Robert Soucy
Encyclopedia
Robert Soucy is an American historian
, specializing in French fascist movements between 1924 and 1939, French fascist intellectuals Maurice Barrès
and Pierre Drieu La Rochelle
, European fascism, twentieth century European intellectual history
, and Marcel Proust
's aesthetics of reading.
. His father was a fruit and vegetables peddler and his mother a former farm girl. Soucy graduated from Washburn University
in 1955, was a Fulbright scholar in Dijon
, France in 1956-57, received his M.A. from Kansas University in 1957 and was an Intelligence Officer
in the United States Air Force
1957-1960. He received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin in 1963, was an Instructor at Harvard University
1963-1964, an Assistant Professor at Kent State University
1964-65, and an Assistant and Full Professor at Oberlin College 1966-1998. He has served on the Editorial Board of the journal French Historical Studies
. He is a professor emeritus of History at Oberlin College.
and socialism
("neither right nor left"), that French fascist movements of the period were "marginal", and that Colonel François de La Rocque's Croix-de-Feu
/Parti Social Français
(CF/PSF) was too socially, economically and culturally conservative to be fascist. The importance of the CF/PSF to the debate over French fascism derives from the fact that CF/PSF was the largest political movement on the French Right in 1937 with a party membership greater than those of the French Communist
and Socialist parties combined.
Soucy acknowledges that some French fascist movements (such as Gaston Bergery's Front Commun and Marcel Déat
's "Neo-Socialists") were more left than right (if only for short periods). But he maintains that the largest French fascist movements of the interwar period—Georges Valois
' Faisceau
, Pierre Taittinger
's Jeunesses Patriotes, René Coty
's Solidarité française
, Jacques Doriot
's Parti Populaire Français
and La Rocque's CF/PSF—were strong defenders of social conservatism and upper class economic interests. Soucy contends that former leftists who joined these movements soon became ex-leftists, that the actual social-economic goals of these fascisms ran from conservative to reactionary (including Doriot's movement after 1937), that their major financial backers were from the business world (both Doriot and La Rocque received funds from the steel trust), and that—with the exception of Doriot's PPF before 1937—none of these movements had any significant working class support (while Doriot's shrank after he turned rightward in 1937).
Too many historians, Soucy argues, have taken the "socialist" rhetoric—or Orwellian
"double-talk"—of some of these movements at face value, ignoring how it was repeatedly contradicted by their specific positions on social, economic and political issues. For Soucy, these organizations were far more nationalist than socialist, as was also one of their precursors, the Cercle Proudhon
, which honored not the early "property is theft" Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
but the later much more socially conservative Proudhon.
Although Soucy points out the obvious—that not all French conservatives in the 1920s and 30's were attracted to fascism (especially members of the Alliance démocratique and the Parti démocratique populaire in the 1930s)—he regards the most successful French fascisms of the era, that is, those with the largest party memberships, as "variants" or "extensions" of social conservatism in crisis, movements that benefited from the right-wing backlash to the elections of the Cartel des Gauches
in 1924 and the Popular Front
in 1936. He contends that one of these variants was La Rocque's CF/PSF, a movement that had close to a million party members by 1937.
Soucy describes a number of characteristics that the CF/PSF shared with other European fascisms of the era and elaborates a similarly multi-faceted definition of fascism itself. Whereas some historians who consider upper class conservatives who supported fascism as "allies" or "accomplices" of fascism but not fascists themselves, Soucy objects that such "selective essentialism" spares traditional elites, but not those beneath them, from being regarded as fascists.
For Soucy, the differences between non-fascist authoritarian conservatives and fascist authoritarian conservatives were often more a matter of degree (which could increase when threatened by leftists) than of fixed or irreconcilable essences. Compared to non-fascist authoritarian conservatives, fascists had a greater hatred of "decadence", a greater desire to create large numbers of anti-decadent "new men", a greater appeal to the young (paramilitary "virility" was the ideal), and were more fiercely nationalistic. They also indulged in a more virulent demonology than many conservatives, blaming more harshly or "extremely" Communists, Socialists, freemasons, internationalists and (though not always) Jews for most of the nation's ills. Fascists had a greater taste for repressing "unpatriotic" souls. They were more willing to engage in paramilitary politics and sought to apply military values (discipline, obedience, anti-hedonism) to society at large. Whereas traditional conservatives were wary of even right-wing populism
, fascists were eager to mobilize the masses—but for socially reactionary not socially radical ends (Gustave Le Bon was a precursor here). In doing so, fascists echoed an ideal that traditional conservatives also promoted: that material differences between the upper and lower classes were unimportant compared to "spiritual" values and the unity of the nation. French fascists urged their followers to revive the "spirit of the trenches" of the First World War where workers and bourgeois, peasants and aristocrats fought side by side against the nation's enemies, including domestic enemies. Soucy believes that at various times La Rocque's movement displayed all of the above features.
Soucy maintains that in the 1930s the more that non-fascist authoritarian conservatives (and even many previously democratic conservatives) felt threatened by the political Left, the greater was their susceptibility to fascism. For French conservatives who chose a fascist alternative, no serious assault on the economic interests of traditional elites was required. A recurring theme in fascist writings from Valois, Taittinger and Coty to La Rocque, Marcel Bucard and Doriot—as well as from Mussolini to Hitler—was that class conflict (especially workers' strikes) should be replaced with nationalistic class conciliation (on conservative terms). In a number of cases during the Great Depression, differences between fascist and non-fascist conservatives gave way to "fusion"—with ideological interpenetration taking place in both directions as a result of common interest.
According to Soucy, when French fascist intellectuals like Robert Brasillach
and Pierre Drieu La Rochelle employed "anti-bourgeois" rhetoric, they were referring to "decadent" bourgeois (secular, liberal, democratic, hedonistic, soft-on-Marxism bourgeois), not "virile" bourgeois. After 1936, in response to the rise of the Popular Front, many previous French fascists and others who were counterrevolutionary, Catholic, traditionalist and reactionary crossed over to La Rocque's PSF. This was also true of some democratic conservatives who had previously viewed La Rocque with repugnance but who were now willing to overlook the many anti-democratic statements and paramilitary threats to overthrow the government that he had made before 1936. When the new Popular Front government banned the paramilitary CF in the summer of 1936, La Rocque replaced it with the PSF, claiming that he was now a political democrat (an alleged conversion that was quickly forgotten in 1941 when he became a strong supporter of the Vichy regime). To historians who claim that his democratic pronouncements between 1936 and 1939 prove that he was not fascist (and that those who supported him, including former members of the CF, believed this as well), Soucy notes that La Rocque was not the only European fascist of the era who chose to pursue a democratic path to power when a paramilitary coup was unrealistic. Hitler made the same calculation after the Munich putsch of 1923 and came to power "legally" a decade later.
Soucy emphasizes that the "fluidity" of fascist ideology and tactics defies historians who insist on imposing static taxonomies on "fascism in motion." A major example of such fluidity in Italian fascism occurred when Benito Mussolini, once a leading member of the Italian Socialist Party, turned sharply to the political Right after his national "syndicalist" Fascio suffered a huge defeat in the Italian elections of 1919. Soucy is also critical of definitions of fascism that require fascists—in order to be considered fascists—to behave before they came to power in as "totalitarian" a fashion as they had after they came to power (both Mussolini and Hitler had once been electoral politicians). For Soucy, too many historians have attempted to white-wash the CF/PSF by defining fascism in such an unhistorical way, taking at face value La Rocque's "democratic" rhetoric after the CF (at least its paramilitary formations) was outlawed in 1936.
Soucy disagrees as well with historians who claim that La Rocque was too "moderate" to be a fascist, that he believed in "republican legality", disapproved of political violence, was a political democrat, and was opposed to anti-Semitism. Soucy's rebuttal includes the following.. In 1935 La Rocque condemned moderates ["les modérés"] for falling prey to "compromise and hesitation" and called upon the French people to stand up against the threat of Communist revolution and "its sordid ally moderation." In 1941, La Rocque reminded his readers of the "many times" in the past that he had "condemned moderates", adding that "They are dainty persons. They are weak persons" ["Ce sont gens de mignardise. Ce sont gens de mollesse."]. In the winter of 1935-1936, La Rocque concluded that circumstances were not favorable for a paramilitary coup and chose to pursue an electoral path to power—despite telling his troops at the time that "even the idea of soliciting a vote nauseates me"). "Hitlerism", he reminded them "became a preponderant political force [in Germany] only on the day [in 1930] when…it achieved 107 seats in the Reichstag."
Soucy also points out that La Rocque was not opposed to all political violence. In 1933 La Rocque praised CF members who had engaged in "numerous" political assaults on pacifist conferences between 1931 and 1933 (leading one of them himself). In 1934 he commanded his troops in a "disciplined" way during the February 6 riots in Paris that led to the resignation of the democratically-elected Daladier government. In October 1936, three months after the creation of the "democratic" PSF, some 15,000 to 20,000 PSF activists violently contested a Communist rally in the Parc des Princes
(thirty police were injured in the melee). A month later, La Rocque described the violence of his followers at the Parc des Princes as a spontaneous "mass unprising" that had stopped the "rise to power of a Communist plot."
Nor, according to Soucy, was La Rocque always opposed to anti-Semitism. Although La Rocque did oppose biological anti-Semitism and defended "French" Jews, especially Jewish war veterans and right-wing Jews (the chief rabbi of Paris, Rabbi Kaplan, supported him for awhile), he indulged increasingly in cultural and political anti-Semitism after 1936, especially where Jewish immigrants and Popular Front Jews were concerned. In 1941 he wrote of "Jewish purulence" abetted by Freemason "conspiracies", and in 1941 he accused Jewish immigrants of having undermined the "morality" and "health" of the nation and—again along with the Freemasons—of having contributed to the "mortal vices" of France. In 1941 he exhorted Vichy officials to undertake with "a pitiless resolution" the "integral extirpation of contaminated elements" in French society.
Soucy also questions the argument that La Rocque's movement was not fascist because it was a form of "patriotic social Christianity", i.e. too nationalistic and too Catholic to be fascist. According to Soucy, the same description could be applied to the dominant faction in Mussolini
's Partito Nazionale Fascista
(PNF) after the signing of the concordat between Italian fascism and the Vatican
in 1929 (the Lateran Accords. Not only did the large influx of Catholics who poured into the PNF after 1929 leave their mark on subsequent fascist ideology in Italy, but Pope Pius XI
thanked Mussolini for implementing the "Social Catholicism" of the Church. Nor were all of the Duce's supporters aesthetic modernists. Historians who assume that fascism and Catholicism (particularly right-wing Catholicism) are as separate as oil and water ignore that during the 1930s there were many fusions of the two, including the existence of important Catholic Fascist movements in Spain, Portugal, Poland, Austria, Hungary, Croatia
, Bolivia
, Argentina
, Chile
and Brazil
. Soucy notes that there were also many Catholics who rejected native fascisms during the interwar period (for example, more Protestants than Catholics voted for Nazism in Germany in the July 1932 elections, 38% to 16%). However, Soucy contends that Catholics like Valois, Taittinger, Coty, Bucard and La Rocque were indeed spokesmen for fascism, for varieties of French fascism whose intellectual origins in France went back to the 1880s, to a fascist "tradition" that La Rocque and others echoed in many ways.
Finally, Soucy takes issue with the assumption that because La Rocque was highly nationalistic and strongly opposed to a German invasion of France in the 1930s he was not fascist. The American scholar points out that La Rocque was hardly the only European fascist of the era who was highly nationalistic. Most were, including Mussolini and Hitler, and none wanted their countries conquered by other nations, even fascist ones. This did not prevent La Rocque from writing in 1934 that the Duce was a "genius" and that "the admiration that Mussolini merited is incontestable."
Both in the 1930s and in 1941, La Rocque called upon France to engage in "continental solidarity" with (but not subjugation to) fascist Italy. In 1941, he also supported "continental collaboration" with Nazi Germany
—on the condition that France be treated as an equal partner. When he finally concluded in early 1942 that this was not going to happen (and the war had started to turn against the Germans), he formed his own Resistance
organization (he was not the only French fascist to join the Resistance) and was arrested by the Gestapo
. He spent the rest of the war in various German prisons. For Soucy, this only proves that he was highly nationalistic, not that he was opposed to French fascism.
) in History (1986): "For the past twenty years Robert Soucy, professor of history at Oberlin College, has studied French fascism. A number of articles and two important books: Fascism in France: the Case of Maurice Barrès (1972) and Fascist Intellectual: Drieu La Rochelle (1979), precede this latest study [French Fascism: the First Wave (1986)]. Based in large part on French police records recently made available to scholars, it challenges a number of what Soucy considers "misconceptions" about the nature of French fascism. ... Soucy raises many important questions on what inspires certain social groups to espouse fascism and on the nature and doctrine of fascism itself. ... Gracefully written, this book should appeal to a variety of readers, from specialists in French history, fascism, and its epoch to the general reader interested in the problems of our age."
Nathanaell Greene (American historian, Wesleyan University
) in History (1996): "This is undoubtedly the best single study of the French Right in the 1930s."
James F. McMillan (British historian) in the The Times Literary Supplement (1995): "Soucy has written a fine social history of France, which highlights [in French fascism] the importance of financial backing from wealthy sympathizers and its widespread appeal in the eyes of petit-bourgeois party members."
James F. McMillan in the The Times Literary Supplement (1997): "French fascism is a historiographical hot potato. One school of historians, particularly strong in France itself and associated with René Rémond and Serge Berstein, regards fascism as essentially ‘un-French' and therefore never able to win a following in inter-war France beyond a fringe of disillusioned left-wingers such as Jacques Doriot and his Parti populaire français (PPF). Another school, spearheaded by American historians of France such as Robert Soucy and William Irvine, rejects the thesis that France was somehow immune to the fascist virus, and points to not only the number of fascist-style leagues in the 1930s, but also to the support they attracted among more traditional conservatives, radicalized by fear of Bolshevism and impressed by Mussolini and Hitler.
Nicolas Weill (French historian) in Le Monde [Translated from French]: "This work attempts to recapture the mass appeal of French fascism by examining its social bases rather than its summits, by studying its troops rather than its leaders, police reports rather than the discourses of intellectuals fascinated by Rome or by Nuremberg... [The evidence that Soucy presents] is so extensive and overwhelming that the debate [over French fascism] should be reopened by the historians of our country, and without concession."
Tony Judt
(historian) in The New York Review of Books: "Soucy presents his findings as controversial, contrasting them with the view of older, mostly French historians...who long insisted that republican France was resistant to fascism.... Here Soucy, a meticulous scholar, surely has the better of the argument."
Robert Paxton
(historian, Columbia University) in French Politics and Society: "Soucy takes on what he calls the ‘consensus historians" of the interwar French Right. He advances the opposite view, that France had a strong indigenous fascism in the late 1930s. The heart of the matter, Soucy rightly observes, is whether Colonel de La Rocque's Croix de Feu, succeeded after June 1936 by the Parti social français, can be legitimately labeled fascist. ... If La Rocque acquired over a million members in 1936-1939 by turning moderate, the case for the ‘allergy' to fascism is bolstered. ... Soucy is right to ignore the disclaimers of those concerned. Most of the muscular New Right in France denied it was fascist (Hitler himself rejected the label). ... Soucy's judicious comparisons demolish the claim that the PSF was not fascist because it played the electoral game. That criterion, he rightly points out...would exclude the young Hitler and Mussolini themselves. Soucy rightly looks for a French form of fascism whether it accepted the label or not. ... Together with his earlier French Fascism: the First Wave, 1924-1933 (1986), Soucy has provided one of the indispensable overviews of the themes, clienteles, and itineraries of the interwar French New Right—whatever taxonomy we apply to it."
David Drake in the London Financial Times: "In his stimulating work, Robert Soucy identifies and addresses key questions which lie at the heart of the continuing debate among historians and academics on the question of French fascism."
William D. Irvine
(historian, York University, Toronto) in The American Historical Review: "Not the least of the many virtues of Soucy's latest book on French fascism in the 1930s is that it devotes considerable space to a serious discussion of [such major formations as the Croix de Feu, the Solidarité française, and the Parti populaire français] which despite their incontestable importance to the politics of the 1930s, have been seriously neglected. Whereas historians of modern France (both within France and abroad) believe that to call the Croix de Feu fascist is to adopt the partisan rhetoric of the 1930s, Soucy makes a compelling case that ‘fascist' is precisely the right label for this mass movement. ... No longer is French fascism limited to the editorial boards of literary reviews—as it largely is for Zeev Sternhell—it now includes the thousands of members of the Croix de Feu, which was, and by a large margin, the largest political formation in the Third Republic's history. ... [Soucy's book] is a major work and a challenging interpretation which all students of fascism and of the Third Republic will have to confront. ... In short, this is an authoritative study, by far the best work yet to appear on French fascism in the 1930s."
William Keylor (historian, Boston University): "[Soucy's] monumental study of French fascism casts the net much more widely and catches fish such as Colonel de La Rocque who has been exonerated of fascist tendencies by [other scholars]. Soucy's analysis of French fascism is grounded in solid research and is presented with clarity, precision, and persuasiveness."
Historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...
, specializing in French fascist movements between 1924 and 1939, French fascist intellectuals Maurice Barrès
Maurice Barrès
Maurice Barrès was a French novelist, journalist, and socialist politician and agitator known for his nationalist and antisemitic views....
and Pierre Drieu La Rochelle
Pierre Drieu La Rochelle
Pierre Eugène Drieu La Rochelle was a French writer of novels, short stories and political essays, who lived and died in Paris...
, European fascism, twentieth century European intellectual history
Intellectual history
Note: this article concerns the discipline of intellectual history, and not its object, the whole span of human thought since the invention of writing. For clarifications about the latter topic, please consult the writings of the intellectual historians listed here and entries on individual...
, and Marcel Proust
Marcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu...
's aesthetics of reading.
Biography
Robert J. Soucy was born in Topeka, KansasTopeka, Kansas
Topeka |Kansa]]: Tó Pee Kuh) is the capital city of the U.S. state of Kansas and the county seat of Shawnee County. It is situated along the Kansas River in the central part of Shawnee County, located in northeast Kansas, in the Central United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was...
. His father was a fruit and vegetables peddler and his mother a former farm girl. Soucy graduated from Washburn University
Washburn University
Washburn University is a co-educational, public institution of higher learning in Topeka, Kansas, USA. It offers undergraduate and graduate programs, as well as professional programs in law and business. Washburn has 550 faculty members, who teach more than 6,400 undergraduate students and...
in 1955, was a Fulbright scholar in Dijon
Dijon
Dijon is a city in eastern France, the capital of the Côte-d'Or département and of the Burgundy region.Dijon is the historical capital of the region of Burgundy. Population : 151,576 within the city limits; 250,516 for the greater Dijon area....
, France in 1956-57, received his M.A. from Kansas University in 1957 and was an Intelligence Officer
Intelligence officer
An intelligence officer is a person employed by an organization to collect, compile and/or analyze information which is of use to that organization...
in the United States Air Force
United States Air Force
The United States Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the American uniformed services. Initially part of the United States Army, the USAF was formed as a separate branch of the military on September 18, 1947 under the National Security Act of...
1957-1960. He received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin in 1963, was an Instructor at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
1963-1964, an Assistant Professor at Kent State University
Kent State University
Kent State University is a public research university located in Kent, Ohio, United States. The university has eight campuses around the northeast Ohio region with the main campus in Kent being the largest...
1964-65, and an Assistant and Full Professor at Oberlin College 1966-1998. He has served on the Editorial Board of the journal French Historical Studies
French Historical Studies
French Historical Studies is the quarterly journal of the Society for French Historical Studies , one of the two primary historical societies devoted to the study of French history headquartered in the United States. It publishes articles in English and French.The first issue was published in 1958...
. He is a professor emeritus of History at Oberlin College.
Participation in the debate over French fascism
Soucy has been a controversial figure in the scholarly debate over French fascism, several of his interpretations differing from those of most French historians who have written on the subject. Soucy disagrees with arguments that fascism in France in the late 1930s was primarily a synthesis of nationalismNationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
and socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
("neither right nor left"), that French fascist movements of the period were "marginal", and that Colonel François de La Rocque's Croix-de-Feu
Croix-de-Feu
Croix-de-Feu was a French far right league of the Interwar period, led by Colonel François de la Rocque . After it was dissolved, as were all other far right leagues during the Popular Front period , de la Rocque replaced it with the Parti social français .- Beginnings :The Croix-de-Feu were...
/Parti Social Français
French Social Party
The French Social Party was a French nationalist political party founded in 1936 by François de La Rocque, following the dissolution of his Croix-de-Feu league by the Popular Front government...
(CF/PSF) was too socially, economically and culturally conservative to be fascist. The importance of the CF/PSF to the debate over French fascism derives from the fact that CF/PSF was the largest political movement on the French Right in 1937 with a party membership greater than those of the French Communist
French Communist Party
The French Communist Party is a political party in France which advocates the principles of communism.Although its electoral support has declined in recent decades, the PCF retains a large membership, behind only that of the Union for a Popular Movement , and considerable influence in French...
and Socialist parties combined.
Soucy acknowledges that some French fascist movements (such as Gaston Bergery's Front Commun and Marcel Déat
Marcel Déat
Marcel Déat was a French Socialist until 1933, when he initiated a spin-off from the French Section of the Workers' International along with other right-wing 'Neosocialists'. He then founded the collaborationist National Popular Rally during the Vichy regime...
's "Neo-Socialists") were more left than right (if only for short periods). But he maintains that the largest French fascist movements of the interwar period—Georges Valois
Georges Valois
Georges Valois was a French journalist and politician.-Life and career:Born in a working-class and peasant family, Georges Valois went to Singapore at the age of 17, returning to Paris in 1898. In his early years he was an Anarcho-syndicalist...
' Faisceau
Faisceau
Le Faisceau was a short-lived French Fascist political party. It was founded on November 11, 1925 as a far right league by Georges Valois. It was preceded by its newspaper, Le Nouveau Siècle - founded as a weekly on February 26, it became a daily after the party's creation.-Creation:Contributors...
, Pierre Taittinger
Pierre Taittinger
Pierre-Charles Taittinger was founder of the famous Taittinger champagne house and chairman of the municipal council of Paris in 1943–1944 during the German occupation of France, in which position he played a role during the Liberation of Paris.-Personal life:Born in Paris, Pierre...
's Jeunesses Patriotes, René Coty
René Coty
René Jules Gustave Coty was President of France from 1954 to 1959. He was the second and last president under the French Fourth Republic.-Early life and politics:...
's Solidarité française
Solidarité Française
Solidarité Française was a French far right league founded in 1933 by perfume manufacturer François Coty and commanded by Major Jean Renaud, they dressed in blue shirts, black berets, and jackboots, and shouted the slogan "France for the French"...
, Jacques Doriot
Jacques Doriot
Jacques Doriot was a French politician prior to and during World War II. He began as a Communist but then turned Fascist.-Early life and politics:...
's Parti Populaire Français
Parti Populaire Français
The Parti Populaire Français was a fascist political party led by Jacques Doriot before and during World War II...
and La Rocque's CF/PSF—were strong defenders of social conservatism and upper class economic interests. Soucy contends that former leftists who joined these movements soon became ex-leftists, that the actual social-economic goals of these fascisms ran from conservative to reactionary (including Doriot's movement after 1937), that their major financial backers were from the business world (both Doriot and La Rocque received funds from the steel trust), and that—with the exception of Doriot's PPF before 1937—none of these movements had any significant working class support (while Doriot's shrank after he turned rightward in 1937).
Too many historians, Soucy argues, have taken the "socialist" rhetoric—or Orwellian
Orwellian
"Orwellian" describes the situation, idea, or societal condition that George Orwell identified as being destructive to the welfare of a free society...
"double-talk"—of some of these movements at face value, ignoring how it was repeatedly contradicted by their specific positions on social, economic and political issues. For Soucy, these organizations were far more nationalist than socialist, as was also one of their precursors, the Cercle Proudhon
Cercle Proudhon
The Cercle Proudhon was a political group founded in France on December 16, 1911 by George Valois and Édouard Berth. It was to include such people as French writer Pierre Drieu La Rochelle.-History:...
, which honored not the early "property is theft" Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was a French politician, mutualist philosopher and socialist. He was a member of the French Parliament, and he was the first person to call himself an "anarchist". He is considered among the most influential theorists and organisers of anarchism...
but the later much more socially conservative Proudhon.
Although Soucy points out the obvious—that not all French conservatives in the 1920s and 30's were attracted to fascism (especially members of the Alliance démocratique and the Parti démocratique populaire in the 1930s)—he regards the most successful French fascisms of the era, that is, those with the largest party memberships, as "variants" or "extensions" of social conservatism in crisis, movements that benefited from the right-wing backlash to the elections of the Cartel des Gauches
Cartel des Gauches
The Cartel des gauches was the name of the governmental alliance between the Radical-Socialist Party and the socialist French Section of the Workers' International after World War I , which lasted until the end of the Popular Front . The Cartel des gauches twice won general elections, in 1924 and...
in 1924 and the Popular Front
Popular Front (France)
The Popular Front was an alliance of left-wing movements, including the French Communist Party , the French Section of the Workers' International and the Radical and Socialist Party, during the interwar period...
in 1936. He contends that one of these variants was La Rocque's CF/PSF, a movement that had close to a million party members by 1937.
Soucy describes a number of characteristics that the CF/PSF shared with other European fascisms of the era and elaborates a similarly multi-faceted definition of fascism itself. Whereas some historians who consider upper class conservatives who supported fascism as "allies" or "accomplices" of fascism but not fascists themselves, Soucy objects that such "selective essentialism" spares traditional elites, but not those beneath them, from being regarded as fascists.
For Soucy, the differences between non-fascist authoritarian conservatives and fascist authoritarian conservatives were often more a matter of degree (which could increase when threatened by leftists) than of fixed or irreconcilable essences. Compared to non-fascist authoritarian conservatives, fascists had a greater hatred of "decadence", a greater desire to create large numbers of anti-decadent "new men", a greater appeal to the young (paramilitary "virility" was the ideal), and were more fiercely nationalistic. They also indulged in a more virulent demonology than many conservatives, blaming more harshly or "extremely" Communists, Socialists, freemasons, internationalists and (though not always) Jews for most of the nation's ills. Fascists had a greater taste for repressing "unpatriotic" souls. They were more willing to engage in paramilitary politics and sought to apply military values (discipline, obedience, anti-hedonism) to society at large. Whereas traditional conservatives were wary of even right-wing populism
Right-wing populism
Right-wing populism is a political ideology that rejects existing political consensus and combines laissez-faire liberalism and anti-elitism. It is considered "right-wing" because of its rejection of social equality and government programs to achieve it, its opposition to social integration, and...
, fascists were eager to mobilize the masses—but for socially reactionary not socially radical ends (Gustave Le Bon was a precursor here). In doing so, fascists echoed an ideal that traditional conservatives also promoted: that material differences between the upper and lower classes were unimportant compared to "spiritual" values and the unity of the nation. French fascists urged their followers to revive the "spirit of the trenches" of the First World War where workers and bourgeois, peasants and aristocrats fought side by side against the nation's enemies, including domestic enemies. Soucy believes that at various times La Rocque's movement displayed all of the above features.
Soucy maintains that in the 1930s the more that non-fascist authoritarian conservatives (and even many previously democratic conservatives) felt threatened by the political Left, the greater was their susceptibility to fascism. For French conservatives who chose a fascist alternative, no serious assault on the economic interests of traditional elites was required. A recurring theme in fascist writings from Valois, Taittinger and Coty to La Rocque, Marcel Bucard and Doriot—as well as from Mussolini to Hitler—was that class conflict (especially workers' strikes) should be replaced with nationalistic class conciliation (on conservative terms). In a number of cases during the Great Depression, differences between fascist and non-fascist conservatives gave way to "fusion"—with ideological interpenetration taking place in both directions as a result of common interest.
According to Soucy, when French fascist intellectuals like Robert Brasillach
Robert Brasillach
Robert Brasillach was a French author and journalist. Brasillach is best known as the editor of Je suis partout, a nationalist newspaper which came to advocate various fascist movements and supported Jacques Doriot...
and Pierre Drieu La Rochelle employed "anti-bourgeois" rhetoric, they were referring to "decadent" bourgeois (secular, liberal, democratic, hedonistic, soft-on-Marxism bourgeois), not "virile" bourgeois. After 1936, in response to the rise of the Popular Front, many previous French fascists and others who were counterrevolutionary, Catholic, traditionalist and reactionary crossed over to La Rocque's PSF. This was also true of some democratic conservatives who had previously viewed La Rocque with repugnance but who were now willing to overlook the many anti-democratic statements and paramilitary threats to overthrow the government that he had made before 1936. When the new Popular Front government banned the paramilitary CF in the summer of 1936, La Rocque replaced it with the PSF, claiming that he was now a political democrat (an alleged conversion that was quickly forgotten in 1941 when he became a strong supporter of the Vichy regime). To historians who claim that his democratic pronouncements between 1936 and 1939 prove that he was not fascist (and that those who supported him, including former members of the CF, believed this as well), Soucy notes that La Rocque was not the only European fascist of the era who chose to pursue a democratic path to power when a paramilitary coup was unrealistic. Hitler made the same calculation after the Munich putsch of 1923 and came to power "legally" a decade later.
Soucy emphasizes that the "fluidity" of fascist ideology and tactics defies historians who insist on imposing static taxonomies on "fascism in motion." A major example of such fluidity in Italian fascism occurred when Benito Mussolini, once a leading member of the Italian Socialist Party, turned sharply to the political Right after his national "syndicalist" Fascio suffered a huge defeat in the Italian elections of 1919. Soucy is also critical of definitions of fascism that require fascists—in order to be considered fascists—to behave before they came to power in as "totalitarian" a fashion as they had after they came to power (both Mussolini and Hitler had once been electoral politicians). For Soucy, too many historians have attempted to white-wash the CF/PSF by defining fascism in such an unhistorical way, taking at face value La Rocque's "democratic" rhetoric after the CF (at least its paramilitary formations) was outlawed in 1936.
Soucy disagrees as well with historians who claim that La Rocque was too "moderate" to be a fascist, that he believed in "republican legality", disapproved of political violence, was a political democrat, and was opposed to anti-Semitism. Soucy's rebuttal includes the following.. In 1935 La Rocque condemned moderates ["les modérés"] for falling prey to "compromise and hesitation" and called upon the French people to stand up against the threat of Communist revolution and "its sordid ally moderation." In 1941, La Rocque reminded his readers of the "many times" in the past that he had "condemned moderates", adding that "They are dainty persons. They are weak persons" ["Ce sont gens de mignardise. Ce sont gens de mollesse."]. In the winter of 1935-1936, La Rocque concluded that circumstances were not favorable for a paramilitary coup and chose to pursue an electoral path to power—despite telling his troops at the time that "even the idea of soliciting a vote nauseates me"). "Hitlerism", he reminded them "became a preponderant political force [in Germany] only on the day [in 1930] when…it achieved 107 seats in the Reichstag."
Soucy also points out that La Rocque was not opposed to all political violence. In 1933 La Rocque praised CF members who had engaged in "numerous" political assaults on pacifist conferences between 1931 and 1933 (leading one of them himself). In 1934 he commanded his troops in a "disciplined" way during the February 6 riots in Paris that led to the resignation of the democratically-elected Daladier government. In October 1936, three months after the creation of the "democratic" PSF, some 15,000 to 20,000 PSF activists violently contested a Communist rally in the Parc des Princes
Parc des Princes
The Parc des Princes is an all-seater football stadium located in the southwest of Paris, France. The venue, with a seating capacity of 48,712 spectators, has been the home of French football club Paris Saint-Germain since 1974. The current Parc des Princes was inaugurated on 4 June 1972, endowed...
(thirty police were injured in the melee). A month later, La Rocque described the violence of his followers at the Parc des Princes as a spontaneous "mass unprising" that had stopped the "rise to power of a Communist plot."
Nor, according to Soucy, was La Rocque always opposed to anti-Semitism. Although La Rocque did oppose biological anti-Semitism and defended "French" Jews, especially Jewish war veterans and right-wing Jews (the chief rabbi of Paris, Rabbi Kaplan, supported him for awhile), he indulged increasingly in cultural and political anti-Semitism after 1936, especially where Jewish immigrants and Popular Front Jews were concerned. In 1941 he wrote of "Jewish purulence" abetted by Freemason "conspiracies", and in 1941 he accused Jewish immigrants of having undermined the "morality" and "health" of the nation and—again along with the Freemasons—of having contributed to the "mortal vices" of France. In 1941 he exhorted Vichy officials to undertake with "a pitiless resolution" the "integral extirpation of contaminated elements" in French society.
Soucy also questions the argument that La Rocque's movement was not fascist because it was a form of "patriotic social Christianity", i.e. too nationalistic and too Catholic to be fascist. According to Soucy, the same description could be applied to the dominant faction in Mussolini
Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....
's Partito Nazionale Fascista
National Fascist Party
The National Fascist Party was an Italian political party, created by Benito Mussolini as the political expression of fascism...
(PNF) after the signing of the concordat between Italian fascism and the Vatican
Holy See
The Holy See is the episcopal jurisdiction of the Catholic Church in Rome, in which its Bishop is commonly known as the Pope. It is the preeminent episcopal see of the Catholic Church, forming the central government of the Church. As such, diplomatically, and in other spheres the Holy See acts and...
in 1929 (the Lateran Accords. Not only did the large influx of Catholics who poured into the PNF after 1929 leave their mark on subsequent fascist ideology in Italy, but Pope Pius XI
Pope Pius XI
Pope Pius XI , born Ambrogio Damiano Achille Ratti, was Pope from 6 February 1922, and sovereign of Vatican City from its creation as an independent state on 11 February 1929 until his death on 10 February 1939...
thanked Mussolini for implementing the "Social Catholicism" of the Church. Nor were all of the Duce's supporters aesthetic modernists. Historians who assume that fascism and Catholicism (particularly right-wing Catholicism) are as separate as oil and water ignore that during the 1930s there were many fusions of the two, including the existence of important Catholic Fascist movements in Spain, Portugal, Poland, Austria, Hungary, Croatia
Croatia
Croatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ...
, Bolivia
Bolivia
Bolivia officially known as Plurinational State of Bolivia , is a landlocked country in central South America. It is the poorest country in South America...
, Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
, Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
and Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
. Soucy notes that there were also many Catholics who rejected native fascisms during the interwar period (for example, more Protestants than Catholics voted for Nazism in Germany in the July 1932 elections, 38% to 16%). However, Soucy contends that Catholics like Valois, Taittinger, Coty, Bucard and La Rocque were indeed spokesmen for fascism, for varieties of French fascism whose intellectual origins in France went back to the 1880s, to a fascist "tradition" that La Rocque and others echoed in many ways.
Finally, Soucy takes issue with the assumption that because La Rocque was highly nationalistic and strongly opposed to a German invasion of France in the 1930s he was not fascist. The American scholar points out that La Rocque was hardly the only European fascist of the era who was highly nationalistic. Most were, including Mussolini and Hitler, and none wanted their countries conquered by other nations, even fascist ones. This did not prevent La Rocque from writing in 1934 that the Duce was a "genius" and that "the admiration that Mussolini merited is incontestable."
Both in the 1930s and in 1941, La Rocque called upon France to engage in "continental solidarity" with (but not subjugation to) fascist Italy. In 1941, he also supported "continental collaboration" with Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
—on the condition that France be treated as an equal partner. When he finally concluded in early 1942 that this was not going to happen (and the war had started to turn against the Germans), he formed his own Resistance
French Resistance
The French Resistance is the name used to denote the collection of French resistance movements that fought against the Nazi German occupation of France and against the collaborationist Vichy régime during World War II...
organization (he was not the only French fascist to join the Resistance) and was arrested by the Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
. He spent the rest of the war in various German prisons. For Soucy, this only proves that he was highly nationalistic, not that he was opposed to French fascism.
Sources
Emiliana P. Noether (American Historian, University of ConnecticutUniversity of Connecticut
The admission rate to the University of Connecticut is about 50% and has been steadily decreasing, with about 28,000 prospective students applying for admission to the freshman class in recent years. Approximately 40,000 prospective students tour the main campus in Storrs annually...
) in History (1986): "For the past twenty years Robert Soucy, professor of history at Oberlin College, has studied French fascism. A number of articles and two important books: Fascism in France: the Case of Maurice Barrès (1972) and Fascist Intellectual: Drieu La Rochelle (1979), precede this latest study [French Fascism: the First Wave (1986)]. Based in large part on French police records recently made available to scholars, it challenges a number of what Soucy considers "misconceptions" about the nature of French fascism. ... Soucy raises many important questions on what inspires certain social groups to espouse fascism and on the nature and doctrine of fascism itself. ... Gracefully written, this book should appeal to a variety of readers, from specialists in French history, fascism, and its epoch to the general reader interested in the problems of our age."
Nathanaell Greene (American historian, Wesleyan University
Wesleyan University
Wesleyan University is a private liberal arts college founded in 1831 and located in Middletown, Connecticut. According to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Wesleyan is the only Baccalaureate College in the nation that emphasizes undergraduate instruction in the arts and...
) in History (1996): "This is undoubtedly the best single study of the French Right in the 1930s."
James F. McMillan (British historian) in the The Times Literary Supplement (1995): "Soucy has written a fine social history of France, which highlights [in French fascism] the importance of financial backing from wealthy sympathizers and its widespread appeal in the eyes of petit-bourgeois party members."
James F. McMillan in the The Times Literary Supplement (1997): "French fascism is a historiographical hot potato. One school of historians, particularly strong in France itself and associated with René Rémond and Serge Berstein, regards fascism as essentially ‘un-French' and therefore never able to win a following in inter-war France beyond a fringe of disillusioned left-wingers such as Jacques Doriot and his Parti populaire français (PPF). Another school, spearheaded by American historians of France such as Robert Soucy and William Irvine, rejects the thesis that France was somehow immune to the fascist virus, and points to not only the number of fascist-style leagues in the 1930s, but also to the support they attracted among more traditional conservatives, radicalized by fear of Bolshevism and impressed by Mussolini and Hitler.
Nicolas Weill (French historian) in Le Monde [Translated from French]: "This work attempts to recapture the mass appeal of French fascism by examining its social bases rather than its summits, by studying its troops rather than its leaders, police reports rather than the discourses of intellectuals fascinated by Rome or by Nuremberg... [The evidence that Soucy presents] is so extensive and overwhelming that the debate [over French fascism] should be reopened by the historians of our country, and without concession."
Tony Judt
Tony Judt
Tony Robert Judt FBA was a British historian, essayist, and university professor who specialized in European history. Judt moved to New York and served as the Erich Maria Remarque Professor in European Studies at New York University, and Director of NYU's Erich Maria Remarque Institute...
(historian) in The New York Review of Books: "Soucy presents his findings as controversial, contrasting them with the view of older, mostly French historians...who long insisted that republican France was resistant to fascism.... Here Soucy, a meticulous scholar, surely has the better of the argument."
Robert Paxton
Robert Paxton
Robert O. Paxton is an American political scientist and historian specializing in Vichy France, fascism and Europe during the World War II era...
(historian, Columbia University) in French Politics and Society: "Soucy takes on what he calls the ‘consensus historians" of the interwar French Right. He advances the opposite view, that France had a strong indigenous fascism in the late 1930s. The heart of the matter, Soucy rightly observes, is whether Colonel de La Rocque's Croix de Feu, succeeded after June 1936 by the Parti social français, can be legitimately labeled fascist. ... If La Rocque acquired over a million members in 1936-1939 by turning moderate, the case for the ‘allergy' to fascism is bolstered. ... Soucy is right to ignore the disclaimers of those concerned. Most of the muscular New Right in France denied it was fascist (Hitler himself rejected the label). ... Soucy's judicious comparisons demolish the claim that the PSF was not fascist because it played the electoral game. That criterion, he rightly points out...would exclude the young Hitler and Mussolini themselves. Soucy rightly looks for a French form of fascism whether it accepted the label or not. ... Together with his earlier French Fascism: the First Wave, 1924-1933 (1986), Soucy has provided one of the indispensable overviews of the themes, clienteles, and itineraries of the interwar French New Right—whatever taxonomy we apply to it."
David Drake in the London Financial Times: "In his stimulating work, Robert Soucy identifies and addresses key questions which lie at the heart of the continuing debate among historians and academics on the question of French fascism."
William D. Irvine
William D. Irvine
William D. Irvine is a Canadian writer, historian and academic. He specializes in French history and has recently published a book on The League of the Rights of Man . He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1966 from the University of British Columbia and Ph.D. from Princeton University...
(historian, York University, Toronto) in The American Historical Review: "Not the least of the many virtues of Soucy's latest book on French fascism in the 1930s is that it devotes considerable space to a serious discussion of [such major formations as the Croix de Feu, the Solidarité française, and the Parti populaire français] which despite their incontestable importance to the politics of the 1930s, have been seriously neglected. Whereas historians of modern France (both within France and abroad) believe that to call the Croix de Feu fascist is to adopt the partisan rhetoric of the 1930s, Soucy makes a compelling case that ‘fascist' is precisely the right label for this mass movement. ... No longer is French fascism limited to the editorial boards of literary reviews—as it largely is for Zeev Sternhell—it now includes the thousands of members of the Croix de Feu, which was, and by a large margin, the largest political formation in the Third Republic's history. ... [Soucy's book] is a major work and a challenging interpretation which all students of fascism and of the Third Republic will have to confront. ... In short, this is an authoritative study, by far the best work yet to appear on French fascism in the 1930s."
William Keylor (historian, Boston University): "[Soucy's] monumental study of French fascism casts the net much more widely and catches fish such as Colonel de La Rocque who has been exonerated of fascist tendencies by [other scholars]. Soucy's analysis of French fascism is grounded in solid research and is presented with clarity, precision, and persuasiveness."
Books
- Fascism in France: the Case of Maurice Barrès, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, University of California Press, 1972.
- Fascist Intellectual: Drieu La Rochelle, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, University of California Press, 1979.
- French Fascism: the First Wave, 1924-1933, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1995. Le Fascisme français, 1924-1933, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 1992.
- French Fascism: the Second Wave, 1933-1939, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1995. Fascismes français? 1933-1939: Mouvements antidémocratiques. Préface d'Antoine Prost, Paris, Éditions Autrement, 2004.
Major articles
- "Fascism in France: Problematizing the Immunity Thesis", France in the Era of Fascism: Essays on the French Authoritarian Right, Brian Jenkins, editor, London and New York, Berghahn Books, 2005, pp. 65–104.
- "Fascism", The Columbia History of Twentieth-Century French Thought, Lawrence D. Kritzman, editor, Columbia University Press, New York, 2006, pp. 35–39.
- "Fascism", "The Encyclopædia Britannica, 2002. "La Rocque et le fascisme français : réponse à Michel Winock", Vingtième Siècle: revue d'histoire, vol. 95 (juillet-septembre, 2007), pp. 219–236.
- "What is meant by ‘revolutionary' fascism?" and "Lack of Response from Roger Griffin", Erwagen Wissin Ethik, University of Paderborn, Germany, vol. 15, issue 3, Heft 3 (2004), pp. 350–353, 416.
- "Proust's Aesthetic of Reading", The French Review, vol. XLI, no. 1 (October 1967), pp. 48–59.
- "Bad Readers in the World of Proust", The French Review, vol. XLIV, no. 4 (March 1971), pp. 677–686.
- "French Fascism as Class Conciliation and Moral Regeneration", Societas—A Review of Social History, vol. I, no. 4 (Autumn 1971), pp. 287–197.
- "French Fascist Intellectuals: An Old New Left?" French Historical Studies, vol. III, no. 3 (Spring 1974), 445-458.
- "Psychosexual Aspects of the Fascism of Drieu La Rochelle", The Journal of Psychohistory, vol. IV, no. 1 (Summer 1976), pp. 71–92.
- "Psychodynamics of French Fascism: the Case of Georges Valois", The Psychohistory Review, vol. XII, no. 2/3 (Winter 1984), pp. 19–23.
- "Drieu La Rochelle and Ascetic Aestheticism", South Central Review, vol. VI, no. 2 (Summer 1989), pp. 48–55.
- "Drieu La Rochelle and Modernist Anti-Modernism in French Fascism", Modern Language Notes, vol. 95 (1980), pp. 922–937.
- "French Press Reactions to Hitler's First Two Years in Power", Contemporary European History, vol. 7, part I (March 1998), pp. 21–38.
- "Functional Hating: French Fascist Demonology between the Wars", Contemporary French Civilization, vol. 23 (Summer 1999), pp. 158–176.