Description
Book SynopsisGustave Hervé (18711944) seemed to have traditional Breton roots and a typical republican education. As a young socialist journalist and professor, he gained notoriety following a 1901 article which appeared to plant the tricolor in a dung pile. When French socialists unified in 1905, the
Hervéistes were an influential minority. The antimilitarist movement called Hervéism gradually emerged as a quixotic crusade to unite revolutionaries against war and for socialism. Hervé soon founded a weekly newspaper,
La Guerre Sociale. Over the next six years, press campaigns, trials, prison, demonstrations, strikes, and conspiratorial organizations maintained Hervé's profile and sold newspapers. Ironically, Hervé advertised conspiracies, which suggests revolutionary theater more than practical politics. Among Hervé's rivals, such theatrics often generated resentment. While Hervé's movement succeeded as a media experience, his leftist competitors became jealous and skeptical. As revol
Trade Review«Michael B. Loughlin’s work on Hervé demonstrates the nuances of current research on fascism which suggests that fascism derived from multiple sources and was far from monolithic, especially in France. Hervé tried out different ideas that were part of a shifting nexus of fascist ideological tenets and he seems to have shown up at different points on the fascist spectrum depending on the time and the issue. Following Hervé’s meandering demonstrates that the key question may not be whether or not he was fascist, but how inconsistent the influence of fascism could be. At the same time it shows how seductive aspects of it were to intellectuals of the day.» (
Samuel Huston Goodfellow
Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri)
«It was a real eye-opener…to see how deep and intense the internal struggles within what I called the
enragé element (the militant, anti-parliamentary left) really were, and how those divisions played out over the course of the Aernoult-Rousset Affair. [Michael B. Loughlin’s] description of the Aernoult funeral obsequies is vivid…and in fact very moving. All in all, I think the chapter [on the Aernoult-Rousset Affair] provides a fine, valuable addition to the literature on the Aernoult-Rousset Affair, and I’m sure your book will provide an equally fine addition to the literature on Hervé himself.» (
John J. Cerullo
University of New Hampshire)
Table of ContentsContents: «Un Breton de Bretagne Bretonnante» «Le Drapeau dans le Fumier» – «Un Commis Voyageur Du Socialisme» – L’Association Internationale Antimilitariste and L’Affiche Rouge of 1905 – The Foundation of La Guerre Sociale: Activist Journalism or Revolutionary Theater? – Journalists and Prisoners: Hervé and the Staff at La Guerre Sociale – The Midi Crisis, the Socialist Congresses at Nancy and Stuttgart and the First Campaigns – The Draveil-Villeneuve-Saint-Georges Strike and Demonstrations – The Postal Strikes of 1909, the Francisco Ferrer Affair, and the Liabeuf Affair – Le Parti Révolutionnaire and Le Comité Révolutionnaire Antiparlementaire (C.R.A.) – The Railroad Strike of 1910 and the Origins of Le Retournement – The Aernoult-Rousset Affair – Les Jeunes Gardes Révolutionnaires (J.G.R.) and Le Service de Sûreté Révolutionnaire (S.S.R.) – La Rectification du Tir and Le Nouvel Hervéisme – From «La Bataille de la Salle Wagram» Until the July Crisis – La Grande Guerre: Gustave Hervé and the Origins of a French National Socialism – The Postwar Crisis in France – Le Parti Socialiste National of 1919 – De-population and De-Christianization – La Victoire and Its Director During the Interwar: Plus Ça Change Plus Ça La Même Chose – Financial and Circulation Problems at La Victoire – Le Parti de la République Autoritaire – The Reawakened Parti Socialiste National and the Elections of 1928 – The Syndicats Unionistes and the Milice Socialiste National – Interwar Foreign Policy: The Increasingly Turbulent Eye Between Two Storms – Gustave Hervé and Anti-Semitism – The Stavisky Affair and the Events of February 6, 1934 – C’est Pétain qu’il nous faut! – The Popular Front and Hervé’s Return to His Ancestral Faith – Hervé’s Interwar Reactions to Fascism and Nazism – Hervé, World War II, and Vichy.
