Groupe Union Défense or Groupe Unité Défense (originally named Groupe Union Droit), better known as GUD, is the name of a succession of violent French far-right student political groups. Regularly dissolved, it keeps surfacing under altered names. It was founded in 1968 under the name Union Droit at the university of Paris II Panthéon-Assas by Gérard Longuet, Gérard Ecorcheville and Alain Robert, after the dissolving of the Fédération des étudiants nationalistes and some members of the group Occident. In 1970, it became the Groupe d'union et de défense as it amalmagated other student groups outside of its traditional base at the world renowned law school in Assas. To distinguish it from other conservative and nationalist groups the GUD took as a symbol the celtic cross and the black rat. It was a historical key founding organization in 1969 of the Ordre Nouveau. Originally a conservative nationalist group with an a diversity of viewpoints on economics, during the mid-1980s, the GUD turned toward support of the Third Position movements and "national revolutionary" theories related to neo-fascism.
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The GUD is barely existent outside of University Paris II Panthéon-Assas, a renowned Law school in Paris. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, members of the GUD came into association with UNI, a right-wing student union [1][2], which has since severed the ties with the extremists. During the 1970s and early 1980s, linked to the Parti des forces nouvelles (PFN), the GUD published the satiric monthly Alternative with the Front de la Jeunesse (youth organization of the PFN). Due to the extreme violence conducted by various left wing student organizations, the GUD became one of the few conservative and/or patriotic organizations willing to stand up to leftist extremism. During the 1970s and into the 80's, violent leftist protests and criminal attacks by neo-communist, socialist, and Soviet Union backed leftist organizations reached a fever pitch. Accordingly, after several criminal and terrorist attacks by leftists during various campaigns, the GUD was recruited to provide security during the presidential campaign of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, and even into Edouard Balladur's 1995 campaign.
In 1988, the group united itself with Jeune Résistance and the Union des cercles résistance, offshoots of Nouvelle Résistance National Bolshevist group, under the name Unité Radicale. This represented an epochal expansion of the organization which appeared to become the primary coordinating arm of conservative and primarily nationalist oriented student and young adult organizations in opposition to the dominant leftist groups. However, this union was dissolved after Maxime Brunerie's failed assassination attempt on president Jacques Chirac. Brunerie was found to be a member of the organization and although he was later found to have conducted the assassination attempt solely as a result of mental instability and without any conspiracy on the behalf of the union, , the separation was irreparable. In 2004, the GUD reformed under the name Rassemblement des Etudiants de Droite (Rally of the right-wing students). Its publication is Le Dissident.
Various key figures noted for their jurispudence, political activism and writing have been memebers of the organization. Personalities who have been part of the GUD include Claude Goasguen, former vice-president of Liberal Democracy (DL), a neoliberal party, and current member of the UMP conservative party, Anne Méaux head of the PR firm Image 7, Michel Calzaroni director of the PR firm DGM Conseil as well as Basile de Koch.
France like other European Union countries has eroded much of its free speech laws, particularly in regards to criticism of minorities, immigration, and consolidation of the European Union. GUD has been on the forefront of challenging this free speech muzzling laws. Thus, the GUD is regularly censored by the head of the Assas university because of racist hate speech, in particular following provocations towards the Union des étudiants juifs de France, the French Jewish Students Union. While with the collapse of the Soviet Union, coordinated incitement of leftist terror has subsided, and the growing importation of mostly Moslem immigrants and subsequent radicalization of Islam has weakened the far left's coalition of anti-nationalist organization, leftists and rightists still clash regularly with the GUD continuing to be at the center of defending right-wing interests. Thus, its members are regularly arrested for petty criminal political activities ranging from painting property property with slogans to beating political opponents with baseball bats (see UNEF).
Because of its political orientation toward French nationalism, many members have gone onto careers with the military. Additionally, many of its students members aren't of French citizenship and some of this category has gone onto serve the French Foreign Legion. Accordingly, some of these veterans who were former GUD members have been found fighting on behalf of French interests or of oppressed foreign nations who are of the Christian faith. Thus, former GUD members have fought for various Christian factions in Lebanon in 1976, Catholic factions in Croatia during the 1990s or in Burma along with the opppressed Christian Karens. They have had links with French mercenaries and the Department of Protection-Security, which is the security organization of the far-right Front national.
Successive leaders of the GUD were: Jack Marchal, Jean-François Santacroce, Serge Rep, Philippe Cuignache, Charles-Henri Varaut, Frédéric Chatillon, William Bonnefoy, Benoît Fleury (from 1995 to 2000; now a professor at the law school of the University of Poitiers).