When I was a graduate student, one of the
books I read, called, in English, The Three Faces of Fascism,
had a profound influence on me.
Published by the German historian Ernest
Nolte in 1963, it was a study of three movements, Adolf
Hitler’s National Socialist (Nazi) Party, Benito Mussolini’s
National Fascist one, and Charles Maurras’ Action Français.
I was reminded of Nolte’s
book when reading reports about attempts by some in France
to seemingly wish to rehabilitate Maurass’ reputation, as
well as that of other interwar fascists and anti-Semites.
From Charles Maurras through the
collaborationist wartime Vichy and the Algérie Française eras,
reactionary thought has a long history in 20th-century
France. It was one of the mainstays of a current which
vigorously opposed the revolutionary and Republican
traditions.
Since the disaster of the Second World War,
in which the country collapsed under the Nazi offensive,
though, this reactionary strand has been on the defensive,
confined to the fringes of the extreme Right.
But is France forgetting this sordid past?
Charles Maurras was the organizer and
principal philosopher of Action Français,
a political movement that was anti-Semitic, monarchist, and
counter-revolutionary.
Vilifying the French Third Republic as run
by Jews, he espoused a “state anti-Semitism.” For Maurras, a
Jew could not have French nationality, and Jews could not
become civil servants, serve in the military, or become
justices. He even voiced death threats in 1936 against French
Premier Leon Blum, who was Jewish.
In 1940, he lauded the creation of the
wartime Nazi-allied Vichy government as a “divine surprise.”
After the war, Maurras was sentenced to life imprisonment and
died in 1952.
Despite this legacy, the French government
at first included his name in the 2018 edition of the National
Commemorations, an annual project to mark the anniversaries of
notable figures and events; Maurras was born in 1868. In the
text, he was described as an “emblematic and controversial
figure.”
There was swift, sharp fallout. Frédéric
Potier, head of the French government’s inter-ministerial
delegation against racism and anti-Semitism, berated the
Ministry of Culture for including Maurras in the commemoration
project.
“To commemorate is to pay homage,” he
wrote. “Maurras, an anti-Semitic author of the extreme right,
has no place in the national commemorations of 2018.”
Maurras was until the end of the Second
World War “the most prominent anti-Semite in France” and an
enemy of liberal democracy,” remarked Zeev Sternhell, an
emeritus professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who
is an expert on the history of French fascism.
Maurras was the intellectual leader of
French “hard nationalism” until the end of the Vichy
government, added Sternhell. “It was no accident that he had
been sentenced to life in prison.”
Françoise Nyssen, France’s Minister of
Culture, finally announced on Jan. 28 that the entire press
run of the 2018 commemorative books would be recalled and
reprinted without mention of Maurras.
Another recent scandal
concerned the author Louis-Ferdinand Céline. On Dec. 12,
Antoine Gallimard, head of the French publishing house
founded in 1919, received a letter from Potier, asking the
company to justify its decision to publish an edition of
three ferociously anti-Semitic pamphlets by him.
Bagatelles Pour un Massacre, L’école des Cadavers, and Les Beaux Draps, were written and released between 1937 and 1941;
they called for the murder of the country’s Jews,
even before France fell to the Nazis. They have
never since been reissued in France.
After the 1940 defeat, Céline became so
extreme that he attacked Vichy for its lack of rigor in its
pursuit of the Jews. He advocated killing every man, woman and
child with machine guns. Vichy did eventually deport more than
75,000 Jews to the Auschwitz death camp.
He fled France for Germany after the Allied
liberation and joined the remnants of the collaborationist
government in its last redoubt, Sigmaringen Castle
in Germany. He returned to France in 1951 when he was
amnestied and died ten years later.
Criticism of the decision
was swift and loud. When far-right writers, politicians, and
comedians are convicted in French courts for incitement to
hatred and anti-Semitism, they asked, why should Gallimard
be permitted to reissue anti-Semitic diatribes?
On Jan. 11, bowing to
public pressure, the publisher reversed its position and
suspended publication of the pamphlets.
The country is struggling to maintain and
protect its large Jewish population, the third largest in the
world, which has been dwindling precipitously thanks to the
wave of anti-Semitism that has gripped the country over the
past decade.
This is certainly no way to reassure them.
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