AN ENIGMA STILL Poujadism Fifty Years On

James G. Shields University of Warwick, England

The day began on a solemn note. The laying of a wreath at the war memorial and a ’s silence for the fallen of Saint-Céré, victims of conflicts from the trenches to Algeria. Red, white and blue carnations, laid by Pierre Poujade and his wife, Yvette. Flanking them, two mayors in their Republican sashes, sons of early-day poujadistes. A picture of respectful, patriotic commemoration. A group of some 40 people had gathered at the corner of the main square in Saint-Céré, alongside the gently flowing Cère and under a July sun already fierce at 9:30 in the morning. They were here (in “le berceau du Poujadisme,” as the invitation proclaimed) to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Union de Défense des Commerçants et Artisans (UDCA), the movement launched by Poujade on 23 July 1953.1 A vin d’honneur in the town hall and a ceremony conferring on Poujade the freedom of Saint-Céré, then to the salle des fêtes for the main business of the day. There, in the auditorium, reflections on the his- tory and meaning of “Poujadism” were offered by its eponymous founder and others, before proceedings were brought to a close with a buffet lunch courtesy of the office of the UDCA. Aged 82 and looking to settle his account with posterity, Poujade was in spirited form. Speaking for over an hour without notes, he rehearsed the ori- gins and some of the high points of his movement before an audience of around a hundred invited guests, arguing the historical significance and con- temporaneity of le poujadisme. He described the UDCA as “un mouvement de légitime défense,” “civique et patriotique.” “Jamais nous n’avons mis la République ou le régime en question,” he insisted. “Nous nous sommes battus pour la nation.” As for his role in the downfall of the Fourth Republic, he was keen to absolve himself of base political ambition. He was, he declared, “fab- riqué” by those whom he had risen up to defend, and his rejection of a min-

French Politics, Culture & Society, Vol. 22, No. 1, Spring 2004 “Poujadism Fifty Years On” but: An Enigma Still 37

isterial post under de Gaulle in 1958 attested his refusal to betray the purity of their cause by becoming a cog in “la mécanique de l’État.” This defensive reflex, this need to stress his own and his movement’s “pureté,” had nothing about it that was new. The term poujadisme carries still a sulfurous odor, even in this its old heartland, where some left-wing members of the council voiced indignation that the center-right mayor, Pierre Destic (UMP), should honor a movement commonly consigned to the extreme Right.2 As early as December 1955, François Mitterrand, who as Interior Min- ister had been a favored target of the Poujadists, found a tidy formula in clas- sifying the UDCA as “un fascisme d’arrière-boutique.”3 The caricature in L’Express of 9 January 1956 of its leader as “Poujadolf” hangs still over the movement five decades on.4

“S’unir ou disparaître”

Yet at its inception, Poujadism had no political bias whatever. It was a move- ment of spontaneous resistance by small shopkeepers and artisans against gov- ernment inspectors dispatched to eradicate tax fraud from the retail outlets of la profonde. Since 1940, small shops had proliferated in France, such that by 1954 there were some 1.3 million employing 2.24 million people.5 In the immediate postwar years, shopkeepers had calculated their profit margins on the security of rationing, a healthy (for them) inflation rate, and the facility of fraud in an archaic and arcane tax system. By 1953, all of these advantages had been brought to an abrupt end. Derestriction and improvements in transport loosened the bond between local dealers and their clientele; the rampant infla- tion of the years 1945-52 was arrested; and the Pinay, Mayer and Laniel gov- ernments (1952-54) adopted a more draconian approach to tax fraud. Set up to offer protection against the “Gestapo fiscale,” the nascent Pou- jadist movement soon took on a more general mission of resistance to eco- nomic concentration and the effects of industrial expansion under the Fourth Republic. “Nous défendrons la structure traditionnelle de l’économie française,” it declared baldly. “Nous sommes contre la reconversion.”6 In this, Poujadism was the expression par excellence of the “stalemate society” that had character- ized France throughout its modern history and, as Stanley Hoffmann has argued, sought to preserve essentially preindustrial values and attitudes against the onset of industrialization.7 It brought together people of all politi- cal hues, allied in their socio-economic interests and their grievances against a remote state apparatus bent on economic modernization. The growth of towns and rural depopulation accentuated the perceived destruction of a traditional way of life and the livelihoods that depended on it. In 1946, the agricultural sector accommodated almost a third of the French workforce; by 1954, the proportion had dropped to just over a quarter.8 Pou- jadism united in common cause small farmers, peasants, winegrowers and 38 James G. Shields

bouilleurs de cru with the shopkeepers, artisans, café owners, and small entre- preneurs who formed the core of the UDCA’s support. Poujade himself was a stationer who had won election the previous year to the municipal council of Saint-Céré on a Gaullist (RPF) ticket. A natural demagogue, he found himself at the head of a protest movement that spread rapidly from the Lot to other departments in the south (Corrèze, Cantal, Aveyron) and then other regions in the west and southeast (Pays de la Loire, Poitou-Charentes, Languedoc, Rhône- Alpes, Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur). It articulated fears over new modes of commercial distribution, in particular the threat to the small producer and vendor posed by larger units, of which the supermarket was the diabolic specter.9 In 1953, there was not a single supermarket in France; but in the changes that were already transforming retail in the United States, the Pou- jadists read the future.10 In apocalyptic language, Poujade called on petits com- merçants to “s’unir ou disparaître.” With the Gallic cock as its emblem, Poujadism styled itself the first antiglobalization movement in postwar France, defending “la France du ‘cocorico’” against “la France du ‘cocacola.’”11 It turned its hostility against “l’État vampire” and its agents, against high finance, big business, big industry, multinational corporations, banks, techno- crats, and politicians—or, as a Poujadist poster screamed, “les trusts apatrides,” “les trusts électoraux,” “le gang des exploiteurs,” “le gang des charognards,” “l’exploitation de l’homme par l’homme.”12 The double use here of the terms “trust” and “gang,” while indicating something of the raw force of Poujadist rhetoric, summed up the essence of this revolt by small independents against the collectivity in all its menacing forms, against a Système poised to crush them. The earliest weapon in the Pou- jadists’ armory was the physical obstruction of tax inspectors, effected by the simple means of massing outside the designated premises and making it impossible for the auditors to gain access; their earliest demands were an end to tax audits, reform of the tax system, and the calling of an Estates-General to determine “ce que veulent les Français” and channel “la volonté démocra- tique.”13 With its resonance of Rousseau, this remained throughout the pro- posal that the Poujadists pressed hardest. Delegations from the town, canton and department would compile cahiers de doléances listing the grievances of society; these would be collated by a representative assembly that would pre- sent the government with a comprehensive synthesis of popular demands.14 To the extent that Poujadism had a “philosophy,” it was to be found here, in this rudimentary concept of direct democracy. Representing the three orders of nobility, clergy and Third Estate, the Estates-General in Old Regime France had not met since 1614 when it was convoked on the eve of the Rev- olution. For all its impracticability, the call for an Estates-General in the mid- 1950s evoked the defense of les petits against les gros, the provincial against the strong centralized state, and drew on a French popular mythology bound up with the Revolution of 1789. As a political institution, it was woefully inadequate; as a symbol, it carried a powerful emotive appeal to a “peuple “Poujadism Fifty Years On” but: An Enigma Still 39

souverain” invited by Poujade to breathe again the “souffle généreux, sacré, de ‘89.”15

“Sortez les Sortants!”

Within two years of its launch, the UDCA had gained substantial representa- tion on professional bodies such as the Chambres de Commerce et d’Industrie and the Chambres des Métiers. It had organizational structures in most depart- ments of France and in Algeria, had established a cadre school, claimed a membership of over 350,000, and ran newspapers (monthly, weekly, then daily) with subscriptions that would reportedly reach 435,000.16 The proceeds were used in part to buy back and return to tax offenders property confiscated and sold at auction. A series of rallies attracted huge crowds, most notably at the Porte de Versailles in Paris in January 1955, where over 100,000 support- ers from across France heard Poujade call for “l’égalité entre commerçants et artisans et les autres classes de la nation”—in concrete terms, an end to tax concessions for larger concerns, equal social security rights with the rising class of urban salariés, and an amnesty for those charged, under emergency legislation, with obstructing tax audits. To bring this about, he urged a tax strike and the withdrawal of savings from state banks. “Si le législateur ne change pas la loi,” thundered Poujade, “nous changerons le législateur.”17 The opportunity to do just that came in the legislative elections of Janu- ary 1956. To universal surprise, the makeshift Poujadist party, Union et Fra- ternité Française (UFF), won 11.6 percent of votes cast (almost 2.5 million) and 52 seats in the National Assembly. Though an overnight sensation as a political party, the Poujadists had effectively been campaigning for some two years already, claiming in total 2,785 public meetings.18 Their electioneering was rowdy, marked by verbal intemperance and at times by violent clashes with the riot police and political opponents, whose meetings they specialized in wrecking.19 Their profession de foi opened with the words “Françaises et Français, nous vomissons la politique” and called for “les pourris, les lâches et les traîtres” to be voted out.20 The political instability of the Fourth Repub- lic—with twelve government crises and 23 prime ministers in eleven years— provided fertile ground for a populist movement trading on antisystem rhetoric.21 With their slogan “Sortez les sortants!,” the Poujadists caught the public mood, as a poll published in L’Express showed two-thirds of respon- dents dissatisfied with the outgoing Assembly.22 Poujade urged his deputies— or “délégués,” as he preferred—to think of themselves as a commando unit dropped behind enemy lines not to capture their objective but to destroy it.23 Their mission was to clear the way for the Estates-General; once that had been achieved, they would resign.24 Compounding melodrama with farce, they even swore an oath to remain loyal or undergo “les châtiments réservés aux traîtres.”25 40 James G. Shields

With little political experience in their ranks and no program, the Pou- jadists proved inept parliamentary “commandos”—incapable, with few excep- tions, of making any meaningful mark on the workings of the National Assembly.26 Almost the entire group was composed of petits commerçants, arti- sans and small-scale entrepreneurs—“mes marchands de saucisson,” as Pou- jade called them.27 Their inaugural declaration projected a studied refusal to be part of “the system”: It contained a brief statement of principle without a sin- gle concrete proposal beyond the convocation of an Estates-General.28 Even the vexed issue of taxation, on which they had made much of their political capital, failed to elicit a contribution. When called before a parliamentary sub- committee on tax, Poujade declined to appear, delegating the task to two UDCA officials who, beyond the obbligato criticisms of the existing system, declared that they had no alternative system to propose and no comment on the fiscal reforms already proposed by other parliamentary groups.29 Reflecting in his recently published autobiography on his party’s most important inter- ventions in a legislature lasting some two and a half years, Poujade listed three: a bill calling for an Estates-General, a bill advocating energy from fuel crops to reduce dependence on petrol, and a vote against French participation in the Suez expedition.30 All three were lost causes. The Poujadist group of 52 was soon reduced to 41, with eleven deputies invalidated for electoral impropriety and summarily replaced by candidates whom they had defeated.31 The invalidations provoked turbulent scenes in the National Assembly, bringing Poujadist and Communist deputies to blows and making dramatic copy for the correspondent of the New York Herald Tribune: “Poujadists and Leftists Clash in Free-for-All At Assembly Rostrum. 4 Blanks Fired by Spectator. Deputies Throw Urns and Stools.”32 Defections and expul- sions would further reduce the Poujadist group to 30. Without tight party cohesion and leaderless in the Assembly (as a point of principle, Poujade had not run for election), the group fell victim to its lack of political purpose. Clashes with Poujade occurred first over Suez, then over Algeria, then, more damagingly, over the return of de Gaulle and the new Constitution in 1958.33 A derisory showing in the November 1958 legislative elections (where 163 Poujadist candidates polled just over 300,000 votes, under 1.5 percent) marked the disintegration of Poujadism as a national political movement that proved unable, in its personnel and its electorate, to withstand the gravitational pull of Gaullism. Of the Poujadist sortants, only two would win re-election, one as an Independent, the other as a Gaullist. As a socio-economic pressure group, the UDCA had also lost much of its momentum, with collapsing membership as government concessions and a resurgence of inflation largely removed the casus belli of the years 1953-56.34 “Poujadism Fifty Years On” but: An Enigma Still 41

A Problem of Definition

Why, then, do we remember this movement 50 years on, and why has the term poujadisme secured an enduring place in modern political usage? The answer lies partly in the representative value, at a critical moment in France’s industrial and economic development, of a movement that captured in dra- matic form the perennial tensions between tradition and modernity. It lies partly, too, in the cluster of powerful associations that cling still to the name, perpetuated by half a century of almost unremittingly negative commentary. “Poujadism” has become a shorthand term for obdurate and revolt against socio-economic change, summoned up to characterize the actions of groups as remote from one another as small businessmen, lorry dri- vers, farmers, hunters, and the José Bové show; it is also a term redolent of some of the worst political excesses, denounced by a host of commentators as anti-parliamentary, violent, demagogic, nationalistic, xenophobic, anti- Semitic, “fascist” in a word.35 Classic formulations of this view have been advanced by Georges Lavau, who saw in Poujadism the latest avatar of the antidemocratic, anti-Republican Right, and by Seymour Martin Lipset, for whom the movement’s “ideology was like that of the Nazis.”36 Lipset’s assertion is misleading on two counts. First, Poujadism had no “ideology” as such; it was a form of populist protest lacking any solid doctri- nal core and opportunistic in its exploitation of political issues and allies; this is one of the principal reasons why, in the end, it lost its bearings and col- lapsed. Second, if the social context in which Poujadism flowered resembled that which gave rise to Nazism, namely the radicalization of the lower middle classes threatened with proletarianization, the Poujadist movement itself bore no relation to the Nazi project and stood in opposition to the whole concep- tion of the state on which Nazism rested. Despite his early flirtations with the youth section of Doriot’s Parti populaire français (PPF) and Pétain’s Com- pagnons de France, Poujade escaped the occupied south to join the RAF, welcomed the Liberation, and evinced no sympathy for Nazism. A “vichysso- résistant,”37 he subscribed with equal vigor to “Travail, Famille, Patrie” and “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité.” In his writings and pronouncements, Poujade was less an exponent of authoritarian than of provincial republi- canism, less Jacobin than Girondin, with strong echoes of the radical philoso- pher Alain.38 That Poujadism displayed some superficially “fascist” features (providentialist leadership, anti-parliamentarism, corporatist leanings, increas- ing nationalism and xenophobia) or had some of the same declared enemies as Nazism provides no grounds for a sustainable comparison. Similarly, Lavau’s reading of Poujadism as antidemocratic is possible only if one ignores the explicitly avowed, and often repeated, commitment of Pou- jade and his movement to the Republic. For the antidemocratic Right stretch- ing back through Maurras to Déroulède’s , France had been betrayed by the Republic, seen as a vitiating foreign graft onto the French 42 James G. Shields

body politic; the real France was la Nation, not la République. According to Pou- jadism, it was the Republic and its great founding principles that had been betrayed by politicians, technocrats and assorted opportunists. The Republic was for Poujade the quintessentially French form of government—part of the very definition of la Nation—that must be recaptured from those who had confiscated it.39 His call was not for a new model of government but for a purer, more representative form of republicanism, a “retour aux principes de base de la République: au peuple.” Hence his critical distinction: “Peu importe si la IVe République disparaît, pourvu que nous sauvions la République.”40 It is a measure of the difficulty of assigning a political definition to Pou- jadism that the most sensitive analyses have proved most hesitant on this point. Noting the politically equivocal nature of Poujade’s movement in his masterly study of 1956, Hoffmann was unsure whether to locate it “dans le jacobinisme, l’antiparlementarisme xénophobe classique (de gauche ou de droite), ou aux limites du fascisme.”41 Another contemporary witness, Jean Touchard, discerned in Poujadism “moins un fascisme qu’une réserve pour le fascisme au cas où …”42 The suggestion—reiterated by the historian Pierre Milza43—that Poujadism was fascist in its potential takes no account of three crucial objections: its lack of any clear doctrine or program; its profoundly provincial, backward-looking defense of the status quo; and the fundamen- tally apolitical nature of much of its audience, who might rally for a time behind the cry for an Estates-General but whose relationship to the state, and to politics, was at its core one of indifference, suspicion or hostility.44 Philip Williams saw the 1956 election as one in which domestic affairs were eclipsed by the problem of the French Union, with voters more con- cerned about the crisis in Algeria than about issues such as purchasing power and wages.45 For the Poujadists, there was evidence that quite the opposite was true. Analysis of a postelection survey carried out in the first sector of the Seine concluded that the Poujadist vote was motivated solely by professional considerations: “On ne trouve absolument pas les thèmes nationalistes, l’idée de restaurer la grandeur de la France, la protestation contre l’abandon des colonies,” though these had been prominent themes in the Poujadist cam- paign. Concerned above all by taxes and the threat to the petit commerçant, Poujadist voters in this survey exhibited “un mécontentement à l’état pur, qui ne porte pas sur une politique particulière et ne se prolonge pas dans le désir d’une politique de rechange.”46 In the hands of such voters, the Republic was safe. The whole mindset of Poujadism was based on aversion to risk and change, on the defense of static sectional interests. The Poujadists were capa- ble of protest, but not of revolution. As the theorist of French postwar fascism, Maurice Bardèche knew his subject. He refused to recognize in Poujade a fellow fascist, located the roots of the UDCA more in Marxism than in fascism, and classified Poujadism not as a political project at all but as a form of civic activism within the democratic framework. What marked Poujade for Bardèche was his lack of doctrinal con- “Poujadism Fifty Years On” but: An Enigma Still 43

viction, his “plasticité,” and “l’image naïve et enthousiaste qu’il se fait de la vraie République.” In leading a popular movement to address social and eco- nomic grievances, Bardèche argued, Poujade “ne combat pas la République, il la ramène à ses origines.”47

From One Extreme to Another

The lack of ideological conviction that Bardèche saw as a defining feature of Poujadism was borne out by the movement’s trajectory between its foundation in 1953 and the 1956 elections. At the outset, the UDCA could not be described as right-wing, much less as extreme-right. It attracted large numbers of left-wing adherents, especially Communists who saw in it a means to extend their sup- port among the lower middle classes. Poujade used the PCF to secure his mili- tant base, allowing the UDCA to fall under virtual Communist control in some areas.48 As Jean Touchard observed, the movement in its early stages was “incon- testablement de gauche,” with a strong Communist infiltration.49 Following Poujade’s vigorous espousal of Algérie française, the increasingly nationalistic tenor of his pronouncements, and his purge of Communist influence within the movement, the PCF passed from sympathy to acrimony. It denounced the UDCA leader as a descendant of La Rocque and Doriot and called for a new “Front populaire” to stem the rise of fascism.50 That the UDCA had launched a parallel “Union de Défense des Travailleurs Français” (UDTF) in a bid to increase its working-class support gave added point to the PCF’s opposition. The UDCA responded in kind to PCF vilification, adding cosaques to its list of designated enemies and defining itself much more sharply as a movement of the Right.51 More than that, in opposing capitalist and Communist “collec- tivism” with the same vehemence, the Poujadists occupied ground already well trodden by the extreme Right. Paradoxically, though they drew some Communist support to themselves, the Poujadists in 1956 favored the PCF by splitting the right-wing vote and amplifying Communist representation in the new National Assembly, where the PCF emerged as the largest party. The strength of the Poujadist vote also ensured the victory of a center-left “Front républicain” under the Socialist Guy Mollet, who succeeded the Radical as prime minister. Like nature, political opportunism abhors a vacuum. While the strong Communist element in the UDCA had initially kept extreme-right interest at bay, a Poujadism vacated of its Communist cadres attracted the attentions of those keen to exploit it to other ends. The influence became increasingly felt in the Poujadist press of former collaborationist journalists such as Serge Jean- neret, Camille Fégy and Claude Jeantet, while the arrival of Jean-Marie Le Pen and Jean-Maurice Demarquet brought a younger generation of strident nation- alists on board. Le Pen and Demarquet were fresh from tours of duty as vol- unteers in Indochina. Together with the former police commissioner, Jean 44 James G. Shields

Dides, they were assumed into the UFF to give it more political definition— “un morceau du drapeau tricolore sur leur tiroir-caisse,” as Le Pen would wryly put it.52 Having been introduced to Poujade as late as November 1955, Le Pen found himself, at 27, the youngest deputy in the National Assembly. As a forceful public speaker, he had distinguished himself on the campaign trail, taking charge of the movement’s youth wing, the Union de Défense de la Jeunesse Française (UDJF). Paris Match of 14 January 1956 published the photo of a young “Jean Le Pen, étudiant en droit” above a caption dubbing him the “avant-garde du poujadisme.” He, Demarquet and Dides were the most radical exponents of militant nationalism and anti-Communism within the Poujadist parliamentary group. Using Poujadism as a convenient vehicle only, they proved unruly recruits and would be promptly expelled.

“Vous qui étiez soldat à Verdun …”

While condemnation of “sociétés anonymes” and “groupements financiers” suggested from the outset a coded anti-Semitism,53 this became a more marked feature of Poujadist discourse under the eight-month premiership of the Rad- ical Pierre Mendès-France, who succeeded Joseph Laniel in June 1954 follow- ing the military disaster of Dien Bien Phu. As the perceived embodiment of the career politician, a committed modernizer and advocate of economic ratio- nalization, a campaigner against alcohol, the prime minister who oversaw the withdrawal from Indochina, and a Jew, Mendès-France represented for his Poujadist detractors a one-man conspiracy, capable of single-handedly bring- ing about the fall of France. The attacks on Mendès-France recalled those on another Jewish prime minister, Léon Blum, in the 1930s, and are among the most incriminating of the utterances recorded in the name of Poujadism.54 The form that they took warrants brief consideration. Poujade’s hostility to Mendès-France and “certains ministres israélites” drew not on the pseudo-scientific racism that had found an outlet under Vichy, but on two other long-established strains of French anti-Semitism. The first was an economic anti-Semitism nurtured over the previous century by Right and Left alike and advanced by none other than Jean Jaurès in his asso- ciation of “la race juive” with “le mécanisme capitaliste, mécanisme de rapine, de mensonge, de corruption et d’extorsion.”55 For Poujade, a Manichaean divide separated “le capital financier apatride” from the honest, impoverished Frenchman “qui a du sang paysan dans les veines et de la vraie terre de France à ses souliers.” The former was a force operating beyond and against the national community in the sole interest of “le veau d’or”; the latter was the very personification of that community, with “sang paysan” marking a socio- economic rather than a racial distinction. 56 The notion of community was crucial to the other, assimilationist strain of anti-Semitism from which Poujadism also drew. This propagated the myth “Poujadism Fifty Years On” but: An Enigma Still 45

that the Jew, by resisting integration within the national community, perpe- trated a form of discrimination against the French.57 , notably, had used this argument to denounce the influence of Jews in France and to justify the removal of French nationality from them—“alors qu’ils en ont une et indélébile, et qu’ils gardent toujours en fait. Qu’elle leur suffise donc!”58 Le Pen today uses a variant of this same idea in his defense of the Front National’s discriminatory policies and his denunciation of “le racisme anti-français.”59 In the chapter devoted to Mendès-France in Poujade’s book, J’ai choisi le combat (1955), it was not the former prime minister’s Jewish origins that were principally at issue but his alleged anti-Frenchness. By an argument that saw the petit commerçant as the epitome of Frenchness, the enemy of the shop- keeper became the enemy of France. More than with any other public figure, the conspiracy to destroy this “patrimoine national”—to replace a “bon pain blanc” with “pain sous cellophane”—was associated with the progressivist Mendès-France, who compounded his guilt in Poujadist eyes by toughening the law against the obstruction of tax inspectors. When as prime minister he added insult to injury by publicly preferring milk to wine, his status as hostile outsider was sealed. He could not have “une goutte de sang gaulois dans les veines,” charged Poujade, to be so inimical to the interests of France.60 The dangers in such language, ten years on from Vichy, need hardly be remarked upon. What distinguished Poujade from proponents of anti-Semi- tism under Vichy, however, was that he did not draw his terms of reference from a closed conception of race. Within a French assimilationist perspective, the boundaries for Poujade were national and cultural rather than racial. His notion of French identity had its roots firmly planted in the soil, and its vital nutrients were collective toil, suffering and memory. The romanticized idea of a Gallic fiber to be attained through shared endeavor and adversity underlay much of Poujade’s discourse, which stressed the openness rather than the exclusiveness of French identity. In an article in the monthly L’Union in July 1954, Poujade responded trenchantly to the charges of racism laid against him: “Oui, il y a place, chez nous, pour tous ceux qui veulent vivre en travail- lant et gagner, petit à petit, le droit de cité. Non, nous ne serons pas les jouets d’une armée de métèques parasites qui campent sur notre sol et qui, avant d’avoir souffert, parlent de nous dicter la loi.”61 This is at once a crude example of the linguistic excess of Poujadism and an indication of what Roland Barthes saw as Poujade’s paradoxical conception of race, his “racisme du mélange.”62 In the same article, Poujade described himself as “le fruit des mélanges qui ont fait la France,” dismissed racism as a retrograde delusion, and insisted: “Seul compte le droit acquis au cours de générations par le travail, le sacrifice et parfois le sang.” This emphasis on time and service as a rite of passage to Frenchness was crucial. The UDCA did not bar those of foreign descent from sitting on its administrative council; but it insisted they be at least third-generation French.63 Appealing to a rural France where local interests were paramount, Poujadism incited suspicion towards 46 James G. Shields

“étrangers,” “métèques,” “Français de fraîche date,” and newly arrived outsiders, or “parachutés,” who had not yet made the required investment of themselves in the community.64 In an open letter to , then Minister of For- eign Affairs, in August 1955, Poujade made a telling reference: “Qu’un para- chuté serve les intérêts de l’étranger, cela ne se pardonne pas, mais cela peut se comprendre. Mais, vous, Monsieur Pinay, vous qui étiez soldat à Verdun …” The obverse of this appeal to an ancien poilu was the charge frequently leveled at Mendès-France: “Nos pères, qui allaient au bistrot, étaient à Verdun et Mendès n’y était pas.”65

A Prudent Subversive

The first national congress of the UDCA, held in in November 1954 fol- lowing the start of the Algerian rebellion, marked a critical point in the move- ment’s evolution. Married to a pied-noir and with wide support among both the European and Arab communities in Algeria, Poujade turned his movement increasingly to the defense of Algérie française. The UDCA now assumed a polit- ical vocation that sat ill with its original, socio-economic raison d’être.66 As the Fourth Republic hung in the balance, the tractations between Gaullists and Poujadists suggested a political future for Poujade. Was he, as he claimed, offered a choice between the Ministry of Commerce and Industry and that of Agriculture?—only to refuse to serve “dans un gouvernement où je n’aurais que le droit de dire ‘oui, mon général’.”67 If so, there may have been prescience in his refusal, since de Gaulle presided over precisely those developments (industrial- ization, economic modernization, commercial concentration, the end of Algérie française) against which the Poujadists had campaigned so vigorously.68 As the situation in Algeria grew more desperate, Poujade became increas- ingly involved with pied-noir and army extremists. His allies of convenience at home, too, were distinctly hard-line—prominent among them the Peasant Party leader, Paul Antier, and the former Green Shirts leader and member of Vichy’s Peasant Corporation, Henri Dorgères (“le Führer vert”). The evidence is, however, that such allies were always “of convenience” for Poujade. Useful initially as a counterweight to Communist influence, his relations with Dorgères were circumspect, grudging and shortlived.69 When Le Pen, Demar- quet and Dides sought to exploit the Poujadist parliamentary group for their own ends, they were expelled. Poujade also broke with the hard-boiled peas- ants’ leader, Léon Dupont, and the wealthy Algiers ultra, Paul Chevallet, founding director of the UDCA newspaper, Fraternité Française. To other nota- bles of the extreme Right, such as Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour, he was more averse still. If Le Pen’s private description of the Poujadists was “ces connards qui vont sauver la France,” Poujade’s assessment of the nationalist milieux to which Le Pen gravitated was “nostalgiques de Vichy,” “zozos d’extrême droite, toujours à l’affût et en attente d’une prise de pouvoir providentielle.”70 “Poujadism Fifty Years On” but: An Enigma Still 47

As resistant to noyautage from the Right as from the Left, as Philip Williams noted, Poujade “turned on his extreme fascist associates as he had previously ousted the Communists.”71 In all of his dealings with extremist ele- ments, the UDCA leader claimed (and appeared) to retain a strong constitu- tionalist impulse that kept him and his movement on the right side of legality. Coups d’état were clearly not on Poujade’s agenda.72 Writing in 1972, the extreme-right historian François Duprat offered a notable corrective to the view of Poujade as an Algérie française jusqu’au-boutiste: “Contrairement à tout ce qui a été écrit sur ce sujet jusqu’à présent, il est certain que les chefs UDCA d’Alger (Goutailler et Ortiz) menèrent les émeutes du 6 février contre le vœu de Poujade. Ce dernier, pendant des mois, freine ses partisans d’Algérie. A Paris, il se heurte violemment avec les partisans de l’Algérie Française de l’UFF: Le Pen, Dides, Demarquet.”73 This same prudence was manifest in Poujade’s refusal to deploy his mili- tants in seriously subversive activity. Though a number of prominent Poujadists were at the center of the Algiers coup of 13 May 1958, Poujade appeared to take a much more circumspect view of what the violent seizure of power could achieve and the grave risks attached to it.74 Hence his refusal, at critical moments in the Algerian drama, to have his militants undertake direct action such as the invasion of préfectures.75 Having conspired with Generals Salan, Zeller and others in the run-up to the “putsch” of April 1961, Poujade withdrew at the last moment from providing the expected support. Part of the operation, he recalled, was to have been to equip the UDCA’s twelve thousand-strong secu- rity service with uniforms and light arms from the Tarn-et-Garonne paratroop barracks, to give a frightened French population the impression that an armed invasion of France had already taken place.76 Poujade maintained that he avoided a bloodbath in France by not placing his movement at the service of the OAS (Organisation de l’Armée Secrète)—thus earning the dubious distinction of being targeted by the FLN (Front de Libération Nationale) and OAS both.77

More “ennemis” than “frères”: Poujade and Le Pen

Of his first meeting with Le Pen, Poujade was fond of saying that he would have done better that day to have broken a leg.78 Le Pen spent less than a year under Poujadist colors before effectively quitting the movement in September 1956, then being formally expelled after calling for a vote against Poujade in a parliamentary by-election in January 1957. He belongs to what Milza terms the “poujadisme politisé de la seconde génération,” harboring neo-fascist lean- ings and a political project remote from the original objectives of the UDCA.79 Between Poujade and Le Pen there was no real meeting of minds but a rela- tionship of mutual advantage—for a time. The bitter rift between the two sug- gests reasons why Le Pen is to be classed squarely on the extreme Right while Poujade remains, as ever, more problematic. 48 James G. Shields

Fundamentally, their politics—and their attitude to politics—were quite different. As a Poujadist deputy, Le Pen retained his links with ultra-national- ist political circles and saw Poujadism as a convenient bandwagon. His belief in the primacy of politics—in the Maurrassian maxim: politique d’abord— found no echo in a Poujade who entered national politics reluctantly and continued to argue that the real strength of his movement lay in its apoliti- cism.80 At the Poujadist congress held two weeks after the January 1956 elec- tions, Poujade stressed the need to keep faith with the UDCA’s professional mission. “Pour rester dans le vrai,” the Poujadists would pursue their activities through professional bodies like chambers of commerce. “La politique,” he declared, “ce n’est pas le vrai.”81 For Le Pen, by contrast, there was no question of anything short of full political engagement. He sought from the outset to politicize his role and to open the Poujadist parliamentary group to ultra-nationalists like Tixier-Vig- nancour. For this reason, Poujade would soon come to see Le Pen as a “cheval de Troie” within the Poujadist ranks.82 Reports compiled by the U.S. Embassy in Paris between 1956 and 1959 (and released in 1997) portrayed Le Pen as a dangerous nationalist and virulent anti-Communist haunted by the humilia- tions of Indochina and Suez and committed to the retention of French Alge- ria. Recording his authoritarian temper and contempt for parliamentary democracy, documents filed on Le Pen by American intelligence in this period divined a political ambition to bring about in France a totalitarian regime on the model of German National-Socialism.83 By 1956, there were two distinct strains of Poujadism, the professional and the political. When these came into conflict over proposed tax increases to finance an escalation of the military campaign in Algeria, it is significant that the professional strain prevailed: Poujade instructed his parliamentary group to vote against the tax rise, despite their strong defense of French Alge- ria—and despite a reportedly furious Le Pen. This pointed up the contradic- tions inherent in Poujadism as a political project. While Le Pen called in the National Assembly for an all-out war in Algeria, Poujade argued against a mil- itary escalation that would violate constitutional principles.84 This failure to carry his radicalism through to conclusion would figure prominently on Le Pen’s charge sheet against his former mentor, who, he ventures, should have filled the power vacuum instead of de Gaulle in 1958. “Mais alors qu’il devait assumer certaines responsabilités, il a fui son destin national. […] L’idée d’être au pouvoir l’effrayait, il ne se sentait pas à la hauteur de sa destinée. […] C’est pourquoi j’ai décidé de ne plus me battre pour cet homme providentiel qui fuyait la providence.”85 Despite this withering judgment, Le Pen would emerge from Poujade’s tutelage with valuable and enduring experience. He had discovered his talents as a speaker both on the electoral hustings and in the National Assembly and would deploy these again in winning re-election in November 1958 under the umbrella of the Centre National des Indépendants et Paysans (CNIP). Of “Poujadism Fifty Years On” but: An Enigma Still 49

longer-term significance were the early lessons learned in the management of a mass movement. Some of the methods used by Le Pen as leader of the Front National are directly derived from his Poujadist experience, such as the orga- nization of parallel associations targeting different socio-professional groups, the “caravan” approach to campaigning around the country,86 the setting up of a cadre school, and the collections in meetings (which the FN would con- vert into a set entrance fee, deposited, as with the Poujadists, in a tricolor). Important lessons in political marketing too were learned, such as the power of personal image in the mobilization of political support, and the use of gad- gets and memorabilia. The audio-cassettes and videos distributed by the FN recall Poujade’s early use of gramophone records and films as a novel way of putting his message across. The 1956 election campaign allowed the young Le Pen to develop a form of improvised oratory to which he would remain attached, mixing invective with crude humor. A rare insight into the future FN leader as a Poujadist can- didate is provided by notes preserved from an electoral meeting held in Paris on 21 December 1955. These show Le Pen outdoing the other speakers in verbal violence, calling for the outgoing deputies to be greeted not by a hail of toma- toes but by Thompson sub-machine guns and hangman’s ropes (cut short, he stressed, in order to economize).87 The anti-Semitic insinuation that would remain a feature of Le Pen’s discourse likewise bears the mark of his Poujadist apprenticeship. The Journal Officiel of February 1958 records a scathing personal attack on Mendès-France before the National Assembly: “Vous n’ignorez pas que vous cristallisez sur votre personnage un certain nombre de répulsions patriotiques et presque physiques!”88 Le Pen’s method of denying anti-Semitic intent has changed little over time. In a joint interview with Poujade in Febru- ary 1956, we find him protesting in familiar terms: “L’antisémitisme est une casserole que les ennemis de l’UDCA attachent à sa queue dans l’espoir de la perdre.” We also find in the same interview the somewhat less familiar remark, from an era of surplus employment: “Nous reconnaissons à tout le monde le droit de venir travailler chez nous. Encore faut-il administrer la preuve non équivoque d’un véritable attachement à la patrie française.”89 Le Pen keeps faith with his early Poujadism in his disqualification of gov- erning elites (la bande des quatre), his imprecations against political corruption, his dogged opposition to globalization, European integration, immigration and all that threatens the Nation. Some of Le Pen’s favored slogans also have a Poujadist pedigree. It was Poujade, not Le Pen, who first claimed to say aloud what everyone thinks; Poujade, too, who first exploited the refrain (from the Provençal poet Frédéric Mistral) “J’aime mon village plus que ton village, j’aime ma province plus que ta province, j’aime la France plus que tout.”90 Poujadism would consolidate and widen Le Pen’s personal network, bringing him into contact with a number of figures who would, much later, play a prominent role in the FN.91 Though Le Pen and his party attract strong sup- port among petits commerçants and artisans, the FN electorate is drawn from a 50 James G. Shields

much wider socio-professional range than that of Poujadism. The reasons for voting UFF in 1956 bear little relation to those for supporting the FN today; the electoral map of Poujadism, too, bears little resemblance to that of the FN. While the strength of Poujadism lay mainly in the rural areas and small towns of the west, center and south (the “French desert”), with some penetration in the southeast, FN support is concentrated in the more urbanized and indus- trialized departments of the north, northeast and southeast.

The Other 45 Years …

The inauguration of the Fifth Republic by referendum in September 1958 and the electoral decimation of the Poujadists in November of that year marked the start of what Poujade called his “traversée du désert.”92 This lasted until 1965, when, in return for supporting de Gaulle in the run-off against Mitter- rand, he was appointed to the Conseil Économique et Social and made an advisor to the Pompidou governments on matters relating to small business. He continued in this role under Pompidou’s presidency, bringing his weight to bear on the 1973 Loi Royer restricting the development of hypermarkets. He was sidelined by Giscard d’Estaing, who saw Poujadism as a brake on the nec- essary modernization of the commercial sector, and who, Poujade charged, presided over a “véritable génocide” of shopkeepers, artisans and small busi- nessmen.93 As a result, Poujade made a final sortie into active politics, fielding an “Union de Défense Interprofessionnelle” list in the European elections of 1979, which won only 1.4 percent of the vote.94 In 1981, again in return for his support, Poujade was reinstated by François Mitterrand to the Conseil Économique et Social, a post he would retain under . As Interior and Justice Minister in the Mendès-France and Mollet governments, Mitterrand had communicated with the Poujadists through the batons of the riot police and the courts; in 1965 and 1974, Pou- jade had swung his support behind de Gaulle and Giscard against Mitterrand. Now, France’s first Socialist president appointed “Poujadolf” not only as an advisor on small business but as a special envoy, entrusted with missions to the Antilles and post-Ceaus¸escu Romania—the latter again a mission he would retain under Chirac. The relations between Poujade and the state had undergone a definitive conversion from opposition to co-operation. Mitterrand also gave support to what had by then become Poujade’s overriding interest: research into the use of vegetable products to produce bio-fuel and (harking back to a bill tabled by the Poujadist parliamentary group) reduce dependence on petrol. Through his Association Nationale pour l’Utilisation des Ressources Énergétiques Françaises (ANUREF), Poujade launched himself in the early 1980s on a new mission that consumed much of his energy thereafter and had more to do with arti- choke-growing than with politics.95 On his 100-hectare farm near Ville- “Poujadism Fifty Years On” but: An Enigma Still 51

franche-de-Rouergue (Aveyron), he discovered a belated vocation as a farmer, aubergiste and animator of experiments in energy fuel crops. His slogan: “Il n’y a pas de désert français mais seulement des Français qui désertent.”96 The loss of Saharan oil in 1962 wrankled even with this unreconstructed defender of . His recent writings ring with denunciations of “la maffia pétrolière anglo-américaine” and call for France to develop a serious program of energy renewal on its farms rather than in its refineries.97

The Final Curtain Call

What, then, should be the final verdict on the movement that celebrated its fiftieth anniversary on 20 July 2003? “Nous sommes inclassables,” declared Poujade of his parliamentary group in 1956.98 From the evidence assembled in the Salle des fêtes at Saint-Céré, the same might be said today. Gathered here were leading representatives of chambers of commerce and trade, retail unions, small business associations, and agricultural bodies; mayors, coun- cilors, a parliamentary deputy and senator, and former members of the Con- seil Économique et Social; several holders of the Ordre du Mérite and of the Légion d’Honneur. With the remote support of Jean-Pierre Raffarin, Alain Juppé, Michèle Alliot-Marie and others from the national political firmament, this was a reunion of la France d’en bas blessed from on high. It was one, too, which reconciled old divisions, as a former OAS activist and FN parliamentary deputy rubbed shoulders with a former Gaullist minister. This was “Poujadism” as history does not record it, and a far cry from the audiences that defined it in the 1950s. The only relics of those febrile days were the stall in the foyer selling a modest stock of books, postcards and mem- orabilia (focused exclusively on Poujade and the UDCA), two UFF tricolor pen- nants draped over chairs on the stage, and the banner, dusted down for the occasion, “J’aime mon village plus que ton village, j’aime ma province plus que ta province, j’aime la France plus que tout.” The speeches delivered from the stage reflected little of Poujadism as a political movement, concentrating rather on the professional mission of the UDCA and Poujade’s more recent interests in bio-fuel. Three main ideas rang out: that small business should continue to have its place in a France that has undergone massive commercial concentration since the 1950s; that research should be vigorously pursued into sources of renewable energy; that elected representatives must be held accountable, and if they fail to enact the will of the people, they should be removed. A faint whiff still, in this assembly of notables, of “Sortez les sortants!” Needless to say, Le Pen was not a guest; nor was his name mentioned at any point in the public proceedings. As for the other 51 Poujadist deputies from 1956, an enquiry brought the reply that they were all deceased. There is no little irony in the fact that Poujadism is most remembered for what it least celebrates today, a foray into national politics that diverted it from its original 52 James G. Shields

path and perverted much of its essential purpose. It projected onto the national consciousness for a time the plight of those most affected by economic and social change in a period of rapid modernization. It expressed nostalgia for an old provincial France built on the rock-solid virtues of the small family firm, giving a focus for unity and common purpose to socio-professional categories by definition isolated in their trades. It served then, and serves still, as a reminder to political mandarins that the state is not their privileged preserve. In this, Poujadism found echoes of late nineteenth-century American Pop- ulism, the revolt of small farms and workshops against corporate power and political vested interest that brought the People’s Party some isolated electoral successes in the 1890s. It evoked more strongly still the Uomo Qualunque (Com- mon Man) movement in postwar Italy, which had 36 deputies elected to the Italian parliament in 1946.99 Both were essentially anti-political movements that adopted a political guise for a time to vent popular frustration with the state and the high-handed rule of politicians over the people. In its political expression, Poujadism mobilized the classic binary oppo- sitions of : weak against strong, people against establishment, hon- est worker against financial power, simple against intellectual, provinces against capital, nation against hostile foreigner. By appropriating two deeply rooted French traditions, peasant resistance to taxation and opposition to the regime, Poujade drew legitimacy from the past and projected himself not as a new man but as the continuator of a long and noble history of Jacquerie.100 A syncretic fusion of diverse traditions and influences, Poujadism fits many categories partly, none fully. It remains as impervious to definition today as it was fifty years ago. As those present for this ritual encore drained their Cahors and set off back to Bordeaux, Paris and other corners of France, they brought the curtain down on one of the most intriguing movements in modern French history. Pierre Poujade died suddenly on 27 August 2003, some five weeks after celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of le poujadisme.

Notes

1. The UDCA was formally created by a Constituent Assembly held in Cahors on 29 November 1953, but the first action of defiance against tax auditors took place on 23 July. 2. Libération, 21 July 2003. 3. Le Monde, 13 December 1955. 4. See Poujade’s autobiography, L’Histoire sans masque (Cestas: Elytis Edition, 2003), pp. 65, 145. “Poujadism Fifty Years On” but: An Enigma Still 53

5. Jean-Pierre Rioux, La France de la Quatrième République, vol. 2 (Paris: Seuil, 1983), p. 79. 6. Quoted in Stanley Hoffmann, Le Mouvement Poujade (Paris: Armand Colin, 1956), p. 253. 7. See Hoffmann, “Protest in Modern France,” in The Revolution in World Politics, ed. Morton A. Kaplan (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1962), pp. 69-80; “Paradoxes of the French Political Community,” in In Search of France: The Economy, Society, and Political System in the Twentieth Century, Stanley Hoffmann et al. (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), pp. 3-12. 8. Roger Eatwell, “Poujadism and Neo-Poujadism: From Revolt to Reconciliation,” in Social Movements and Protest in France, ed. Philip G. Cerny (London: Pinter, 1982), p. 72. 9. See Poujade’s denunciation of a projected “expérience de super-marché en Corse,” J’ai choisi le combat (Saint-Céré: Société générale des éditions et des publications, 1955), p. 115. 10. Jean-Pierre Rioux, “La Révolte de Pierre Poujade,” L’Histoire 32 (1981), p. 12. In the mid-1950s, the ratio of shops to inhabitants in the United States was 1:91, com- pared with 1:62 in France (M.S. Lipsedge, “The Poujade Movement,” The Contem- porary Review, February 1956, p. 85). 11. Poujade, J’ai choisi le combat, p. 34; Rioux, “La Révolte de Pierre Poujade,” p. 14. 12. Reproduced in Hoffmann, Le Mouvement Poujade, p. 145. 13. Hoffmann, Le Mouvement Poujade, p. 230. 14. In correspondence with the author as late as August 2003, Poujade described the UDCA still as a channel for the expression of popular “doléances.” 15. Quoted in Hoffmann, Le Mouvement Poujade, p. 229. 16. Poujade, correspondence with the author, 15 August 2003; À l’heure de la colère (Paris: Albin Michel, 1977), p. 150; Jean Touchard, “Bibliographie et chronologie du Poujadisme,” Revue française de science politique (January-March 1956), p. 24. 17. Christian Guy, Le Cas Poujade (Givors: André Martel, 1955), pp. 34-35, 158, 160; Poujade, À l’heure de la colère, p. 148. 18. Hoffmann, Le Mouvement Poujade, p. 30; also Philip Williams, Crisis and Compro- mise: Politics in the Fourth Republic (London: Longmans, 1964), p. 164. 19. Philip Williams, French Politicians and Elections 1951-1969 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), pp. 46-47. 20. François Essig, “La campagne électorale dans l’Eure,” in Les Élections du 2 janvier 1956, ed. Maurice Duverger, François Goguel and Jean Touchard (Paris: Armand Colin, 1957), pp. 363-64; Williams, French Politicians and Elections, p. 44 n. 3. 21. See Williams, Crisis and Compromise, pp. 413-27. 22. Rioux, La France de la Quatrième République, vol. 2, p. 84. 23. Interview with the author, 18 April 1995; À l’heure de la colère, pp. 152-53, 163. 24. Tract reproduced in Hoffmann, Le Mouvement Poujade, p. 154. 25. Le Monde, 5 January 1956; also 21 December 1955. 26. See Jacques Isorni, Ainsi passent les républiques (Paris: Flammarion, 1959), p. 75; Hoffmann, Le Mouvement Poujade, pp. 161-62; Williams, Crisis and Compromise, p. 165 nn. 21-23. 27. Gilles Bresson and Christian Lionet, Le Pen: Biographie (Paris: Seuil, 1994), p. 136. 28. Dominique Borne, Petits bourgeois en révolte? Le Mouvement Poujade (Paris: Flam- marion, 1977), pp. 152-53. 29. Le Monde, 10 March 1956. 30. Poujade, L’Histoire sans masque, p. 86. 31. In order to appeal to specific sectors of the electorate, the Poujadists ran three lists: one for shopkeepers and artisans, one for small farmers, peasants and winegrowers, and one for consumers, incorporating salaried workers, liberal professionals and 54 James G. Shields

other groups less readily attracted to Poujadism. By forming alliances between these in certain constituencies, the Poujadists contravened the 1951 electoral law gov- erning alliances (or apparentements) between lists (Williams, Crisis and Compromise, pp. 507-8). 32. Frank Kelley, New York Herald Tribune, 16 February 1956. 33. See François Duprat, Les Mouvements d’extrême droite en France depuis 1944 (Paris: Albatros, 1972), pp. 76-79; Christian Poinsignon, “Le Mouvement Poujade,” in Par- tis, journaux et hommes politiques d’hier et d’aujourd’hui, ed. (Paris: Lectures françaises, 1960), p. 237; Malcolm Anderson, Conservative Politics in France (London: Allen and Unwin, 1974), p. 277; Bresson and Lionet, Le Pen, pp. 146-49. 34. Rioux, La France de la Quatrième République, vol. 2, pp. 79-80; Poujade, À l’heure de la colère, p. 224. 35. See James G. Shields, “The Poujadist Movement: A Faux ‘Fascism’,” Modern and Con- temporary France, 8, 1 (2000), pp. 19-34. 36. Georges Lavau, “Les classes moyennes et la politique,” in Partis politiques et classes sociales en France, ed. Maurice Duverger (Paris: Armand Colin, 1955), pp. 60, 76, 83- 84; Seymour Martin Lipset, Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics (London: Heine- mann, 1983), p. 157. 37. Nicolas Weill, “La mort de Pierre Poujade, précurseur d’un nouveau populisme,” Le Monde, 29 August 2003. 38. On Poujade’s kinship with Alain and the Girondin quality of Poujadism, see Hoff- mann, Le Mouvement Poujade, pp. 211-14, 228, 251-54, 387-90. 39. Poujade, J’ai choisi le combat, pp. 43, 111. See Poujade’s description of himself as “fier d’être français et républicain” (L’Histoire sans masque, p. 110). 40. Poujade, J’ai choisi le combat, p. 124; Hoffmann, Le Mouvement Poujade, p. 242. 41. Hoffmann, Le Mouvement Poujade, pp. 194, 225. 42. Touchard, “Bibliographie et chronologie du Poujadisme,” p. 43. 43. Pierre Milza, Fascisme français passé et présent (Paris: Flammarion, 1987), p. 308. 44. All three of these factors are perceptively explored by Hoffmann, who draws a par- allel between Poujadism and the “pure” Vichy of 1940-41 (Le Mouvement Poujade, pp. 251-54, 387-95). 45. Williams, French Politicians and Elections, p. 55. 46. Jean Stoetzel and Pierre Hassner, “Résultats d’un sondage dans le premier secteur de la Seine,” in Les Élections du 2 janvier 1956, ed. Duverger, Goguel and Touchard, pp. 226-27. 47. Maurice Bardèche, “Histoire du Mouvement Poujade,” Défense de l’ 33 (1956), pp. 3-27. 48. See Williams, Crisis and Compromise, p. 163; Guy, Le Cas Poujade, pp. 42-43; Jean Plumyène and Raymond Lasierra, Les Fascismes français 1923-1963 (Paris: Seuil, 1963), pp. 232-34; also Poujade, L’Histoire sans masque, pp. 49, 58. 49. Touchard, “Bibliographie et chronologie du Poujadisme,” p. 32. 50. Waldeck Rochet, “Le caractère fasciste du ‘mouvement’ poujadiste,” Les Cahiers du communisme (March 1956), pp. 194-211; Hoffmann, Le Mouvement Poujade, p. 354. 51. René Rémond, Les Droites en France (Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1982), p. 252. 52. Quoted in Bresson and Lionet, Le Pen, p. 123. 53. Tract reproduced in Hoffmann, Le Mouvement Poujade, p. 45. 54. See Pierre Birnbaum, Un mythe politique: “La République juive”. De Léon Blum à Pierre Mendès France (Paris: Fayard, 1988). 55. Quoted in Michel Winock, Nationalisme, antisémitisme et fascisme en France (Paris: Seuil, 1990), p. 202. 56. Plumyène and Lasierra, Les Fascismes français, pp. 233-34; Poujade, J’ai choisi le com- bat, pp. 116, 229. Poujade insisted that his movement defended with equal vigor “tous ces Israélites, qui, n’étant pas ministres, sont victimes du fisc, comme les autres.” “Poujadism Fifty Years On” but: An Enigma Still 55

57. See on this point Hoffmann, Le Mouvement Poujade, p. 226. 58. Charles Maurras, Votre bel aujourd’hui (Paris: Fayard, 1953), p. 458. 59. For two FN publications developing this line, see Jean-Yves Le Gallou, Le Racisme antifrançais (September 1988); and Jean-Pierre Cohen, Ni raciste, ni antisémite: Le Front National répond aux organisations juives qui le combattent injuste- ment (March 1997). 60. Poujade, J’ai choisi le combat, pp. 109-16. The chapter on Mendès-France is a near- delirious rant, peppered with accusations of “mensonge,” “trahison,” “connivence,” “lâcheté” and “escroquerie.” 61. See Poujade, J’ai choisi le combat, pp. 231-32. In an interview with the author in April 1995, Poujade dismissed the charge of anti-Semitism as a fabrication by uncomprehending Parisian commentators. 62. Roland Barthes, Mythologies (Paris: Seuil, 1957), p. 187. 63. Hoffmann, Le Mouvement Poujade, p. 225. “Moi, je préconise la méthode pratiquée en Suisse: Pour qu’un citoyen d’Helvétie puisse accéder à une fonction publique, on lui demande avant tout de prouver qu’il est Suisse depuis au moins trois généra- tions” (quoted in Guy, Le Cas Poujade, p. 80). 64. Poujade, J’ai choisi le combat, pp. 116, 119. Taxed with insulting Henri Ulver, “para- chuté au ministère de l’industrie,” Poujade replied: “Je ne m’en suis pas pris à un M. Ulver israélite, mais à un M. Ulver, Français de trop fraîche date, à mes yeux. Mon attitude aurait été la même à son égard s’il avait été un catholique ou un protestant venant des bords du même Danube, ou encore un Anglais, un Américain, un Scan- dinave” (Combat, 9 February 1956; Le Monde, 26 January 1955). 65. Quoted in Hoffmann, Le Mouvement Poujade, p. 227. 66. See Poujade, À l’heure de la colère, pp. 224-25. 67. Poujade, L’Histoire sans masque, pp. 148, 167; À l’heure de la colère, pp. 195, 212, 216- 19. Other accounts have it that Poujade was outmaneuvered by de Gaulle, who appeared to promise but failed to deliver Poujadist representation in his new gov- ernment. 68. James F. McMillan records the disappearance of some 108,000 petits commerçants and 18,000 artisans between 1962 and 1968 (Dreyfus to De Gaulle: Politics and Soci- ety in France 1898-1969 [London: Edward Arnold, 1985], p. 166). 69. After a brief alliance on rural interests and Algérie Française, the two would break definitively in March 1959. See Hoffmann, Le Mouvement Poujade, pp. 337-41; Plumyène and Lasierra, Les Fascismes français, pp. 234-37. 70. Bresson and Lionet, Le Pen, p. 131; Poujade, L’Histoire sans masque, p. 121; also À l’heure de la colère, p. 202. 71. Williams, Crisis and Compromise, p. 164. 72. See his reflections in L’Histoire sans masque, pp. 65, 128-33, 151. 73. Duprat, Les Mouvements d’extrême droite en France, p. 76. On 6 February 1956, while laying a wreath at the war memorial in Algiers, the new Socialist prime minister, Guy Mollet, was pelted with tomatoes by pieds-noirs enraged at his apparent readi- ness to broker a peace that threatened their privileges and the future of Algérie française. 74. See Poujade, À l’heure de la colère, pp. 208, 227-29; L’Histoire sans masque, pp. 128-33. 75. See John S. Ambler, The French Army in Politics 1945-1962 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1966), pp. 245, 267 n. 31; also Bresson and Lionet, Le Pen, pp. 146-47. 76. Poujade, L’Histoire sans masque, p. 132. 77. Poujade, A l’heure de la colère, pp. 196, 230; L’Histoire sans masque, p. 130. 78. Interview with the author, 18 April 1995; also Bresson and Lionet, Le Pen, p. 115. 56 James G. Shields

79. Milza, Fascisme français, p. 308. On Le Pen as an “ultrapoujadiste” and the fascistic tenor of his campaign, see Hoffmann, Le Mouvement Poujade, pp. 169, 282. 80. See the article “Notre apolitisme,” Le Monde, 29 December 1955. 81. Le Monde, 15-16 January 1956. See also on this point Hoffmann, Le Mouvement Pou- jade, pp. 234-35, 296-97. 82. Poujade, L’Histoire sans masque, p. 86. 83. See Vincent Jauvert, “Le Pen: ‘Un néofasciste dangereux et sans scrupule’,” Le Nou- vel Observateur, 3-9 April 1997. 84. Bresson and Lionet, Le Pen, p. 146; Hoffmann, Le Mouvement Poujade, p. 241; Le Monde, 10 March 1956. 85. Le Pen, Les Français d’abord (Paris: Carrère-Lafon, 1984), pp. 46-47. See also Bresson and Lionet, Le Pen, pp. 146-47; and for Poujade’s reflections, À l’heure de la colère, pp. 188, 214, 227-33. 86. Le Pen’s earliest use of this technique was the “Algérie Française caravan” with which he toured France in summer 1957. This was followed by the “T-V caravan” in support of Tixier-Vignancour’s 1965 presidential bid, Le Pen’s own “caravan” for the 1988 presidential election, and the FN’s anti-Maastricht “caravan” in 1992. 87. Reproduced in Hoffmann, Le Mouvement Poujade, pp. 184-85. 88. Quoted in Bresson and Lionet, Le Pen, p. 191. 89. Combat, 9 February 1956; Bresson and Lionet, Le Pen, p. 128. 90. Poujade, J’ai choisi le combat, pp. 132, 153, 234. Compare Le Pen’s “J’aime mieux mes filles que mes nièces, mes nièces que mes voisines, mes voisines que des incon- nus et les inconnus que des ennemis” (Winock, Nationalisme, antisémitisme et fas- cisme en France, p. 42). 91. Among them Pierre Durand, Alain Jamet, Dominique Chaboche, Jean-Pierre Reveau, André Dufraisse, and Jean-François Galvaire. 92. Poujade, À l’heure de la colère, pp. 224, 247. 93. Poujade, L’Histoire sans masque, pp. 180, 193. 94. Eatwell, “Poujadism and Neo-Poujadism,” p. 80. 95. See Poujade, L’Histoire sans masque, pp. 239-62. 96. Poujade, L’Histoire sans masque, p. 240. 97. Poujade, correspondence with the author, 24 January and 12 February 2003; L’His- toire sans masque, pp. 114-20, 239-62. 98. Poujade, À l’heure de la colère, p. 161. 99. Poujade embraced the parallel between his movement and l’Uomo Qualunque (L’Histoire sans masque, p. 295). 100. See Poujade, J’ai choisi le combat, p. 26; À l’heure de la colère, p. 171.