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François Mitterrand Click here for Full Issue of EIR Volume 8, Number 34, September 1, 1981 Part I: Europe's Monarchists Francois Mitterrand: an agent of the House of Orleans by Laurent Murawiec, European Economics Editor "Since the beginning, I had considered social affairs During the war, and again 20 years ago, his designs from a corporativist angle, which I held for a higher were frustrated by Charles de Gaulle. The self-defined mode of [social] organization. One had to specify that "social Christian" king in the wings, who relishes calling the point was to defend the French crafts, not to desire a for a "social monarchy," is still waiting for the crown. return to a retrogressive conception of the cor­ But with the election of Socialist Franrrois Mitterrand as porations .... Of course, Mussolini had established a president of France, he is more confident that his children new dialogue among the social partners and defined a will return to the throne. modern organization of labor; but the dialogue only served to conceal the predominance that the Fascist state The Hooded Ones intend to exert. .. I, to the contrary, was campaigning It is an unfortunate fact that it does not suffice to for decentralization, which, alone, would have been able cut off the head of a few oligarchs once, or even once in to encompass specific or local problems and bring them a while, to get rid of the oligarchic principle of govern­ remedies." ment. Even though France has been a republic in form The curious criticism of Mussolini's fascism cited for over a century, the accumulated wealth in land and above, which blames II Duce for his overly centralizing money, and in networks of loyalty and feodality that and statist proclivities, but defines a program in broad centuries have woven, do not unravel peacefully. Their agreement with Italian fascism, was written by an aging perennity is precisely what accounts for this paradoxical individual who attempted, three times in modern French assertion: Franrrois Mitterrand is and has been for more history, to launch a coup d'etat and recover for his family than 40 years a political asset of the French royalist the power and the throne they claim as their birthright. faction. This program for a fascism with a decentralized face is To prove this assertion, we will be returning to pre­ that of Henri, Count of Paris, scion of the Orleans family World War II France and the milieux in which Mitter­ which controlled and unleashed the Jacobin mob that rand started his political life; we will follow their stormed the Bastille and sent the cream of French scien­ deployments through the period of the war and the tists to the guillotine; it is the same family that ruled the Fourth Republic, and will then witness the conversion nation from 1830 to 1848 under King Louis"Philippe, of right-wing oligarchical political figures into left-wing and later in the century, controlled the racialist, xeno­ socialists, bringing us up to the recent French presiden­ phobic mobs of the Action Francaise of crazed race­ tial election. doctrinaire Charles Maurras. We must first return to France between the two Henri d'Orieans, who calls himself "Count of Paris," world wars; French republicans, who had ruled the tried to topple the Republic in 1934, and succeeded in nation from 1875 onwards, had set up an advanced instigating a bloodbath in the streets of Paris; he tried to educational system and presided over much industrial convince Nazi collaborator Marshal Petain to restore the development and some positive colonial expansion and monarchy and, that having failed, turned to British and had been hounded from power in a literal cold coup American intelligence services to the same end; and when d'etat in 1914. They would not return to power until the Fourth Republic collapsed in 1958, largely at the General de Gaulle entered Paris in 1944. behest of some of his political and military collaborators, France after World War I was dominated by a the Count was waiting for the crown of France to descend policy very much like that of Mrs. Thatcher, with an upon his august head. outrageously overvalued franc allowing Paris to rise as 42 International EIR September 1, 1981 © 1981 EIR News Service Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission strictly prohibited. a major international financial power center, but which sympathizers by the millions. No priest in a village stymied the domestic industrial economy. Unbridled would fail to read the Action Fran�aise newspaper every Malthusianism spilled from economic management into day. population affairs; France's population, net of external Not only aristocrats representing some of the oldest migrations, decreased between 1918 and 1939, by a and wealthiest noble families joined the Hooded Ones; large margin. top officers of the armed forces and military intelligence French oligarchs, who ruled through a kaleidoscopic did too, bringing along their subordinates. succession of short-lived parliamentary governments, Fran�ois Mitterrand, then a young man, was an had grandiose foreign designs. Their figureheads were intimate of Cagoule founder Deloncle, and of the whole the war marshals, such as the "Jackbooted Jesuit" family, which was no less fanatically devoted to the Marshal Foch, who prepared an invasion of the Soviet cause of civil war against the republic than the chief of Union and geared the French armed forces in this the Cagoule himself. In fact, one Mitterrand brother direction; or Gen. Maxime Weygand, who led the married into the Deloncles, and Mitterrand himself, a French army in Poland against Tukachevsky's. A few years later, was to become a professional employee "national" doctrine of geopolitics dictated that France of the Schueller business concern. should take control of much of Eastern and Balkan By the mid-1930s, the Orleans family had deter­ Europe, and fiercely oppose Britain as well as Germany. mined that they should start to organize for their return The infamous motto "Germany will pay" aptly symbol­ to the throne; by 1939, they had determined that the izes the fundamental outlook of those who were intent republic would be done away with, even at the price of on reviving the French Empire: consume existing military defeat, foreign invasion and occupation, and a wealth, parasitize the world as it is, and turn your back junior-partner role in Adolf Hitler's New European on production of new wealth. Order. The defeat, as the pretender said, was "the result France internally was slated to return to the mon­ of 60 years of Republic.... French people! It is time to archy, although the pretenders to the throne were rally around the monarchieal principle! Alone it will constrained by law to live in exile; the population was secure peace, order, justice, the continuity of actions not ready to accept such a restoration. and designs!" In July 1936, in a castle near Paris, a group of Royalist fanatic General Weygand, himself the ille­ collaborators of the Count of Paris and his father, the gitimate son of a Hapsburg and the deputy commander­ Duke of Guise, were convening in great secrecy to in-chief of the armed forces, made sure that 1940 could found a clandestine terrorist organization that became be nothing but a defeat. He opened Paris to the Nazis known as the Cagoule (the Hood). Benito Mussolini's by convincing a stunned government that had fled the secret intelligence services bankrolled it generously, and capital that a communist insurrection had taken over! provided very large amounts of weapons and military As Guderian's tanks rolled down the Champs-Elysees, equipment to a group set to exacerbate civil strife by Charles Maurras dubbed the tragedy of the collapse of means of a terrorist strategy of tension, and create the France "a divine surprise." Senile Marshal Petain was conditions of a civil war. granted di.ctatorial powers. The Orleans family was on The founders of the Cagoule were not aristocrats; its way back. The government in Vichy was populated noble families generally delegate such mundane tasks as with outright monarchist agents, or associated forces, murder and bombings to individuals much lower on the such as the "synarchist" Banque Worms. pecking order. Industrialist Eugene Schueller, a Roth­ Returning to France after his escape from a German schild business associate who devoted much of his POW camp, Mitterrand moved to take ajob in Vichy as fortune to plotting and scheming, and ideologue Eu­ junior official in the veterans' administration. His ef­ gene Deloncle, ran the Hooded Ones. They took "con­ forts in that job found reward when Vichy awarded him tracts" for murdering opponents of the Duce, planted with its highest medal, the Francisque, which he ob­ bombs at the homes and offices of right-wing individu­ tained through the personal guarantee of top Vichy als and organizations in the hopes of pinning the blame official Jeantet, Cagoule founder Deloncle's right-hand on the left, and trained a large membership in the crafts man. and skills of civil war. The Vichy regime faithfully collaborated with the The Hooded Ones very often had noble names in Nazis; at the same time, it kept channels of communi­ their membership. Dukes and counts and marquesses cation open with London and with Washington, whose abounded, who clearly had received the word that the ambassador, Admiral Leahy, spared no words of con­ Cagoule was bona fide in the eyes of the pretenders. tempt for General de Gaulle in his dispatches. And They had been drawn from the large pool of antirepub­ while the Vichy cabinet in the south (whose economics, lican ferment organized by monarchist ideologue Charl­ agriculture, justice, and industry ministers in particular, es Maurras, the Action Francaise, which numbered its were intimates of the Orleans monarchists) went on EIR September 1, 1981 International 43 Henri d'Orleans, the self-designated Corntede Paris, and Franfois Mitterrand.
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