François Duprat
| François Duprat | |
|---|---|
 A communist in his teenage years, François Duprat later became a nationalist. Duprat supported Arab states as an anti-Zionist. He became involved in several journals and was important for French revisionism regarding World War II and French Holocaust revisionism. Each year, Jean-Marie Le Pen paid his respects at Duprat's gravesite. At the 30th anniversary of his death, Le Pen paid tribute to Duprat being a "martyr to the cause of freedom of thought". | |
| Born | 26 October 1941 Ajaccio, Corsica |
| Died | 18 March 1978 (aged 36) Caudebec-en-Caux, Normandy, France |
| Nationality | French |
| Known for | Co-founder of Front National |
François Duprat (1941–1978) was a French patriotic activist and historian, whose field of speciality was politics and World War II history. He was known also for being a founding member of the Front National party and was one of the leading members until his assassination in 1978.
Contents
Biography
François Duprat was born on 26 October 1941, in Ajaccio, Corsica, and was educated in Bayonne, Toulouse, at the prestigious Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris. He graduated in History at the Sorbonne, earning a diploma of higher studies in history in 1963.[1]
A Trotskyist in his teenage years,[1] François Duprat became a patriot and became a member of the Jeune Nation wing of the French nationalist students' federation (Fédération des étudiants nationalistes FEN). Strongly opposed to Algerian independence during the Algerian War (1954–62), Duprat later supported Arab states as an anti-Zionist. After the March 1962 Evian agreements granting independence to Algeria, he traveled to Katanga, supporting the secession led by Moise Tshombe. He became Tshome's Director of Propaganda on Radio-Katanga.
Thereafter, he returned to France, where he became a member of Occident, which carried out street clashes with Maoists and other Marxist students. However, he was excluded in 1967, supposedly accused of being a police informant.[2] Duprat then took part in the Ordre Nouveau movement (New Order), and became the editor of L'Action européenne (European Action) and of the Revue d’histoire du fascisme (History Review of Fascism), including supporting books which questioned Jewish ethnocentric accounts of WWII.
In 1972, François Duprat co-founded the National Front (FN) headed by Jean-Marie Le Pen, and was part of its political bureau until his death in 1978. He directed the Groupes nationalistes révolutionnaires (National Revolutionary Groups), alongside Alain Renault.
Historian
François Duprat conceived of history as a political weapon, stating in May 1976:
"We must not let to our opponents, Marxists and régimistes,[3] the monopole of the historical representation of men, facts and ideas. Because History is a wonderful war instrument, and it would be useless to deny that one of the important reasons of our political hardships resides in the historical exploitation and the systemic deformation of the nationalist experiences of the past... It is in order to answer these needs... that a team of intellectuals, professors and nationalists have created the Revue d'histoire du fascisme." [4]
Duprat wrote a book on the political scene in France from 1940 to 1944, during the time of the French-government based in Vichy. He also created a number of magazines and political reviews, including the Cahiers d'histoire du fascisme (History Notebooks on Fascism) and the Cahiers Européens-Notre Europe (European Notebooks - Our Europe).
Death
Duprat was murdered on 18 March 1978, in a car-bomb attack. His wife Jeanine was also injured in the terrorist attack, losing the use of her legs. A Jewish "Remembrance Commando" and a "Jewish Revolutionary Group" immediately claimed responsibility for the murder. The perpetrators of the bombing were never found and the police investigation into his assassination was "inconclusive." Jean-Pierre Bloch, director of LICRA, condemned the murder trying.
In Génération Occident: de l'extrême droite à la droite, anti-patriot Frédéric Charpier claimed that the assassination would have been commanded by nationalist political rivals. He recalled that Duprat had been excluded in 1967 from Occident on allegations that he was a police informant. According to Roger Faligot and Pascal Krop, Duprat was killed for his links with Palestinians and Syrians.[5]
Shortly before the assassination, Patrice Chairoff had published names and addresses of publishers which were tied to Duprat, included one of which was his private residence.[6] His funeral at the church of Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet was attended by leading French nationalists, which included the National Front, the PFN, monarchists and solidarists.[7][8]
Legacy
Le National, a patriotic political review, honoured him in April 1978 as one of the French leader of "the 'revisionist' historical school" who had introduced in France "one of the most explosive booklet" of Richard Harwood.,[9]" member of the British National Front and author of the negationist pamphlet "Did Six Million Really Die?". The Cahiers européens - Notre Europe diffused this pamphlet starting in February 1976. The anonymous author of this text had been identified by Pierre-André Taguieff as likely being André Delaporte.[10]
Each year Jean-Marie Le Pen pays his respects to the at Duprat's gravesite at the cimetière de Montmartre. At the 30th anniversary of his death, LePen paid tribute to his being a "martyr to the cause in free thinking", "fighter", and "politician right to the tips of his fingers".[11]
Quotes
- It is the Jews who introduced abortion, Simone Veil, supported by numerous Jewish doctors. Yet, what is the real purpose of the IVG? This is to prevent the French from having children, and it is the children of immigrants who take our place, since they have many children.
Bibliography
- Chebel d'Appollonia, A., L'Extrême Droite en France: De Maurras à Le Pen. Éditions Complexe, Brussels, 2nd edition, 1996. ISBN 2-87027-573-0
- Duprat, François. L'Internationale étudiante révolutionnaire (Revolutionary Student International), N.E.L., 1968.
- Igounet, Valérie, Histoire du négationnisme en France. Éditions du Seuil, Paris, 2000. ISBN 2-02-035492-6 (in particular the chapter L'extrême droite diffuse les thèses négationnistes / François Duprat, un passeur idéologique, p. 161 to 180).
- Lebourg, Nicolas. François Duprat: Idéologies, Combats, Souvenirs, Perpignan 2000.
See also
Exernal links
- Jewish Militants: Fifteen Years, and More, of Terrorism in France - The section "François Duprat"
- The Zündel Trials (1985 and 1988) - The section "François Duprat: A Precursor"
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Francis Bergeron, Philippe Vilgier, De Le Pen à Le Pen. Une histoire des nationaux et des nationalistes sous la Ve République, Dominique Martin Morin editions, 1986, p.155
- ↑ Frédéric Charpier, Génération Occident : de l'extrême droite à la droite
- ↑ This is a neologism, which is not in the Petit Robert dictionary. Probably alludes to legalistic supporters of the Republic (as "régime" means "regime" or "political regime"
- ↑ « Front historique », Année Zéro, May 1976. French: « Nous ne devons pas laisser à nos adversaires, marxistes et régimistes, le monopole de la présentation historique des hommes, des faits et des idées. Car l'Histoire est un merveilleux instrument de combat et il serait vain de nier qu'une des raisons importantes de nos difficultés politiques réside dans l'exploitation historique et la déformation systématique des expériences nationalistes du passé. (...) C'est pour répondre à ce besoin (...) qu'une équipe d'intellectuels, de professeurs, de nationalistes a créé la Revue d'Histoire du fascisme."
- ↑ DST : Police secrète (Flammarion, 1999)
- ↑ Patrice Chairoff, Dossier néo-nazisme, Preface by Beate Klarsfeld, éditions Ramsay, 1977, page 238, note 141.
- ↑ Minute, 29 mars 1978.
- ↑ Joseph Algazy, op. cit., p. 170.
- ↑ Hommage à François Duprat, Le National, April 1978, p. 9-11
- ↑ Interview of Pierre-André Taguieff by Valérie Igounet, Paris, 2 April 1993, quoted by Valérie Igounet, in Histoire du négationnisme en France, Le Seuil, 2000.
- ↑ « Hommage de Jean-Marie Le Pen à l'occasion des 30 ans de l'attentat contre François Duprat », website of Front national, 18 March 2008
