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The politics of counter-memory on the French extreme right

University of Surrey

This article examines the forms, the modes of dissemination and some of the recent topics of revisionist historical writing in France’s extreme right-wing subculture today. Over the last two centuries shared understandings of French national history have structured the extreme right’s definition of itself as guardian of the national interest in opposition to other ideological families which came to constitute the political mainstream. Its adherents take pride in the strength and continuity of their intellectual tradition. Although the extreme right is largely excluded from historical debates in the journals or media outside its own milieu, its adherents shadow those debates, putting their own, different interpretations on the meaning of events to articulate what they consider to be authentic readings of the past and, hence, of the present. It is argued that this process, defined here as counter-memory, is essential to the maintenance of the subculture.

Key Words: extreme right • France • historical revisionism

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