The Nationalists (France)

Last updated
The Nationalists
Les Nationalistes
ChefYvan Benedetti
Founded2015;9 years ago (2015)
Newspaper Militant
Ideology French nationalism
Ultranationalism
Neo-Pétainism
Neo-fascism
Identitarianism
Anti-immigration
Political position Far-right
Religion Catholicism
International affiliation Alliance for Peace and Freedom (Associate)
Colours Blue and Gold
Party flag
Flag of French Nationalist Party.svg
Website
https://www.les-nationalistes.com/
PNF members alongside members of the nationalist CLAN movement participating in a 2015 rally honoring Jeanne d'Arc PNF Rally France 2015.png
PNF members alongside members of the nationalist CLAN movement participating in a 2015 rally honoring Jeanne d'Arc

The Nationalists (French : Les Nationalistes), is a far-right neo-fascist [1] political movement in France originally established in 1983 by former National Front (FN) members, including former Waffen-SS members like Pierre Bousquet, Jean Castrillo, and Henri Simon, around the magazine Militant. Inactive after the early 1990s, it was reactivated in 2015 following the dissolution of the néo-Pétainist movement L'Œuvre Française by the French authorities in 2013. Far-right militant Yvan Benedetti serves as its current leader.

Contents

History

The organization was originally established in December 1983 as Parti Nationaliste Français (PNF) by Pierre Bousquet, Jean Castrillo, Henri Simon (the three of them were former Waffen-SS Charlemagne members), Pierre Pauty, André Delaporte, Patrice Chabaille, Alain Renault. All of them, except Simon, were former National Front (FN) members who had split off from the party in 1980 after dismissing it as becoming "too conservative" and "too Zionist" following the death of François Duprat in 1978. [2] [3] [4] FN leader Jean-Marie Le Pen himself was seen a puppet of the Jews, [5] and rising FN member Jean-Pierre Stirbois accused of secretly being a Jew. [6] Alain de La Tocnaye, who had been involved in the Petit-Clamart terrorist attack against then French President Charles de Gaulle, was also a founding member of the party. [4]

Pauty was the leader and first president of the Parti Nationaliste Français (PNF). Their aim was to "organize French nationalists and legally diffuse their doctrine", but the racist ideology of a "white Europe from Brest to Vladivostok" failed to convince the public. [7] [8]

Two years after the foundation of the Nationalist Party in June 1985, a group of radicals split off the PNF to create the French and European Nationalist Party (PNFE), [3] whose members were involved in several terrorists attacks in the late 1980s, and which replaced the PNF as the main neo-Nazi group in France until its own dissolution in 1999. [9]

From the early 1990s, the PNF was weakened by the departure of its leader Pierre Pauty, who joined the FN in 1992, and by the death of Pierre Bousquet in 1991. [10] In June 1995, Pauty obtained 26.2% of the votes in the municipal election of Saint-Denis, Seine-Saint-Denis. [11] Meanwhile, the organization became inactive, with only its magazine Militant surviving. [12] The party had no more than 100 militants during this period. [9]

After the dissolution of L'Œuvre Française in 2013, its president Yvan Benedetti, along with André Gandillon, the redactor-in-chief of Militant, reactivated the French Nationalist Party as a new outset for the banned association. [12] In September 2015, Benedetti became its spokesman and called on all L'Œuvre members to join the PNF. [13]

In 2022, party spokesman Yvan Benedetti tried with no success to run as candidate for the 2022 French presidential election. [14] [15]

Organisation

As of 2016, the party was headed by a 15-member presidium , which included Jean-François Simon (president), André Gandillon (secretary general), Éric Leroy (treasurer), and Yvan Benedetti (spokesman). [3]

Castrillo was a member of the presidium from 1983 until his death in 2012. [3]

Elections

European Parliament

ElectionLeaderVotes %Seats+/−EP Group
2024 Pierre-Marie Bonneau5,9040.02 (#25)
0 / 81
New

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Groupe Union Défense</span> French far-right students union

Groupe Union Défense, better known as GUD, was a French far-right students' union formed in the 1960s. After a period of inactivity it relaunched in 2022.

Roland Gaucher was the pseudonym of Roland Goguillot, a French far-right journalist and politician. One of the main thinkers of the French far-right, he had participated in Marcel Déat's fascist party Rassemblement National Populaire (RNP) under the Vichy regime. Sentenced to five years of prison for Collaborationism after the war, he then engaged in a career of journalism, while continuing political activism. One of the co-founders of the National Front (FN) in October 1972, he became a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the FN in 1986.

The Groupement de Recherche et d'Études pour la Civilisation Européenne, better known as GRECE, is a French ethnonationalist think tank founded in 1968 to promote the ideas of the Nouvelle Droite. GRECE founding member Alain de Benoist has been described as its leader and "most authoritative spokesman". Prominent former members include Guillaume Faye and Jean-Yves Le Gallou.

The Carrefour de l'Horloge, formerly Club de l'Horloge (1974–2015), is a French far-right national liberal think tank founded in 1974 and presided by Henry de Lesquen. The organization promotes an "integral neo-Darwinist" philosophy, characterized by a form of economic liberalism infused with ethnic nationalism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">French and European Nationalist Party</span> French neo-Nazi organization

The French and European Nationalist Party was a French nationalist militant organization active between 1987 and 1999. Led by Claude Cornilleau until 1996, its slogan was "France first, white always". It had around a thousand sympathizers at its height.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">François Duprat</span> French essayist and politician (1940–1978)

François Duprat was a French essayist and politician, a founding member of the Front National party and part of the leadership until his assassination in 1978. Duprat was one of the main architects in the introduction of Holocaust denial in France.

The far-right tradition in France finds its origins in the Third Republic with Boulangism and the Dreyfus affair. In the 1880s, General Georges Boulanger, called "General Revenge", championed demands for military revenge against Imperial Germany as retribution for the defeat and fall of the Second French Empire during the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71). This stance, known as revanchism, began to exert a strong influence on French nationalism. Soon thereafter, the Dreyfus affair provided one of the political division lines of France. French nationalism, which had been largely associated with left-wing and Republican ideologies before the Dreyfus affair, turned after that into a main trait of the right-wing and, moreover, of the far right. A new right emerged, and nationalism was reappropriated by the far-right who turned it into a form of ethnic nationalism, blended with anti-Semitism, xenophobia, anti-Protestantism and anti-Masonry. The Action française (AF), first founded as a journal and later a political organization, was the matrix of a new type of counter-revolutionary right-wing, which continues to exist today. During the interwar period, the Action française and its youth militia, the Camelots du Roi, were very active. Far right leagues organized riots.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jeune Nation</span> French nationalist movement

Jeune Nation was a French nationalist, neo-Pétainist and neo-fascist far-right movement founded in 1949 by Pierre Sidos and his brothers. Inspired by Fascist Italy and Vichy France, the group attracted support from many young nationalists during the Algerian war (1954–62), especially in the French colonial army. Promoting street violence and extra-parliamentarian insurrection against the Fourth Republic, members hoped the turmoils of the wars of decolonization would lead to a coup d'état followed by the establishment of a nationalist regime. Jeune Nation was the most significant French neo-fascist movement during the 1950s; it gathered at its height 3,000 to 4,000 members.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jean-Yves Le Gallou</span> French politician, essayist and official

Jean-Yves Le Gallou is a French politician. He served as a member of the European Parliament from 1994 until 1999, representing the National Front. Since 2022, he has been a member of Reconquête.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">René Binet (neo-Fascist)</span> French Trotskyist and neo-fascist activist

René Binet was a French fascist political activist. Initially a Trotskyist in the 1930s, he espoused fascism during World War II and joined the SS Charlemagne Division. Soon after the end of the war, Binet became involved in numerous neo-fascist and white supremacist publications and parties. He wrote the 1950 book Théorie du racisme, deemed influential on the European far-right at large. Binet died in a car accident in 1957, aged 44.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jean-Pierre Stirbois</span> French politician (1945–1988)

Jean-Pierre Stirbois was a French far-right politician. Elected deputy mayor in 1983 of Dreux, a city of around 30,000 inhabitants at the time, he was one of the main architects, along with his wife Marie-France Stirbois, of the first electoral breakthrough of the National Front.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dominique Venner</span> French journalist and essayist

Dominique Venner was a French historian, journalist, and essayist. Venner was a member of the Organisation armée secrète and later became a European nationalist, founding the neo-fascist and white nationalist Europe-Action, before withdrawing from politics to focus on a career as a historian. He specialized in military and political history. At the time of his death, he was the editor of the La Nouvelle Revue d'Histoire, a bimonthly history magazine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pierre Sidos</span> French nationalist activist (1927–2020)

Pierre Sidos was a French far right nationalist, neo-Pétainist, and antisemitic activist. One of the main figures of post-WWII nationalism in France, Sidos was the founder and leader of the nationalist organizations Jeune Nation (1949–1958) and L'Œuvre Française (1968–2013).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Terre et Peuple</span> French neo-pagan association

Terre et Peuple is a far-right and neo-pagan cultural association in France founded by Pierre Vial and launched in 1995. Its positions are close to the Identitarian movement, although it precedes that movement and its terminology.

The European Rally for Liberty, also translated as European Assembly for Liberty, was a far-right, white nationalist and euro-nationalist party active in France between 1966 and 1968, and the political showcase of the Nationalist Movement of Progress, created nine months earlier. The movement and the party were founded by the euro-nationalist magazine Europe-Action, escorted by militants from the Federation of Nationalist Students.

Europe-Action was a far-right white nationalist and euro-nationalist magazine and movement, founded by Dominique Venner in 1963 and active until 1966. Distancing itself from pre-WWII fascist ideas such as anti-intellectualism, anti-parliamentarianism and traditional French nationalism, Europe-Action promoted a pan-European nationalism based on the "Occident"—or the "white peoples"— and a social Darwinism escorted by racialism, labeled "biological realism". These theories, along with the meta-political strategy of Venner, influenced young Europe-Action journalist Alain de Benoist and are deemed conducive to the creation of GRECE and the Nouvelle Droite in 1968.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">L'Œuvre Française</span> French nationalist movement

L'Œuvre Française, also called L'Œuvre, was a French nationalist, néo-Pétainist and antisemitic far-right movement founded in 1968 by Pierre Sidos. Inspired by the "semi-fascist" regimes of Vichy France, Francoist Spain and the Estado Novo, L'Œuvre Française was—until its dissolution by the authorities in 2013—the oldest nationalist association still active in France.

Yvan Benedetti is a French far-right activist. The former president of L'Œuvre Française (2012–13), he has been the spokesman of The Nationalists since 2015.

Pierre Bousquet was a French journalist and far-right politician. A former section leader (Rottenführer) in the Waffen-SS Charlemagne Division, Bousquet was the first treasurer and a founding member of the National Front in 1972.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jean-Claude Valla</span> French journalist and essayist.

Jean-Claude Valla was a French journalist and a prominent figure of the Nouvelle Droite.

References

  1. Lebourg, Nicolas (2018). "The French Far Right in Russia's Orbit". Carnegie council (Research Report).
  2. Taguieff, Pierre-André (1993). "Origines et métamorphoses de la nouvelle droite". Vingtième Siècle. Revue d'histoire. 40 (1): 6. doi:10.3406/xxs.1993.3005.
  3. 1 2 3 4 de Boissieu, Laurent (2021). "Parti Nationaliste Français (PNF) — France Politique". France-Politique.
  4. 1 2 "Parti nationaliste français". Bibliothèque Nationale de France .
  5. Camus, Jean-Yves; Lebourg, Nicolas (2017). Far-Right Politics in Europe. Harvard University Press. p. 106. ISBN   9780674971530.
  6. Lebourg, Nicolas (2001). "Neo-fascisme et nationalisme-révolutionnaire. 2. Etat-Nation-Europe". Pratique de l’Histoire et Dévoiements Négationnistes (PHDN).
  7. Igounet, Valérie (2009). Histoire du négationnisme en France (in French). Le Seuil. ISBN   9782021009538.
  8. Petitfils, Jean-Christian (1987). L'Extrême-droite en France (in French). Presses universitaires de France. ISBN   9782130678816.
  9. 1 2 Venner, Fiammetta (2006). Extreme France (in French). Grasset. ISBN   978-2-246-66609-7.
  10. Szajkowski, Bogdan; Terranova, Florence (2004). Revolutionary and Dissident Movements of the World. John Harper Pub. p. 119. ISBN   9780954381127.
  11. Rosso, Romain (7 November 1996). "Profanateurs néonazis: nouvelles preuves". L'Express (in French).
  12. 1 2 De Boissieu, Laurent (25 October 2015). "L'Œuvre Française se reconstitue au sein du Parti Nationaliste Français". iPolitique (in French).
  13. Erome, Sébastien (1 March 2017). "Yvan Benedetti - Œil sur le front". Libération (in French).
  14. "France 2022 : les candidats". FRANCE 24 (in French). 2022-01-14. Retrieved 2023-01-16.
  15. Ronai, Maurice (2022-02-01). "Présidentielle : le point sur les candidatures " anti-système "". Conspiracy Watch | L'Observatoire du conspirationnisme (in French). Retrieved 2023-01-16.