French Popular Party - Ideology and Fascism of PPF

Ideology and Fascism of PPF

The PPF's ardent advocacy of collaboration with the Nazis was accompanied, somewhat discordantly, with nationalistic rhetoric. Members of the PPF were required to take the following oath:

"In the name of the people and of the fatherland, I swear fidelity and devotion to the Parti Populaire Français, its ideals, and its leader. I swear to serve until the supreme sacrifice the cause of national and popular revolution which will leave a new, free and independent France."

The PPF is generally regarded to be a fascist party in its ideological, as well as its practical, orientation. The party denounced parliamentarianism and sought to limit French democracy and remake French society according to its own, authoritarian beliefs. It was vehemently opposed to both Communism and liberalism and also wished to rid France of Freemasonry, about which it was greatly concerned (as were most other Fascist groups of the time). The PPF were critical of the supremacy of rationalism in politics and desired a move towards politics dictated by emotion and will rather than reason. Intellectuals who are often viewed as fascists, notably Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, Ramón Fernandez, Alexis Carrel, Paul Chack, and Bertrand de Jouvenel, were members of the PPF at various times. Moreover, the PPF was anti-semitic. They had initially been ambiguous towards anti-Semitism, expressing a negative view of Jews in their literature (associating Jews with banking interests) but allowing a Jew, Alexandre Abremski, to sit on their Politburo until his death in 1938. In 1936, Doriot stated: "Our party is not anti-Semitic. It is a great national party that has better things to do than fight Jews." By 1938, PPF literature was filled with references to the "Judeo-masonic-bolshevik" conspiracy. As the PPF tended more towards fascism, and especially after the French defeat and the establishment of Vichy France, anti-Semitism became much more a central feature of party policy. In 1941, Doriot, writing in the journal Au Pilori, would write: (t)he Jew is not a man. He's a stinking beast." This overt anti-semitic ideology was manifested by the paramilitary Gardes Françaises (formerly the Service d'Ordre), in which many PPF members operated, and which participated in wide-scale violence against Jews in France and North Africa and in the mass-deportation of Jews to concentration camps.