State antisemitism is a concept promoted by Charles Maurras, who claimed that this type of antisemitism was distinct from "racial antisemitism". [1] Maurras defined it as a political rather than biological or religious antisemitism.
State antisemitism is a concept promoted by Charles Maurras, who claimed that this type of antisemitism was distinct from "racial antisemitism". [1] Maurras defined it as a political rather than biological or religious antisemitism.
Charles Maurras inherited the notion of combating "states within a state" from thinkers like François René de La Tour du Pin. He identified four "confederated states" within France—Jewish, Protestant, Freemason, and foreign—and sought to curtail their perceived influence. [2]
For Maurras, the "Jewish problem" stemmed from what he saw as an inevitable conflict between Jewish and French interests. He argued that Jews, lacking a homeland in France, inherently maintained an allegiance to Palestine. [3]
While Maurras's state antisemitism is often considered a secondary element of his work, [4] it played a significant role in Action française ideology. Maurras distinguished "good Jews"—those who fought for France in World War I—from those he deemed harmful to national interests. [5]
Maurras rejected racial antisemitism, viewing it as contrary to Catholic teachings and incompatible with French nationalism. He believed the state should limit Jewish influence in key sectors like public administration and education without persecuting them physically or religiously. [6]
Maurras himself condemned biological antisemitism, denouncing it as "a moral evil". [7] He criticized the Nazi focus on racial purity and argued for a distinction between political antisemitism and racist ideologies. [8]
Following the Holocaust, Maurras continued to advocate for state antisemitism, albeit with modifications. He recognized the atrocities of the Nazi regime and argued that France should have protected its Jewish citizens. [9]
Despite his antisemitism, Maurras received support from certain Jewish members of Action française, including René Groos and Louis Latzarus. He distinguished between "well-born Jews"—those assimilated into French culture—and foreign Jews, whom he saw as problematic. [10]
Maurras, though agnostic, admired Catholicism as a stabilizing force in society. His antisemitism did not advocate conversion or religious persecution but instead focused on limiting Jewish influence in secular domains. [11]
The current approach in the field of intellectual history often privileges a scholarly perspective. However, historian Laurent Joly criticizes this methodology in his book Naissance de l'Action française, arguing that it focuses excessively on reading "printed and periodical sources" without proper context. [12] Joly accuses some historians, including François Huguenin, of attempting to "neutralize the problem of antisemitism" in Maurras's thought. [13]
Huguenin suggests that antisemitic discourse in France predated the founding of Action française and existed within nationalist and reactionary movements, as well as among socialists. He highlights earlier instances of antisemitism on both the political left and right, citing figures like Voltaire, Karl Marx (in On the Jewish Question), Jean Jaurès, and Georges Clemenceau. This view supports the argument that antisemitism was pervasive across the political spectrum in 19th-century France. [14]
Historian Michel Dreyfus points to works like Alphonse Toussenel's Les Juifs, rois de l'époque (1845) as foundational in linking Jews to stereotypes of banking and capitalism. [15] This antisemitism, Dreyfus notes, was equally present in socialist and anarchist thought. [15]
Charles-Marie-Photius Maurras was a French author, politician, poet, and critic. He was an organizer and principal philosopher of Action Française, a political movement that is monarchist, anti-parliamentarist, and counter-revolutionary. Maurras also held anti-communist, anti-Masonic, anti-Protestant, and antisemitic views, while being highly critical of Nazism, referring to it as "stupidity". His ideas greatly influenced National Catholicism and integral nationalism, led by his tenet that "a true nationalist places his country above everything".
Action Française was a French far-right monarchist and nationalist political movement. The name was also given to a journal associated with the movement, L'Action Française, sold by its own youth organization, the Camelots du Roi.
Maurice Pujo was a French journalist and co-founder of the nationalist and monarchist Action Française movement. He became the leader of the Camelots du Roi, the youth organization of the Action Française which took part in many right-wing demonstrations in the years before World War II (1939–45). After World War II he was imprisoned for collaborationist activity.
Bernard Lazare was a French literary critic, political journalist, polemicist, and anarchist. He is known as the first Dreyfusard.
Integral nationalism is a type of nationalism that originated in 19th-century France, was theorized by Charles Maurras and mainly expressed in the ultra-royalist circles of the Action Française. The doctrine is also called Maurrassisme.
The King's Camelots, officially the National Federation of the King's Camelots was a far-right youth organization of the French militant royalist and integralist movement Action Française active from 1908 to 1936. It is best known for taking part in many right-wing demonstrations in France in the 1920s and 1930s.
Henri Vaugeois was a French teacher and journalist who was one of the founders of right-wing nationalist Action Française movement.
Maurrassisme is a political doctrine originated by Charles Maurras (1868–1952), most closely associated with the Action française movement. Maurassisme advocates absolute integral nationalism, monarchism, corporatism, national syndicalism, and opposition to democracy, liberalism, capitalism, and communism.
"Auschwitz or the great alibi" is a 1960 article published in Programme communiste, the French magazine of the International Communist Party (ICP), later reedited in the form of a brochure. The authorship of this text has been attributed to both Amadeo Bordiga and Martin Axelrad. However, the Programme communiste was a Bordigist revue, publishing its texts anonymously in order to emphasize its character of a collective work.
The Revue critique des idées et des livres (1908–1924) was a French bi-monthly journal of political and literary criticism published from 1908 to 1924. It was published by Jean Rivain and writer and literary critic Eugène Marsan. From 1908 Lucien Moreau and Jean Rivain were the key contributors to the review.
Laurent Joly is a French historian and a specialist of Vichy France and antisemitism.
Simon Epstein is an Israeli economist and historian.
Mathieu Georges Dairnvaell was a French journalist and pamphleteer using the pen name Satan, publishing during the years 1838 to 1851. In 1846 he published a 36-page pamphlet launching the antisemitic canard that the fabulous wealth of the Rothschild banking dynasty was amassed by Nathan Rothschild through obtaining advance knowledge of the outcome of the Battle of Waterloo (1815) and using this information to successfully play the stock market. In this way, Dairnvaell contributed to the rise of what Michel Dreyfus has called "economic antisemitism".
Marius Plateau was a French engineer, WWI sergeant, and royalist militant. Plateau was an editor of the far-right journal of Action Française and a former secretary general of the Camelots du Roi. In 1923, Plateau was assassinated by the French anarchist Germaine Berton, who was later acquitted.
La Seule France is a book published in 1941 by the journalist and French politician Charles Maurras, director of L'Action française. Maurras supports an isolationist position between Nazi Germany and Great Britain during World War II, and was resolutely opposed to collaborationism.
Devant l'Allemagne éternelle is a book by the French journalist and politician Charles Maurras, director of L'Action française published in 1937. The work was composed during the author's period of detention in La Santé prison from October 20, 1936, to July 6, 1937, for death threats against Léon Blum. He compiles "texts written for forty years on Germany, pan-Germanism and German influence in France".
L'Avenir de l'intelligence is a philosophical and political essay by the French journalist and politician Charles Maurras, director of L'Action française, published in 1905. This text was published in 1902 in the review Minerva led by journalist René-Marc Ferry. Charles Maurras offers a critique "of the evolution of the status of Intelligence in contact with modernity, of its progressive submission to Gold".
L'Allemagne et nous is a book by French journalist and politician Charles Maurras, director of L'Action française, published in 1945. The text takes up the defense of the Cour de Justice du Rhône held between January 24 and 27, 1945 after the Liberation of France. The statement retrospectively explores the position of Action Française vis-à-vis Germany during the first half of the 20th century.
L'Idée de la décentralisation is a political booklet by the French journalist and politician Charles Maurras, member of the Félibrige then journalist and director of L'Action française, published in February 1898.
The Revue d'Action française, sometimes called the Revue d'AF or the little gray due to its gray cover, was the precursor to the L'Action française. It was a French biweekly journal founded by Henri Vaugeois and Maurice Pujo in 1899 on the first floor of the Café de Flore in the 6th arrondissement of Paris. It was directed solely by Henri Vaugeois. According to historian Laurent Joly, before its transformation into a daily newspaper, the biweekly served as a platform for an intellectual association to disseminate its directives. In April 1908, after a "monarchist subversion", it came under the direction of Charles Maurras and transitioned into a daily newspaper under the shorter title of L'Action française.
