Pierre Bousquet

Pierre Bousquet (November 1919 – 27 August 1991) was a French journalist and far-right politician. A former Caporal in the Waffen-SS Charlemagne Division, Bousquet was the first treasurer and a founding member of the National Front in 1972.

Not to be confused with René Bousquet.
Pierre Bousquet
BornNovember 1919
Tours, France
Died27 August 1991(1991-08-27) (aged 71)
France
NationalityFrench
OccupationJournalist
Political partyNational Front (1972–1980)
French Nationalist Party (1983–1991)

Biography

Early life and WWII

Pierre Bousquet was born in November 1919 in Tours.[1] He became a member of the youth movement of the Mouvement Franciste in 1936.[2][3] In 1941 Marcel Bucard appointed him director of the commanding office of Jeunesse française.[2] On 25 August 1943, Bousquet joined the Waffen-SS in Alsace and ended up with the rank of Caporal in the Charlemagne Division.[4]

1950–1960s

After the Fall of France in August 1944, he managed to convince the American troops that he had been a forced member of the Service du travail obligatoire, and was designated to be in charge of organizing the arrest and the return to France of former collaborationists. Back in Paris in 1946, he tried to infiltrate anti-communist movements with a group of former Waffen-SS in order to maneuver them.[5] Bousquet then became an activist in the neo-fascist movement Jeune Nation led by Pierre Sidos in the late 1950s.[6]

A member of the euro-nationalist magazine Europe-Action, he replaced Dominique Venner as the president of the European Rally for Liberty following its failure in the 1967 legislative election, along with another former Waffen-SS named Pierre Clémenti.[7] This takeover, along with the relations maintained with the German neo-Nazi NPD and seminars held on Mein Kampf, triggered a wave of resignations.[8] In March 1968, an extraordinary session of the REL's national council excluded Bousquet and Venner from the movement.[9]

1970–1980s

Bousquet created the nationalist magazine Militant with Pierre Pauty in December 1967.[10][11] He participated in the founding of the National Front (FN) in 1972 and was its first treasurer. Bousquet left the party in 1980, dismissing the FN as pro-Zionist since the assassination of François Duprat in 1978. He launched in 1983 the French Nationalist Party along with former Waffen-SS Jean Castrillo.[5][12]

Later life and death

He declared in 1986 that he did not see his past in the Waffen-SS as a "youthful mistake", but condemned gas chambers and Nazi torture in an equivocal manner: "assuming–and I mean assuming–that there were gas chambers and torture, I condemn them." He added that he kept on advocating a "white Europe, from Brest to Vladivostok".[1]

Bousquet died in 1991. FN founding members Roger Holeindre and Roland Gaucher were present at his funeral.[13] He was a neo-pagan.[1]

References
  1. B. T. (24 June 1986). "'Jean-Marie Le Pen est un réformiste qui se trompe car la démocratie n'est pas amendable...'". Le Monde (in French).
  2. D'Appollonia 1998, p. 472.
  3. Taguieff, Pierre André (1994). Sur la Nouvelle Droite: jalons d'une analyse critique (in French). Descartes et Cie. p. 161. ISBN 9782910301026.
  4. Schneider, C. L. (2018). "Police Abuse and the Racialized Boundaries". In Bonner, Michelle D.; Seri, Guillermina; Kubal, Mary Rose; Kempa, Michael (eds.). Police Abuse in Contemporary Democracies. Springer. p. 40. ISBN 9783319728834.
  5. Lebourg, Nicolas (8 May 2014). "Les anciens SS ont reconstruit l'extrême droite française après 1945". Slate (in French).
  6. Camus & Lebourg 2017, p. 30.
  7. Shields 2007, pp. 137–139.
  8. Camus & Lebourg 2017, pp. 132–133.
  9. Dard, Olivier (2000). "L'Anticommuniste des Héritiers de Jeune Nation". Communisme. Aspects de l'anticommunisme (in French). L'Âge d'Homme. 62/63: 139, 142. ISBN 9782825114858.
  10. Leclercq, Jacques (2015). (Nos) Néo-nazis et ultras-droites (in French). Editions L'Harmattan. 54. ISBN 9782336381848.
  11. Camus & Lebourg 2017, p. 133.
  12. Camus & Lebourg 2017, p. 106.
  13. Lebourg, Nicolas (12 April 2012). "Front national : François Brigneau, un mort encombrant". L'Obs.

Bibliography
  • Camus, Jean-Yves; Lebourg, Nicolas (2017). Far-Right Politics in Europe. Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674971530.
  • D'Appollonia, Ariane Chebel (1998). L'extrême-droite en France: De Maurras à Le Pen (in French). Éditions Complexe. ISBN 978-2-87027-764-5.
  • Shields, James (2007). The Extreme Right in France: From Pétain to Le Pen. Routledge. ISBN 9781134861118.
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