The Ideology of the National Revolution

Abstract

The presentation of Vichy ideology in the context of a volume devoted to the extreme right in France immediately puts us in a paradoxical position. For the first time - one dare not label it also the last time - the ideas of the French extreme right were in power. The key figures of the Vichy regime had emerged from the ranks of the Republic: they had served it faithfully, it had lavished honours upon them. We see them at the helm of the nation at a time when the prewar leaders of the extreme right had been marginalised, whether, like Maurras, they were offering their support to the new régime or whether, like the ‘gentlemen from Paris’, they were opposing it. By the circumstances of its coming to power - filling the void created by a traumatic military defeat - as much by the Republican origins of its leaders, the Vichy régime sets itself apart from the majority of European interwar dictatorships, whether totalitarian or authoritarian.¹ In particular it contrasts with those fascisms and movements of the radical extreme right which came to power through alliances with the forces of conservatism and the existence of a mass-based single party committed to an ideology that was never less than explicit.