for example, joined the Cité catholique fundamentalist group and going to Argentina, where they were in contact with the Argentine Armed Forces. Jean Pierre Cherid, former OAS member, took part in the 1976 Montejurra massacre against left-wing Carlists. [2] [3] He was then part of the Spanish GAL death squad, and participated in the 1978 assassination of Argala, one of the etarra who had killed Franco's Prime minister, Luis Carrero Blanco, in 1973.

Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour was the far-right candidate at the 1965 presidential election. His campaign was organized by Jean-Marie Le Pen. Charles de Gaulle said of Tixier-Vignancourt: "Tixier-Vignancour, that is Vichy, the Collaboration proud of itself, the Militia, the OAS".

[edit] Fifth Republic

Jean-Marie Le Pen founded the Front National (FN) party in 1972, along with former OAS member Jacques Bompard, former Collaborationist Roland Gaucher, François Duprat, who introduced negationist thesis to France [4], and others nostalgics of Vichy France, Catholic fundamentalists, etc [5]. Le Pen presented himself for the first time in the 1974 presidential election, obtaining 0.74% [5].

Mark Frederiksen, a French Algeria activist, created in April 1966 a Neo-Nazi group, the FANE (Fédération d'action nationaliste et européenne, Nationalist and European Federation of Action). The FANE boasted at most a hundred activists, including members such as Luc Michel, now leader of the Parti communautaire national-européen (National European Communautary Party), Jacques Bastide, Michel Faci, Michel Caignet and Henri-Robert Petit, a journalist and former Collaborationist who directed under the Vichy regime the newspaper Le Pilori. The FANE maintained international contacts with the British group the League of Saint George [6]. Dissolved first in September 1980 by Raymond Barre's government, the group was recreated, and dissolved again in 1985 by Laurent Fabius's government. Finally, it was dissolved a third time in 1987 by Jacques Chirac's government, on charges of "violent demonstrations organized by this movement, which has as one of its expressed objective the establishment of a new Nazi regime," the "paramilitary organisation of this association and its incitations to racial discrimination."

After a brief passage at the National Front, Mark Fredriksen crated the Faisceaux nationalistes européens (FANE) in July 1980. These would eventually merge with the Mouvement national et social ethniste in 1987, and then with the PNFE (French and European Nationalist Party) in January 1994, which also gathered former National Front members.

In the 1980s, Alain de Benoist theorized the Nouvelle Droite movement, creating the GRECE in 1968 with the Club de l'Horloge. They advocated an ethno-nationalism stance focused on European culture, which advocated a return of paganism. Members of the GRECE quit the think tank in the 1980s, such as Pierre Vial who joined the FN, or Guillaume Faye who quit the organization along with others members in 1986. Faye participated in 2006 in a conference in the US organized by the American Renaissance white separatist magazine published by the New Century Foundation.

On the other hand, Alain Benoist occasionally contributed to the Mankind Quarterly review which insists on hereditarianism and associated with the US think tank Pioneer Fund, headed by J. Philippe Rushton, author of Race, Evolution and Behavior (1995) which argues in favour of a biological conception of "race." GRECE, as well as the Pioneer Fund, are actively involved in the "race and intelligence" debate, postulating that there is an identifiable link between levels of intelligence and distinct ethnic groups.

The Club de l'horloge itself had been founded by Henry de Lesquen, a former member of the conservative Rally for the Republic, which he quit in 1984. Others members of the Club de l'horloge, such as Bruno Mégret, later joined the FN after a short time in the RPR.

The National Front gained 35 deputies (nearly 10% of the votes) at the 1986 French legislative elections, under the appellation of "Rassemblement national." These included the monarchist Georges-Paul Wagner. Following this electoral victory, some hardliners inside the FN spin-off to create the Parti Nationaliste Français et Européen (PNFE). Three former members of the PNFE were charged of having profanated a Jewish cemetery in Carpentras [7].

Bruno Mégret then headed a split from the FN, taking with him many elected members of the FN and electoral troops, in the creation of the rival National Republican Movement (MNR) in 1999. However, in view of the 2007 legislative elections, he accepted to support Le Pen's candidacy for the presidential election which is due a short time before.

Other minor groups that are or have been active in the Fifth Republic include:

[edit] References

  1. ^ Winock, Michel (dir.), Histoire de l'extrême droite en France (1993)
  2. ^ MONTEJURRA: LA OPERACIÓN RECONQUISTA Y EL ACTA FUNDACIONAL DE LAS TRAMAS ANTITERRORISTAS. Fuente "INTERIOR" Por Santiago Belloch (Spanish)
  3. ^ Rodolfo Almirón, de la Triple A al Montejurra, PDF (Spanish)
  4. ^ Henry Rousso, "Les habits neufs du négationniste," in L'Histoire n°318, March 2007, pp.26-28 (French)
  5. ^ a b Le Pen, son univers impitoyable, Radio France Internationale, September 1, 2006 (French)
  6. ^ R. Hill & A. Bell, The Other Face of Terror- Inside Europe’s Neo-Nazi Network, London: Collins, 1988, pp.186-189
  7. ^ La profanation de Carpentras a été longuement préméditée, L'Humanité, 7 August 1996 (French)

[edit] Bibliography

  • Winock, Michel (dir.), Histoire de l'extrême droite en France (1993)

[edit] See also

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