''La Guerre Sociale'' was an
ultra-left
The term ultra-leftism, when used among Marxist groups, is a pejorative for certain types of positions on the far-left that are extreme or uncompromising. Another definition historically refers to a particular current of Marxist communism, where ...
journal appearing in
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...
from 1977 to 1985.
It attracted controversy over its support for
negationism
Historical negationism, also called denialism, is falsification or distortion of the historical record. It should not be conflated with '' historical revisionism'', a broader term that extends to newly evidenced, fairly reasoned academic reinter ...
.
The leading spirit was Dominique Blanc. He had previously been involved in the ''
Organisation des Jeunes Travailleurs Révolutionnaires'' (OJTR) during the early 1970s. Originally inspired by the
Situationist International, the OJTR was later influenced by
left communism
Left communism, or the communist left, is a position held by the left wing of communism, which criticises the political ideas and practices espoused by Marxist–Leninists and social democrats. Left communists assert positions which they reg ...
. A milieu had developed around the bookshop
La Vieille Taupe which sought to reconcile the views of the German and Italian left communists. The group
Le Mouvement Communiste had emerged from these circles.
In 1972 OJTR published the text ''Militantisme, stade suprême de l'aliénation''. They also produced texts under the name ''Quatre Millions de Jeune Travailleurs'', taking the name from a 1971 youth publication of the
Parti Socialiste Unifié - a French Socialist Party. During 1974 OJTR organised a national conference but disappeared shortly afterwards. However the text ''Un Monde Sans Argent'' emerged from the remains of the group. It was published as three pamphlets by the 'Les Amis de 4 Millions de Jeunes Travailleur' between 1975–76.
By 1976 Dominique Blanc had published a journal called ''
King Kong International'' with former members of the OJTR, Le Mouvement Communiste and the milieu around La Vieille Taupe. The following year essentially the same grouping produced the first issue of ''La Guerre Sociale''.
The text 'De l'exploitation dans les camps à l'exploitation des camps' appeared in GS#3 in 1979. This tackled the
concentration camp
Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simpl ...
system and its subsequent ideological use. It made extensive use of the work of
Paul Rassinier
Paul Rassinier (18 March 1906 – 28 July 1967) was a political activist and writer who is viewed as "the father of Holocaust denial". Totten, Samuel; Bartrop, Paul Robert; Jacobs, Steven L. "Rassinier, Paul", ''Dictionary of Genocide'', Vo ...
, a lifelong
pacifist whose political trajectory had taken him through being a left-oppositionist, socialist deputy and by the 1950s a member of the
Anarchist Federation. He had been interned in German labour camps during the war for his resistance activities. He subsequently wrote several books challenging other accounts of the concentration camps. In the course of this he moved from scepticism about the existence of extermination camps as opposed to labour camps, to denial of the scale of the
holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...
. Although GS appreciated the visceral
anti-Stalinism
The anti-Stalinist left is an umbrella term for various kinds of left-wing political movements that opposed Joseph Stalin, Stalinism and the actual system of governance Stalin implemented as leader of the Soviet Union between 1927 and 1953. T ...
in Rassinier's writings, such as his accusations that
Communist Party
A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of ''The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. ...
members collaborated in the functioning of the camps, they 'failed' to mention that Rassinier was equally antisemitic.
Extracts from the article were used on a wall poster titled ''Qui est le juif ?''(Who is the Jew?), which Guerre Sociale published in defence of
Robert Faurisson, at the time an obscure professor of literature with a taste for controversy. He claimed he was being 'persecuted' for declaring that the gas chambers had not existed. Faurisson's alleged 'victimisation' by opponents of his views was compared through the title of this wall poster to the victimisation of Jews. This was the beginning of ultra-left negationionism.
The mentor of this phenomenon was
Pierre Guillaume, a former member of
Socialisme ou Barbarie
Socialisme ou Barbarie () was a French-based radical libertarian socialist group of the post-World War II period whose name comes from a phrase which was misattributed to Friedrich Engels by Rosa Luxemburg in the '' Junius Pamphlet'', but which pr ...
and
Pouvoir Ouvrier who in 1965 had founded the bookshop La Vieille Taupe. Until its closure in 1972 it provided a home to a section of the ultra-left milieu in Paris. By 1978, several years after the bookshop had closed, Guillaume became infatuated with Faurisson and revived the name La Vieille Taupe for a publishing house devoted to negationism. He soon became the principal negationist publisher in France. However although Guillaume was the messenger, ''La Guerre Sociale'' were the prime movers in disseminating
Holocaust denial
Holocaust denial is an antisemitic conspiracy theory that falsely asserts that the Nazi genocide of Jews, known as the Holocaust, is a myth, fabrication, or exaggeration. Holocaust deniers make one or more of the following false statements: ...
amongst the French ultra-left in the early 1980s.
References
Introduction to the Question of the StateRetrieved 2 June 2008
1977 establishments in France
1985 disestablishments in France
Communist magazines
Defunct political magazines published in France
French-language magazines
Left communism
Magazines established in 1977
Magazines disestablished in 1985
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