Serge de Beketch
Encyclopedia
Serge André Yourevitch Verebrussoff de Beketch (born 12 December 1946, Tours
Tours
Tours is a city in central France, the capital of the Indre-et-Loire department.It is located on the lower reaches of the river Loire, between Orléans and the Atlantic coast. Touraine, the region around Tours, is known for its wines, the alleged perfection of its local spoken French, and for the...

, Indre-et-Loire
Indre-et-Loire
Indre-et-Loire is a department in west-central France named after the Indre and the Loire rivers.-History:Indre-et-Loire is one of the original 83 départements created during the French Revolution on 4 March 1790...

, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

, died 6 October 2007 Clichy
Clichy, Hauts-de-Seine
-Administration:The canton covers a part of the commune; the other is in the northern part of Levallois-Perret-Twinnings: Heidenheim, Germany, since 1959 Sankt Pölten, Austria, since 1968 Santo Tirso, Portugal, since 1991 Rubí, Spain, since 2005 Southwark, United Kingdom, since 2005Clichy has also...

, Hauts-de-Seine
Hauts-de-Seine
Hauts-de-Seine is designated number 92 of the 101 départements in France. It is part of the Île-de-France region, and covers the western inner suburbs of Paris...

) was a French journalist, story writer for cartoons and writer linked to the extreme-right. He was also the co-founder of Radio Courtoisie
Radio Courtoisie
Radio Courtoisie is a French radio station and cultural associative union created in 1987 by Jean Ferré. Serge de Beketch was also among its founders....

, where he directed a Wednesday evening broadcast up until his death, and was a founder and host of the Libre Journal de la France courtoise.

Biography

De Beketch was of Russian
Russians
The Russian people are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Russia, speaking the Russian language and primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries....

 origin and from a Tatar
Tatars
Tatars are a Turkic speaking ethnic group , numbering roughly 7 million.The majority of Tatars live in the Russian Federation, with a population of around 5.5 million, about 2 million of which in the republic of Tatarstan.Significant minority populations are found in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan,...

 lineage. His maternal grandfather was a colonel in the French army
French Army
The French Army, officially the Armée de Terre , is the land-based and largest component of the French Armed Forces.As of 2010, the army employs 123,100 regulars, 18,350 part-time reservists and 7,700 Legionnaires. All soldiers are professionals, following the suspension of conscription, voted in...

; his paternal grandfather was aide-de-camp
Aide-de-camp
An aide-de-camp is a personal assistant, secretary, or adjutant to a person of high rank, usually a senior military officer or a head of state...

 to General Anton Denikin, chief of the White Armies
White movement
The White movement and its military arm the White Army - known as the White Guard or the Whites - was a loose confederation of Anti-Communist forces.The movement comprised one of the politico-military Russian forces who fought...

 during the Russian Civil War
Russian Civil War
The Russian Civil War was a multi-party war that occurred within the former Russian Empire after the Russian provisional government collapsed to the Soviets, under the domination of the Bolshevik party. Soviet forces first assumed power in Petrograd The Russian Civil War (1917–1923) was a...

. De Beketch's father, a non-commissioned officer
Non-commissioned officer
A non-commissioned officer , called a sub-officer in some countries, is a military officer who has not been given a commission...

 in the French foreign legion
French Foreign Legion
The French Foreign Legion is a unique military service wing of the French Army established in 1831. The foreign legion was exclusively created for foreign nationals willing to serve in the French Armed Forces...

 was killed in action
Killed in action
Killed in action is a casualty classification generally used by militaries to describe the deaths of their own forces at the hands of hostile forces. The United States Department of Defense, for example, says that those declared KIA need not have fired their weapons but have been killed due to...

 at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu
Battle of Dien Bien Phu
The Battle of Dien Bien Phu was the climactic confrontation of the First Indochina War between the French Union's French Far East Expeditionary Corps and Viet Minh communist revolutionaries. The battle occurred between March and May 1954 and culminated in a comprehensive French defeat that...

, achieving Mort pour la France
Mort pour la France
Mort pour la France is a term used in the French legal system for people who died during a conflict, usually in service of the country.- Definition :...

status. After his schooling as an enfant de troupe (military child), de Beketch performed several jobs, including manual labour and working in a bookstore. In 1966 he started doing freelance reporting for the entertainment page of the weekly newspaper Minute
Minute (French newspaper)
Minute is a weekly newspaper, initially right-wing but now extreme-right, circulated in France since 1962. Its editorial position is satirical and conservative. According to figures announced by the paper's leadership, it had a circulation of 40,000 copies each week in 2006.- Right-wing period :In...

. In 1967, he joined the Israeli Defence Force at the time of the Six-Day War
Six-Day War
The Six-Day War , also known as the June War, 1967 Arab-Israeli War, or Third Arab-Israeli War, was fought between June 5 and 10, 1967, by Israel and the neighboring states of Egypt , Jordan, and Syria...

., but "the fighting went so quickly that he didn't even have time to put on his uniform".

In 1970, de Beketch was hired by the Havas Conseil consultancy, where he took part in creating a media department. One-time freemason and member of the Grande Loge de France
Grande Loge de France
The Grande Loge de France is the third largest Masonic obedience in France. It positions itself as occupying a unique position in the landscape of French Freemasonry, recognising and having relations with the obediences of Continental Freemasonry while still considering itself to be separate from...

(then the Grande Loge nationale) he quickly distanced himself from freemasonry, as he often took the opportunity to explain. From 1969, René Goscinny
René Goscinny
René Goscinny was a French comics editor and writer, who is best known for the comic book Astérix, which he created with illustrator Albert Uderzo, and for his work on the comic series Lucky Luke with Morris and Iznogoud with Jean Tabary.-Early life:Goscinny was born in Paris in 1926, to a family...

 had invited de Beketch to write theatre reviews for the Pilote
Pilote
thumb|Cover of the first Pilote teaser issue, #0.Pilote was a French comics periodical published from 1959 to 1989. Showcasing most of the major French or Belgian comics talents of its day the magazine introduced major series such as Astérix le Gaulois, Blueberry, Achille Talon, and Valérian et...

weekly. Besides this, he would write various stories in cartoon
Cartoon
A cartoon is a form of two-dimensional illustrated visual art. While the specific definition has changed over time, modern usage refers to a typically non-realistic or semi-realistic drawing or painting intended for satire, caricature, or humor, or to the artistic style of such works...

 form and prepare French versions of the American offerings Eerie
Eerie
Eerie was an American magazine of horror comics introduced in 1966 by Warren Publishing. Like Mad, it was a black-and-white newsstand publication in a magazine format and thus did not require the approval or seal of the Comics Code Authority. Each issue's stories were introduced by the host...

, Creepie and Vampirella
Vampirella
Vampirella is a fictional character, a comic book vampire heroine created by Forrest J Ackerman and costume designer Trina Robbins in Warren Publishing's black-and-white horror comics magazine Vampirella #1 . Writer-editor Archie Goodwin later developed the character from horror-story hostess, in...

 for éditions Publicness. He also worked for the international visual arts review Zoom. In 1975, de Beketch left Pilote following the departure of Goscinny. He became head of information, then chief editor of Minute in 1979. He left Minute following a disagreement about the paper's new direction, and took on the role of editor-in-chief of National-Hebdo at the request of Jean-Marie le Pen
Jean-Marie Le Pen
Jean-Marie Le Pen is a French far right-wing and nationalist politician who is founder and former president of the Front National party. Le Pen has run for the French presidency five times, most notably in 2002, when in a surprise upset he came second, polling more votes in the first round than...

.

In 1987, de Beketch participated with Jean Ferré
Jean Ferré
Jean Ferré was a French art historian and far-right journalist. He was also the founder of the Paris-based Radio Courtoisie in 1987....

 in creating Radio Courtoisie after having been ousted from Radio Solidarité. He began a weekly "free news report" (Libre Journal) slot starting at three o'clock on Wednesdays, which continued until his death. In 1990, at the request of the new owner Serge Martinez, de Beketch returned to the lead editorship of Minute. In 1993 he was dismissed from his functions by the editing team who had bought back the paper from Martinez and judged that de Beketch was too politically involved. De Beketch founded his own newspaper with his wife Danièle, called Le Libre Journal de la France courtoise, which, contrary to popular belief, was not a written version of his radio show. De Beketch was a great friend of the journalist and novelist A.D.G., whom he met in 1974 at Minute. A. D. G. was inspired by de Beketch to create his character Sergueï Djerbitskine, alias Machin, alcoholic journalist and anarchist.

De Beketch died from a streptococcus
Streptococcus
Streptococcus is a genus of spherical Gram-positive bacteria belonging to the phylum Firmicutes and the lactic acid bacteria group. Cellular division occurs along a single axis in these bacteria, and thus they grow in chains or pairs, hence the name — from Greek στρεπτος streptos, meaning...

 infection contracted in hospital while being treated for hepatitis B. He had acquired hepatitis fifteen years earlier while being treated for Hodgkin's lymphoma
Hodgkin's lymphoma
Hodgkin's lymphoma, previously known as Hodgkin's disease, is a type of lymphoma, which is a cancer originating from white blood cells called lymphocytes...

. His funeral in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 was attended by more than 2,000 people including Jean-Marie Le Pen, Bruno Gollnisch
Bruno Gollnisch
Bruno Gollnisch is a French academic and politician, a member of the National Front far-right party, and a member of the European Parliament. He was chairman of the European Parliamentary group 'Identity, Tradition, Sovereignty' in 2007, which was dissolved in November 2007 following the...

, Bruno Mégret
Bruno Mégret
Bruno Mégret is a French Far-right politician. He is the leader of the Mouvement National Républicain political party, but retired in 2008 from political action.-Youth and studies:...

 and Jean Raspail
Jean Raspail
Jean Raspail is a French author, traveler and explorer.Jean Raspail was born the son of factory manager Octave Raspail and Marguerite Chaix...

.

Politics

De Beketch's family history laid the foundations for his involvement in right-wing (and later far right
Far right
Far-right, extreme right, hard right, radical right, and ultra-right are terms used to discuss the qualitative or quantitative position a group or person occupies within right-wing politics. Far-right politics may involve anti-immigration and anti-integration stances towards groups that are...

) politics. He preferred to be categorised as a "hard-line royalist
Royalist
A royalist supports a particular monarch as head of state for a particular kingdom, or of a particular dynastic claim. In the abstract, this position is royalism. It is distinct from monarchism, which advocates a monarchical system of government, but not necessarily a particular monarch...

". His views became more radical over the years; thus in 1992 in a reply to Philippe Guilhaume, the former president of the Antenne 2 and FR3 TV stations, de Beketch declared himself to be neither a democrat nor a liberal. According to Le Monde
Le Monde
Le Monde is a French daily evening newspaper owned by La Vie-Le Monde Group and edited in Paris. It is one of two French newspapers of record, and has generally been well respected since its first edition under founder Hubert Beuve-Méry on 19 December 1944...

, "his puns oozed antisemitism, and he never missed an allusion to the genocide of Jews in order to put its size into context"."

De Beketch styled himself as a creationist
Creationism
Creationism is the religious beliefthat humanity, life, the Earth, and the universe are the creation of a supernatural being, most often referring to the Abrahamic god. As science developed from the 18th century onwards, various views developed which aimed to reconcile science with the Genesis...

, asserting that he didn't believe in evolution, that the world was no older than about ten thousand years and that the flood described in the bible, Noah's ark
Noah's Ark
Noah's Ark is a vessel appearing in the Book of Genesis and the Quran . These narratives describe the construction of the ark by Noah at God's command to save himself, his family, and the world's animals from the worldwide deluge of the Great Flood.In the narrative of the ark, God sees the...

 and the tower of Babel
Tower of Babel
The Tower of Babel , according to the Book of Genesis, was an enormous tower built in the plain of Shinar .According to the biblical account, a united humanity of the generations following the Great Flood, speaking a single language and migrating from the east, came to the land of Shinar, where...

 were historical facts. De Beketch advised people to read material by the holocaust denier
Holocaust denial
Holocaust denial is the act of denying the genocide of Jews in World War II, usually referred to as the Holocaust. The key claims of Holocaust denial are: the German Nazi government had no official policy or intention of exterminating Jews, Nazi authorities did not use extermination camps and gas...

 Robert Faurisson
Robert Faurisson
Robert Faurisson is a French academic who is a Holocaust denier. Faurisson generated much controversy with a number of articles, published in the Journal of Historical Review and elsewhere, as well as various letters he has sent to French newspapers , which deny various aspects of the Holocaust,...

 in order to "escape the dictats of single-mindedness" and "pickle the neurons".

In his radio broadcast, he execrated the "socialist abortion state", "the occupied territories" (by which he meant the deprived multi-cultural suburbs of French cities), "the stinking Karl Zéro
Karl Zéro
Karl Zéro is the stage name of Marc Telenne . Zéro is a political talk show host/personality who has recorded albums of pop standards of the 1940s and 1950s...

 and his anal-whore broadcast" (using the French phrase anal-pute, literally "anal-whore", a pun on Zéro's broadcasting station canal plus
Canal+
Canal+ is a French premium pay television channel launched in 1984. It is 80% owned by the Canal+ Group, which in turn is owned by Vivendi SA. The channel broadcasts several kinds of programming, mostly encrypted...

), "crappy woodlice" (referring to journalists), "imbeciles who read Libé" (referring to the left-wing newspaper, Libération
Libération
Libération is a French daily newspaper founded in Paris by Jean-Paul Sartre and Serge July in 1973 in the wake of the protest movements of May 1968. Originally a leftist newspaper, it has undergone a number of shifts during the 1980s and 1990s...

), "scouts" (like Guy Bedos
Guy Bedos
Guy Bedos is an actor and stand-up comedian, mostly known in France for his part in the film Nous irons tous au paradis....

, Jean-Jacques Goldman
Jean-Jacques Goldman
Jean-Jacques Goldman is a Grammy Awards-winning French singer-songwriter. He is hugely popular in the French-speaking world, and since 2003 was the second-highest-grossing French living pop singer, after Johnny Hallyday.- Biography :...

) "who once wouldn't have even been given a Christian burial".

In 1995, de Beketch was communications director for the Toulon
Toulon
Toulon is a town in southern France and a large military harbor on the Mediterranean coast, with a major French naval base. Located in the Provence-Alpes-Côte-d'Azur region, Toulon is the capital of the Var department in the former province of Provence....

 city government, which was then led by the Front National mayor Jean-Marie Le Chevallier. He resigned after four months, assessing that the incompetence of the municipal staff damaged the Front Nationals image. He was also head of the Patriote du Var. In the conflict which pitted Mégret against Le Pen between 1998 and 1999, de Beketch tried in vain to adopt a conciliatory position.

In his broadcasts, Beketch often defended medical therapies rejected by official bodies, such as those of Mirko Beljanski
Mirko Beljanski
Mirko Beljanski was a French-Serbian molecular biologist, and the founder of the Beljanski Foundation, a nonprofit organization focused on researching beneficial plant extracts for the treatment of cancer. His later work on HIV and cancer was controversial.-Career:Beljanski was born in 1923 in...

 and Loïc Le Ribault, since he believed that his own medical conditions had been helped by them.

Public polemics

On 20 November 1996 de Beketch stated on Radio Courtoisie:

The positions de Beketch took earned him numerous court appearances, and several convictions. He was condemned on two counts for defamation relating to Olivier Biffaud, journalist for
Le Monde. On the first count de Beketch was ordered to pay a single franc
French franc
The franc was a currency of France. Along with the Spanish peseta, it was also a de facto currency used in Andorra . Between 1360 and 1641, it was the name of coins worth 1 livre tournois and it remained in common parlance as a term for this amount of money...

 in damages and 8,000 francs court costs. On the second count, he was ordered to pay 80,000 francs in damages as well as a similar 8,000 francs in costs for "affecting the sensitivity and dignity of the person concerned."

Involvements with groups

Serge de Beketch was former vice-président of AGRIF ("General alliance against racism and for the respect of French and Christian Identity") and a member until his death. He also founded the "French Jewish and Christian friendship circle" with Bernard Antony, Alain Sanders, Jean-Pierre Cohen and Pierre Semour.

In 2006, de Becketch was a signatory to "the call of the 25" a petition requesting a presidential pardon for Michel Lajoye.

De Beketch was also a staunch defender of the Riaumont
Riaumont
Riaumont is located on the hill of Riaumont, in the commune of Liévin, in the Pas-de-Calais département in northern France, in the former province of Artois...

 children's village.

Cartoon texts

  • Thorkaël I. L'œil du dieu, drawings by Loro, text by Serge de Beketch, Tury Éditions SERG, Classiques de l'Âge d'or, 1976. ISBN 2-85869-018-9 ; reedited. Paris-Lausanne-Montréal, Dargaud
    Dargaud
    Les Éditions Dargaud is a publisher of Franco-Belgian comics series, headquartered in the 18th arrondissement of Paris. It was founded in 1943 by Georges Dargaud.Initially, Dargaud published novels for women...

    ,
    Pilote, 1982.
  • Thorkaël II. La Porte de Taï-Matsu, drawings by Loro, text by Serge de Beketch, Tury, Éditions SERG, Classiques de l'Âge d'or 1977. ISBN 2-85869-023-5 ; reedited Paris-Lausanne-Montréal, Dargaud
    Dargaud
    Les Éditions Dargaud is a publisher of Franco-Belgian comics series, headquartered in the 18th arrondissement of Paris. It was founded in 1943 by Georges Dargaud.Initially, Dargaud published novels for women...

    ,
    Pilote, 1982. ISBN 2-205-02193-1
  • Déboires d'outre-tombe I, drawings by Loro, text by Serge de Beketch, Paris, Éditions du Cygne, BD Cygne, 1981.
  • Déboires d'outre-tombe II, drawings by Loro, text by Serge de Beketch, Paris, Éditions du Cygne, BD Cygne, 1982. ISBN 2-902748-10-8
  • with Jacques Tardi, "Un hussard en hiver", and "La voiture maudite", two short stories in four pages for Pilote 1972

Essays, pamphlets and other writings

  • with Denis Maraval and Jean Piverd, Les Grandes Découvertes archéologiques du vingtième siècle. L'Histoire arrachée à la terre, presented by Jean Dumont, research and text by Serge de Beketch, Denis Maraval, Jean Piverd, Genève, Famot, 1979.
  • with Alain Sanders, La Nuit de Jericho I. La Révolte du lieutenant Poignard, Paris, Éditions des Vilains hardis, 1991. ISBN 2-9506220-0-3
  • Dictionnaire de la colère, collection of chronicles published in Le Libre Journal de la France courtoise, Paris, Éditions des Vilains hardis, 2005 270
  • Catalogue des nuisibles, Paris, Éditions des Vilains hardis, 2006, 190 ISBN 9782952842907
  • Préface à Philippe Randa, Présumé coupable politique. Chroniques barbares, vol. 4, Coulommiers, Éditions Dualpha, "Politiquement incorrect", 2007. ISBN 978-2-35374-024-6
  • À l'appel de Dénikine, ed. Renaissance Catholique, 2007, 310 ISBN 978-2916951058 Interventions by Serge de Beketch during Renaissance Catholique, published posthumously.

Documentary

  • Co-direcion and commentary with Patrick Buisson and Anne Sophie Druet, Le Pen sur le front, Patrick Buisson, Paris, Édition et distribution Intervalles, 1985. Distributed on one VHS video cassette, SECAM, colour, 1hr 15mins.

See also

  • Le Libre Journal de la France courtoise
  • Radio Courtoisie
    Radio Courtoisie
    Radio Courtoisie is a French radio station and cultural associative union created in 1987 by Jean Ferré. Serge de Beketch was also among its founders....

  • Minute
    Minute (French newspaper)
    Minute is a weekly newspaper, initially right-wing but now extreme-right, circulated in France since 1962. Its editorial position is satirical and conservative. According to figures announced by the paper's leadership, it had a circulation of 40,000 copies each week in 2006.- Right-wing period :In...

  • Pilote
    Pilote
    thumb|Cover of the first Pilote teaser issue, #0.Pilote was a French comics periodical published from 1959 to 1989. Showcasing most of the major French or Belgian comics talents of its day the magazine introduced major series such as Astérix le Gaulois, Blueberry, Achille Talon, and Valérian et...

  • AGRIF
  • Riaumont
    Riaumont
    Riaumont is located on the hill of Riaumont, in the commune of Liévin, in the Pas-de-Calais département in northern France, in the former province of Artois...


External links

Discussion with de Beketch about his career at Le Libre Journal de la France courtoise (2007). Recordings and documents site in honour of de Beketch The announcement of de Beketch's death on the Radio Courtoisie blog.
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