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Publication Date:
31 Jan 1997
Publisher:
Yale University Press
For delivery:
Estimated despatch 1 - 9 May 2024
Description
Did fascism have a significant following in France in the 1930s? Were its supporters predominantly from the political right or left? This provocative book, in conjunction with its acclaimed predecessor, French Fascism: The First Wave, demolishes the notion that fascism never took hold in France. Robert Soucy argues that France has a long-standing fascist tradition, one that arose, he argues, more from counterrevolutionary forces on the right than from forces on the left.
Analyzing fascist "double-talk," Soucy underscores the social and economic conservatism of such mass movements as Francisme, the Solidarité Française, the Parti Populaire Français, and the Croix de Feu-as well as the ideological and membership crossovers between them. Examining police reports of the era, he penetrates beneath the "socialist" rhetoric of these movements and describes their financial backing from the steel and electricity industries and the middle- and lower-middle-class constituencies (rather than workers) who provided most of their recruits. Soucy investigates why thousands of French men and women found fascist ideas attractive during this period and what fueled the more authoritarian and brutal aspects of French fascism. According to Soucy, these tendencies (seen most recently in the right-wing activity of Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front) periodically emerge from perceived threats from "alien" elements in French society-whether they be Communists, Socialists, immigrants, Jews, feminists, hedonists, democrats, or liberals "soft" on Marxism and secularism.
Contents
Acknowledgements; Introduction: The Debate over Fascism, The Consensus School, The Sternhell Controversy, Historical Fascism in ltaly and Germany, Defining Fascism, Contextualising Fascism, Major Common Denominators of European Fascism; Context: Depression and its Political Consequences, The February 6th, 1934, Riots, The Popular Front; Major and Declining Fascisms, Newspaper Allies, and the Greenshirts: Small and Large Fascisms, The Francistes, The Jeunesses Patriotes, The Action Francaise Newspaper Allies, The Greenshirts, The Cagoule, The Fascist Left: Deat and Bergery; The Solidarite Francaise: Leadership, Financing, and Membership, Rise and Fall Was the Solidarite Francaise Fascist?, Anti-Semitism, Praising Musslini and Hitler and Calling for a Franco-Italian-German Alliance Fascist "Republicanism" and National "Socialism", Anti-Marxism, Antiliberatism, Women Patriotism, Tradition, and the Veterans' Mystique; The Croix de Feu - Parti Social Francais: Political History, 1928- 1939, La Rocque after 1940, Financing, Membership, Was La Rocque's Movement Fascist?, Anti-Semitism, Antidemocracy, Paramilitarism, Anti-Marxism, "Neither Right nor Left", Antidecadence, Antiliberalism; The Parti Populaire Francais: Jacques Doriot: The Communist Years, 1920-1936, The Shift to Fascism, Fascist Symbolism, Financing , Leadership, Membership, National "Socialism" as Anti-Marxism, Cultural Traditionalism, Antifeminism, and Imperialism, National "Socialism" in the Writings of Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, Raymon Fernandez, and Bertrand de Jouvenel Antidemocracy, Antiliberalism, Antirationalism, and Anti-Semitism; Fascist Intellectuals and the Revolt against Decadence: Bertrand de Jouvenel, Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, Robert Brasillach, Louis-Ferdinand, Celine Splitting; Conclusion; Notes; Index.
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