Pierre Sidos

Pierre Sidos (6 January 1927 – 4 September 2020) was a French far right nationalist, neo-Pétainist, and antisemitic activist.

Pierre Sidos was born on 6 January 1927 in Saint-Pierre-d'Oléron, the son of François Sidos (1891–1946) and Louise Rocchi.

He grew up in a familial background strongly tainted with nationalism and far-right ideologies.

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, who would later oppose Sidos and mark a shift between his euro-nationalist doctrine and the "nostalgic neo-Petainists of Pierre Sidos."

Although they were largely inspired by the ideologies of fascist Italy and Vichy France, Jeune Nation began to break with the collaborationist circles that had been protecting them since Sidos' prison time.

As Gaullists and former resisters were joining their ranks during the Algerian war, Sidos furthermore banned any evocation of the period 1933–1945 among its militants, with only a few events like the commemorations of Robert Brasillach or 6 February 1934 allowed to take place.

His father, a Catholic and anti-republican right-winger, had been a member of the Jeunesses Patriotes, a far-right league dissolved in 1936.

Born in Mouzaïaville (then in French Algeria) and serving in the colonial army, he had traveled across the French empire where he met his wife Louise.

A First World War hero, François Sidos eventually collaborated with the Vichy regime during WWII.

His mother Louise was of Corsican descent and his grandfather, Jean Rocchi, a fervent Bonapartist and friend of Pierre Taittinger, future leader of the Jeunesses Patriotes.

As a child, he had fun recreating the March on Rome in the family house staircase with his brother Jean, later killed in action by the German forces in 1940.

Pierre Sidos has asserted that the death of his brother was the event that made him swing into political action.

The place, originally built by the Nazis in 1941, had been recently transformed by the French authorities to include elementary needs, such as central heating or electric lighting.

The inmates—most of them former Nazi-collaborators—could even organize free-fights, running competitions or put on a play.

While serving his sentence, Pierre Sidos spent most of his time reading and running.

He met Marcel Bibé, a former Bezen Perrot militant who initiated him in Celtic esoterism.

Sidos then began to write about druidism and the Celtic Cross, which he described in his prison notes as the allegory of the "walking sun and universal life", a symbol he would later use in all the organizations he created: Jeune Nation, Occident and L'Œuvre Française.

The latter, unlike most of the family, had joined the Free French Forces in 1942 and participated in Operation Dragoon along with the Allies in the summer of 1944.

They were joined by their brother Jacques following his own release, and together they prepared the ground for the creation of Jeune Nation.

In 1943, then 16 years old (the minimum required age), Pierre Sidos joined the youth movement of the Parti Franciste, one of the main collaborationist movements under the Vichy regime.

Sidos was convicted in 1946 of joining the fascist Mouvement Franciste at 16 years old in the midst of WWII and Nazi occupation of France.

In January 1946, he was tried by a court in La Rochelle—along with his father, mother and his brother Jacques—convicted and received a 5-year jail sentence for his membership in the Parti Franciste.

The conviction was reduced as Sidos was still a minor at the time of the events.

His father François was sentenced to death, guilty of unlawful arrests of resisters organized with the Milice, and of his participation in the armed conflict with the Nazi forces against the Allies.

Before his execution on 28 March 1946, François wrote a letter to his sons, urging them to avenge his "unjust death".

His brother Jacques was sentenced to 10 years in jail for his past in the Vichy intelligence services, his mother released with all charges dropped, and Pierre was sent in autumn 1946 to the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp in Alsace.

In 1948, the French authorities made an offer to the inmates: their release against an enlistment in the Indochina War.

Sidos refused the proposition, while hundreds of former Nazi collaborators were sent to fight within the French army in southeast Asia, diffusing Wehrmacht and SS songs they had learnt during their internment in Natzweiler-Struthof.

Sidos nonetheless benefited from an early release on 4 August 1948.

He quickly found a job and contacted another of his brothers, François.

One of the main figures of post-WWII nationalism in France, Sidos was the founder and leader of the nationalist organizations Jeune Nation (1949–1958) and L'Œuvre Française (1968–2013).

After spending two years of internment in Natzweiler-Struthof, he founded in 1949 Jeune Nation, the most prominent French neo-fascist movement of the 1950s.

By 1949, the final structure of the organization had been designed and the group ready to be launched, but the Sidos brothers lacked money as far-right financial sponsors were not abundant in the immediate post-war.

Pierre Sidos then decided to reach out to Jeanne Pajot, the wife of a rich industrialist.

A Bonapartist and friend of Pierre Taittinger like his grandfather, she agreed to fund them and "La Jeune Nation"—as it was initially called—held its first presentation on 22 October 1949.

Publicly unknown for several years, the movement experienced a sudden fame and a rise in membership after the return of military personnel from south-east Asia following the end of the First Indochina War on 20 July 1954.

Famous for its insurrectional violence during the Algerian war, the organization was dissolved by official decree in 1958.

Convicted a second time in 1963 of "recreating a disbanded league" and "compromising State security", Sidos founded Occident the following year, but soon broke with the group.

He eventually established another Vichyist movement in 1968, L'Œuvre Française, of which he was the leader until he stepped down in 2012.

The movement was banned a year later, making it the fourth association founded by Sidos to be dissolved by the French authorities, and the fifth he had been part of, in a 70-year period of political activism.