Jeune Nation

Jeune Nation (French: [ʒœn nɑsjɔ̃]; English: Young Nation) was a French nationalist, neo-Pétainist and neo-fascist far-right movement founded in 1949 by Pierre Sidos and his brothers. Inspired by Fascist Italy and Vichy France, the group attracted support from many young nationalists during the Algerian war (1954–62), especially in the French colonial army. Promoting street violence and extra-parliamentarian insurrection against the Fourth Republic, members hoped the turmoils of the wars of decolonization would lead to a coup d'état followed by the establishment of a nationalist regime. Jeune Nation was the most significant French neo-fascist movement during the 1950s; it gathered at its height 3,000 to 4,000 members.

Suspected of a bomb attack in the National Assembly, Jeune Nation was dissolved by official decree during the May 1958 crisis. The organization nonetheless survived through the 1960s under the shape of several other nationalist organizations, primarily the Federation of Nationalist Students (1960–1967), the Organisation Armée Secrète (1961–1962), Europe-Action (1963–1966), Occident (1964–1968) and L'Œuvre Française (1968–2013), all established by former Jeune Nation members.

Jeune Nation's founder, Pierre Sidos, joined the fascist Parti Franciste in 1943 at 16 years old, the minimum required age. His father, François Sidos, was executed in 1946 for his involvement in the Vichy paramilitary Milice. Pierre avoided a harsher sentence since a minor at the time of the events and was convicted to five years in jail. The time he spent serving his sentence comforted the political convictions he had built before and during the war, and Pierre Sidos began to imagine "Jeune Nation" during prison time.

Discredited by earlier European far-right experiences, French nationalist parties scored poorly in elections from the fall of fascism in 1945 until the rise of the Front National in the 1980s. Neo-fascists groups nonetheless saw in the immediate post-war new reasons to swing into action, mainly the fight against communist expansion and the defense of the French empire's survival against the growing decolonization movement.

Released earlier from prison on 4 August 1948, Sidos quickly contacted his brothers François et Jacques to help him work on his project. In 1949, the final structure of the organization had been designed but the Sidos brothers lacked money, and far-right sponsors were not abundant in the immediate post-war. Pierre then requested assistance from Jeanne Pajot, a rich bonapartist and a friend of Pierre Taittinger, former leader of the Jeunesses Patriotes. She accepted to fund the movement, called at that time "La Jeune Nation", which held its first presentation on 22 October 1949 in Pajot's apartment. In 1952, they published a monthly magazine, Peuple de France et d'Outre-mer ("People of France and Overseas France"). The movement also tried to establish links with other nationalist right-wingers abroad, with Sidos traveling to London to visit fellow groups.

They were soon joined by other nationalists like Albert Heuclin, Jean Marot, Jacques Wagner and Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour. On 23 March 1950, the group was officially declared to the Prefecture of Police, but it remained publicly unknown for several years. In 1954, two events changed the destiny of Jeune Nation: the end of the First Indochina War on July 20, and the beginning of the Algerian War of Independence on November 1.

The movement experienced a sudden fame and membership rose after the return of military personnel from south-East Asia. On 11 November 1954, ten days after the beginning of the Algerian War, Pierre Sidos announced the official birth of the movement "Jeune Nation" under its final name. Tixier-Vignancour, opposed to violent actions, soon left the group to create his own organization, the Rassemblement National Français. Jeune Nation held its first congress on 11 November 1955, when they adopted the Celtic cross as their emblem. Dismissing mass parties, Sidos aimed at creating a small and faithful army, with a revolutionary general staff ready to seize power and rule as a military junta when their moment has come.

Labeling themselves the "successors of those of 1934" and targeting young people in their recruitment, Jeune Nation was joined in 1956 by Dominique Venner, then 21, whose later opposition to Sidos marked a generational and ideological shift between the young "euro-nationalists" and the "nostalgic neo-Petainists of Pierre Sidos." If they were largely inspired by the ideologies of fascist Italy and Vichy France, Jeune Nation began at that time to break with the collaborationist circles that had been protecting them since Sidos' prison time. As Gaullists and former resisters were joining their ranks in the context of the Algerian war, Sidos banned any evocation of the period 1933–1945 among its militants, with only a few events like the commemorations of Robert Brasillach's death or the events of 6 February 1934 allowed to take place.