Centrist Fascism: The Jeunesses Patriotes

Abstract

On 6 February 1934, several anti-parliamentary leagues joined forces in Paris for a massive street demonstration protesting about the Stavisky scandal and a shift to the left in the French government. When demonstrators prepared to storm the Chamber of Deputies and 'throw the rascals out', fighting developed between the police (one of whom was killed and 1,664 injured) and the rioters (four killed and 655 injured). Only with great difficulty were the police able to defend the National Assembly from being attacked in what has been called 'the bloodiest encounter in the streets of Paris since the Commune of 1871'. The following day, Premier Daladier, anxious to head off further violence, resigned, and a more right-wing cabinet was formed. One of the most important leagues involved in the riots of 6 February was the Jeunesses Patriotes (JP), with some 90,000 members, 6,400 in Paris. The JP had its own paramilitary uniform and some 1,900 hard-core 'shock-troops', 400 of whom were university students, 'phalangeards' from the Latin Quarter. Its chain of command was military, its central committee all war veterans. The JP realized, however, that it could not rely on military means alone to come to power. Like other fascist movements of the period (such as Hitler's after the Munich putsch of 1923), it realized it needed to win mass support through effective propaganda. This essay is an examination of the nature of that propaganda and its fascist content. That the JP was in fact fascist has been disputed by some scholars who see it, the Croix de Feu, and other such leagues as more conservative than fascist and who require French movements to conform to German Nazism or Italian fascism in a variety of respects to qualify for the term. But as a European-wide