Défense de l'Occident
Défense de l’Occident (English: Defense of the West) was a neo-fascist journal published in France from 1952 to 1982.[1] It was the most important French far-right magazine of the immediate post-war,[2] and provided an important arena for the discussion of right-wing ideas and Holocaust denial texts.[3]
Overview
The magazine was established by Maurice Bardèche and Jean-Louis Tixier Vignancour in December 1952. Based in Paris, its original aim was to diffuse ideas of the neo-fascist European Social Movement in France.[3][4] Promoting historical negationism and anti-Zionism,[1] the magazine denounced the épuration period as the "revenge of the victors". In an article of November 1954, Défense de l’Occident refuted the idea of the extermination of the Jews during WWII, and in December 1955 proposed to relocate the state of Israel in Madagascar.[5] From the 1960s, the magazine developed a "proteiform negationism": rehabilitating the Vichy regime as "protector of the Jews", condemning the Nuremberg trials as a symbol of injustice, and denouncing Israel as a "land stolen from Arabs and billions [of reichmarks] taken from Germans through the blackmail of “Nazi war crimes” [quoted in text]".[5]
The managing editor was Jacques Poillot between 1952 and 1960.[6] Its contributors, mostly unpaid, included Marc Augier, Henry Coston, Paul Rassinier, or François d'Orcival.[7][8] Défense de l’Occident managed to survived over 30 years despite the limited audience due to the ideological consistency of its leader Maurice Bardèche and the journal's collaborators, as well as the thematic adaptions of the articles according to the historical context.[5]
References
- ^ a b Lebourg, Nicolas. "Neo-fascisme et nationalisme-révolutionnaire. 2. Etat-Nation-Europe". phdn.org. Retrieved 2019-08-31.
- ^ Camus, Jean-Yves; Monzat, René (1992). Les droites nationales et radicales en France: répertoire critique (in French). Presses Universitaires de Lyon. ISBN 9782729704162.
- ^ a b Barnes, Ian (2002-04-01). "I am a Fascist Writer: Maurice Bardèche–Ideologist and Defender of French Fascism". The European Legacy. 7 (2): 195–209. doi:10.1080/10848770220119659. ISSN 1084-8770.
- ^ David Clark Cabeen; Richard A. Brooks (1980). A critical bibliography of French literature. Syracuse University Press. p. 22. ISBN 978-0-8156-2205-5. Retrieved 14 November 2014.
- ^ a b c Igounet, Valérie (2009-10-01). Histoire du négationnisme en France (in French). Le Seuil. ISBN 9782021009538.
- ^ Alice Kaplan (20 November 2014). The Collaborator: The Trial and Execution of Robert Brasillach. University of Chicago Press. p. 220. ISBN 978-0-226-30874-6. Retrieved 20 November 2016.
- ^ Philippe Carrard, The French Who Fought for Hitler: Memories from the Outcasts, Cambridge University Press, 2010, p. 147 [1]
- ^ Charpier, Frédéric (2014-01-31). Génération Occident (in French). Le Seuil. ISBN 9782021157512.
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