French Fascism, Both Right and Left: Reflections on the Sternhell Controversy

Abstract

In January 1983, Editions du Seuil published Zeev Sternhell's Ni droite, ni gauche.' Few books on European history in recent memory have caused such controversy and commotion. Assailed by irate critics in the pages of France's leading newspapers and reviews, denounced by those whose heroes (or friends) he had proclaimed to have suspect pasts, Sternhell was taken to court by one of his protagonists, Bertrand de Jouvenel, and found guilty of defamation. True, the presiding judge dismissed seven of the nine counts brought by the plaintiff; and the penalty imposed, from a financial point of view, was more symbolic than punitive. Furthermore, the judge took care not to require Sternhell's publisher to remove the offending passages from the present or any future editions of the work, a major defeat for Jouvenel. Still, the precedent was disturbing, and a message had been sent: clearly, those who write on twentieth-century French history should tread lightly and edit their manuscripts with a lawyer at their side, especially when writing about people alive or even dead whose heirs might be inclined to defend the impugned honor of their families. Historians of twentieth-century France take 2 warning. But why all the fuss and bother? To answer this question, one must put Sternhell's book into its proper context. Ni droite, ni gauche is the third volume in a trilogy whose subject is the development of fascist ideology in France. The first installment of the trilogy was a finely crafted study of the nationalism of Maurice Barres.3 If there was anything revisionist in this carefully documented