Refuting claims made by several historians that the Croix de Feu/Parti social français were non-exclusionary, this article demonstrates the prevalence of anti-Semitism and xenophobia throughout the league's metropolitan and Algerian sections. CDF/PSF leadership and rank-and-file alike prioritized the notion of the enemy, and their plans for les exclus augured similar developments under the Vichy regime. Although less rabidly xenophobic than his colleagues, whose opinions variously promoted denaturalization and outright elimination, group leader Colonel Françaois de la Rocque was nonetheless prone to racist and exclusionary doctrine, arguing that foreign Jews and immigrants were the enemies of la patrie, and should necessarily be expunged from the new nation. The article describes the wide range of xenophobia present in group actions and discourse, while positioning the CDF/PSF within the broader context of French and Algerian society.
Search Results
Parasites from all Civilizations
The Croix de Feu/Parti Social Français Confronts French Jewry, 1931-1939
Samuel Kalman
In Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jun 2008
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 46–65 (20 total)
Interwar Fascism and the Franchise
Women's Suffrage and the Ligues
Daniella Sarnoff
This article addresses the fascist leagues' policies and philosophies regarding the political role of women, particularly the question of female suffrage. Unlike the parliamentary Right, which did not attempt to mobilize women until 1935, the fascist leagues envisioned women as key political players as early as 1924. Often invoking female work and sacrifice during the war, as well as women's supposedly superior moral aptitude, the leagues presented themselves as the forces that truly respected women's potential and importance in the state. To the leagues the domestic identities and concerns of women were not only compatible with fascist notions of politics, but rendered women potentially better fascists and citizens. Leaders of the organizations expected women to be wives and mothers, producing more children for France, while at the same time the leagues advocated that women engage in national politics and world affairs.
In Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jun 2008
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 112–133 (22 total)
Book Reviews
Alice L. Conklin Les Enfants de la colonie: Les métis de l’Empire français entre sujétion et citoyenneté by Emmanuelle Saada
Jason Earle Surrealism and the Art of Crime by Jonathan P. Eburne
Paul Jankowski Reconciling France against Democracy: The Croix de Feu and the Parti Social Français, 1927–1945 by Sean Kennedy
Jean-Philippe Mathy French Theory: How Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, & Co. Transformed the Intellectual Life of the United States by François Cusset
David Lepoutre La France a peur. Une histoire sociale de l'« insécurité » by Laurent Bonelli
In French Politics, Culture & Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jun 2010
- Article Type:
- Book Review
- Pages:
- 134–150 (17 total)
Book Reviews
Richard Ivan Jobs, Judith Surkis, Laura Lee Downs, Nimisha Barton, and Kimberly A. Arkin
from the center’s after-school and sports programs. The Croix de feu’s insistence on the politically neutral and “strictly social” nature of its “pénétration sociale” of poor and working-class neighborhoods foreshadows strikingly similar statements made
In French Politics, Culture & Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jun 2016
- Article Type:
- Book Review
- Pages:
- 131–150 (20 total)
From Insurrectional Socialism to French National Socialism
Gustave Hervé and the Great War
Michael B. Loughlin
Great War , 138–145. 89 Heuré, Gustave Hervé , 245. Heuré cited Lucien Juventy, Souvenirs et lettres, 1914–1918 , 109–110. 90 Heuré, Gustave Hervé , 246. 91 William Irvine, “Fascism in France and the Strange Case of the Croix de Feu,” Journal of
In Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques
- Published (Print):
- 01 Dec 2017
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 82–101 (20 total)
François Mitterrand and the Gray Zone of Vichy
Hugh McDonnell
Pétain's National Revolution at Vichy. He joined the Volontaires nationaux (the youth division of Colonel de la Roque's Croix de Feu), wrote articles for the very conservative L'Écho de Paris , and took part in rightist demonstrations against “ les
In French Politics, Culture & Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jun 2019
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 87–109 (23 total)