René Binet (16 October 1913 – 16 October 1957) was a French

militant The English word ''militant'' is both an adjective and a noun, and it is generally used to mean vigorously active, combative and/or aggressive, especially in support of a cause, as in "militant reformers". It comes from the 15th century Latin " ...

political activist. Initially a

Trotskyist Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Ukrainian-Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and some other members of the Left Opposition and Fourth International. Trotsky self-identified as an orthodox Marxist, a rev ...

in the 1930s, he espoused

fascism Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultra-nationalist political ideology and movement,: "extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy an ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

and joined the SS Charlemagne Division. Soon after the end of the war, Binet became involved in numerous

neo-fascist Neo-fascism is a post-World War II far-right ideology that includes significant elements of fascism. Neo-fascism usually includes ultranationalism, racial supremacy, populism, authoritarianism, nativism, xenophobia, and anti-immigration sent ...

and

white supremacist White supremacy or white supremacism is the belief that white people are superior to those of other Race (human classification), races and thus should dominate them. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of any Power (social and polit ...

publications and parties. He wrote the 1950 book ''Théorie du racisme'', deemed influential on the European

far-right Far-right politics, also referred to as the extreme right or right-wing extremism, are political beliefs and actions further to the right of the left–right political spectrum than the standard political right, particularly in terms of being ...

at large. Binet died in a car accident in 1957, aged 44. According to scholar

Nicolas Lebourg Nicolas Lebourg (born 1974) is a French historian who specializes on far-right movements in Europe. Biography Born in 1974, Lebourg studied sociology at Aix-Marseille University and history at the University of Perpignan, from which he graduated ...

, "Binet’s openly advertised racialism has paved the way to an anti-colonialist and anti-immigrant

ethnopluralism Ethnopluralism or ethno-pluralism, also known as ethno-differentialism, is a political concept which relies on preserving and mutually respecting separate and bordered ethno-cultural regions. Among the key components are the "right to difference" ( ...

celebrated by the

New Right New Right is a term for various right-wing political groups or policies in different countries during different periods. One prominent usage was to describe the emergence of certain Eastern European parties after the collapse of the Soviet Uni ...

and then the Identitarians. Abandoning classic nationalism and

Aryanism Aryanism is an ideology of racial supremacy which views the supposed Aryan race as a distinct and superior racial group which is entitled to rule the rest of humanity. Initially promoted by racist theorists such as Arthur de Gobineau and Houst ...

for the notion of a 'white world', Binet clearly outlined the forthcoming themes of '

white genocide The white genocide, white extinction, or white replacement conspiracy theory is a white supremacist conspiracy theory which states that there is a deliberate plot, often blamed on Jews, to promote miscegenation, interracial marriage, mass non ...

' and the ZOG (

Zionist Occupation Government The Zionist occupation government, Zionist occupational government or Zionist-occupied government (ZOG), sometimes also referred to as the Jewish occupational government (JOG), is an antisemitic conspiracy theory claiming Jews secretly contr ...

)."

Biography

Early life and communist activism

René Valentin Binet was born on 16 October 1913 in

Darnétal Darnétal (; Norman: ''Dernétal'') is a commune in the Seine-Maritime department in the Normandy region in northern France. Geography A light industrial suburban town surrounded by woodland, situated some east of the centre of Rouen at the junct ...

Seine-Maritime Seine-Maritime () is a department of France in the Normandy region of northern France. It is situated on the northern coast of France, at the mouth of the Seine, and includes the cities of Rouen and Le Havre. Until 1955 it was named Seine-Inféri ...

., s.v. Binet René, Valentin. He became a communist sympathizer in high school after a trip to the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

. Aged 16 in 1930, Binet joined the French Communist Youth and became the secretary of its local

Le Havre Le Havre (, ; nrf, Lé Hâvre ) is a port city in the Seine-Maritime department in the Normandy region of northern France. It is situated on the right bank of the estuary of the river Seine on the Channel southwest of the Pays de Caux, very cl ...

section, before getting expelled from that group in 1934 after he supported

Jacques Doriot Jacques Doriot (; 26 September 1898 – 22 February 1945) was a French politician, initially communist, later fascist, before and during World War II. In 1936, after his exclusion from the Communist Party, he founded the French Popular Party (P ...

's ideas of "common front" (''front unique''). Binet then moved towards the

Fourth International The Fourth International (FI) is a revolutionary socialist international organization consisting of followers of Leon Trotsky, also known as Trotskyists, whose declared goal is the overthrowing of global capitalism and the establishment of wor ...

, joining

Pierre Frank Pierre Frank (24 October 1905, Paris – 18 April 1984, Paris) was a French Trotskyist leader. He served on the secretariat of the Fourth International from 1948 to 1979. Educated as a chemical engineer, Frank was one of the first French Trotsky ...

and

Raymond Molinier Raymond Molinier (1904–1994) was a leader of the Trotskyist movement in France and a pioneer of the Fourth International. Molinier was born in Paris. In 1929, founded the journal ''La Vérité'', and in March 1936 he and Pierre Frank co-fou ...

around the journal ''La Commune''. In March 1936, he became a founding member of the

Internationalist Communist Party Internationalist Communist Party may refer to: * Internationalist Communist Party (France) The Internationalist Communist Party (french: Parti Communiste Internationaliste, PCI) was a Trotskyist political party in France. It was the name taken ...

(PCI) along with Frank and Molinier, and was elected to the party's Central Committee. Binet was also a member the Le Havre employees trade union's council, but got expelled in February 1937 after he refused to follow the internal refereeing procedure. When the PCI was dissolved in December 1938 in order to merge into the

Workers and Peasants' Socialist Party The Workers and Peasants' Socialist Party (''Parti socialiste ouvrier et paysan'', ''PSOP'') was an ephemeral socialist organisation in France, formed on June 8, 1938 by Marceau Pivert. Its youth wing was the ''Workers and Peasants' Socialist Yout ...

(POSP), Binet withdrew from the group and continued his own journal, ''Le Prolétaire du Havre''. His group sent an observer to the 3rd congress of the

Internationalist Workers Party The Internationalist Workers Party (Parti ouvrier internationaliste, POI) was a French Trotskyist party established in 1936 after the exclusion of militant Trotskyists from the French Section of the Workers' International in 1935 and dissolved in 1 ...

(POI) in January 1939, a rival organization of the PCI led by

Pierre Naville Pierre Naville (1 February 1903 – 24 April 1993) was a French Surrealist writer and sociologist.Stubb, JeremyObituary: Pierre Naville ''The Independent'', 3 June 1993. He was a prominent member of the "Investigating Sex" group of Surrealist ...

and . In August 1939, Binet was arrested for distributing pacifist propaganda. He wrote in his memoirs that he felt hatred for the

and the Jews during the period 1934–1939.

World War II

Enlisted in the French army in May 1940, Binet was soon taken as a

prisoner-of-war A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is held captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610. Belligerents hold prisoners of w ...

by the Germans. During the war, he moved away from his communist stance to become an open supporter of

Nazism Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...

. In 1943, he enrolled in Nazi Germany's Compulsory Work Service. In April of the same year, the Internationalist Communist Committee published a "warning" about Binet, dismissing him as a traitor to the Trotskyist cause. In February 1944, he joined the

Legion of French Volunteers Against Bolshevism The Legion of French Volunteers Against Bolshevism (french: Légion des volontaires français contre le bolchévisme, LVF) was a unit of the German Army during World War II consisting of collaborationist volunteers from France. Officially desig ...

(LVF), then served as a staff sergeant within the SS Charlemagne Division.

Post-war activism

On 3 May 1945, claiming to be an escapee from German camps, Binet surrendered to the Americans and was repatriated to France. He spent 6 months in a French prison for serving in the German military, then returned to political activism. His wife Marie-Angèle Lamisse created a support group for former prisoners which served as the basis of the first organization Binet founded in 1945, the Republican Party for Popular Unity (PRUP). The group denounced "Slavic and American imperialism" and the cultural influence of the

Vatican Vatican may refer to: Vatican City, the city-state ruled by the pope in Rome, including St. Peter's Basilica, Sistine Chapel, Vatican Museum The Holy See * The Holy See, the governing body of the Catholic Church and sovereign entity recognized ...

, adopted the slogan "France for the Real French!", and tried to recruit leftists on radical nationalist slogans. According to scholar James G. Shields, the PRUP followed "an ideological hotchpotch mixing nationalism with

Europeanism European values are the norms and values that Europeans are said to have in common, and which transcend national or state identity. In addition to helping promote European integration, this doctrine also provides the basis for analyses that charac ...

and socialist themes with

collaborationist Wartime collaboration is cooperation with the enemy against one's country of citizenship in wartime, and in the words of historian Gerhard Hirschfeld, "is as old as war and the occupation of foreign territory". The term ''collaborator'' dates to t ...

sympathies." The party, which militated "against the massive arrival of North African workers", had around 150 members when it joined forces with the Rassemblement Travailliste Français to contest the 1947 municipal elections. Following an electoral defeat, Binet converted the PRUP into the Mouvement Socialiste d'Unité Française (MSUF) in 1948. The MSUF advocated the emergence of a Franco-German union which, according to them, was "alone capable of saving the white race from the invasion of the Negroes." Its periodical ''L'Unité'' led a campaign against the Épuration of Nazi collaborators and demanded the departure of Arabs from France to stop an alleged "African invasion". The party, which had 250 members at most, obtained financial aid from the Argentinian embassy and maintained relations with the Egyptian embassy, the

Arab League The Arab League ( ar, الجامعة العربية, ' ), formally the League of Arab States ( ar, جامعة الدول العربية, '), is a regional organization in the Arab world, which is located in Northern Africa, Western Africa, E ...

and the ''Bruderschaft''. The MSUF was banned by the French authorities in March 1949. Binet founded the bulletin ''Le Drapeau Noir'' to defend "the demands of the soldiers of the East", that is former

Waffen-SS The (, "Armed SS") was the combat branch of the Nazi Party's ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) organisation. Its formations included men from Nazi Germany, along with Waffen-SS foreign volunteers and conscripts, volunteers and conscripts from both occup ...

and LVF members. His sympathizers belonged to the Front Noir, a clandestine organization that contemplated armed struggle in order to build a "new Europe" relying on fascism. The organization had linked with other neo-fascist groups abroad via a Front Noir International and a Secours Noir International, two organizations that acted as an "embryonic" and "ephemeral" transnational union of fascist activists according to political scientist Jean-Paul Gautier. Binet also co-founded with fascist writer Saint-Loup the newspaper ''Combattant européen'' in March 1946, which claimed to fight the "colonization of Europe" by "negroes" and "Mongols" and advocated the union of former communist resistance fighters and the

in order to build "the European nation". From 1949 to 1952, Binet published two bulletins: ''L'Étincelle'', which saw an irregular publication, and ''Sentinelle'', where one could read the contributions of Jean-André Faucher,

Karl-Heinz Priester Karl-Heinz Priester (1913 – 16 April 1960) was a German far-right political activist. Although he played only a minor role in Nazi Germany he became a leading figure on the extreme right in Europe after the Second World War. Under the Nazis A n ...

Gaston-Armand Amaudruz Gaston-Armand "Guy" Amaudruz (21 December 1920 – 7 September 2018) was a Swiss neo-fascist political philosopher and Holocaust denier. Biography Initially a supporter of the Swiss fascist movement of Arthur Fonjallaz, he came to wider attent ...

. In ''Sentinelle'', Binet advocated his views on "national socialism" and "scientific racism" while promoting the establishment of a "fascist international".

New European Order

In July 1950, Binet launched the magazine ''Le Nouveau Prométhée'', which presented itself as "national-progressist" and tried to appear more mainstream, and where he developed his theories on "biological realism". The text published in the first issue was adapted the same year as a brochure entitled ''Théorie du racisme'' in order to serve as a doctrinal pamphlet advocating

racial segregation Racial segregation is the systematic separation of people into race (human classification), racial or other Ethnicity, ethnic groups in daily life. Racial segregation can amount to the international crime of apartheid and a crimes against hum ...

. The magazine disappeared after one year of existence in 1951. The same year, Binet founded the group Nation and Progress, which later inspired the

Nationalist Movement of Progress The European Rally for Liberty (French: Rassemblement Européen pour la Liberté, REL), also translated as European Assembly for Liberty, was a far-right, white nationalist and euro-nationalist party active in France between 1966 and 1968, and ...

and

Nouvelle Droite The Nouvelle Droite (; en, "New Right"), sometimes shortened to the initialism ND, is a far-right political movement which emerged in France during the late 1960s. The Nouvelle Droite is at the origin of the wider European New Right (ENR). Vario ...

leaders. Binet also became close to

Maurice Bardèche Maurice Bardèche (1 October 1907 – 30 July 1998) was a French art critic and journalist, better known as one of the leading exponents of neo-fascism in post–World War II Europe. Bardèche was also the brother-in-law of the collaborationist ...

and the In 1951, he went to

Malmö Malmö (, ; da, Malmø ) is the largest city in the Swedish county (län) of Scania (Skåne). It is the third-largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm and Gothenburg, and the sixth-largest city in the Nordic region, with a municipal populat ...

with Bardèche and attended the meeting that saw the formation of the

European Social Movement The European Social Movement (German: ''Europäische soziale Bewegung'', ESB) was a neo-fascist Europe-wide alliance set up in 1951 to promote pan-European nationalism. History The ESB had its origins in the emergence of the Italian Social Move ...

, a neo-fascist alliance set up to bring together nationalists from all over Europe. However, Binet soon broke from the new group which he felt did not go far enough in terms of

racialism Scientific racism, sometimes termed biological racism, is the pseudoscientific belief that empirical evidence exists to support or justify racism (racial discrimination), racial inferiority, or racial superiority.. "Few tragedies can be more ...

and

anti-communism Anti-communism is political and ideological opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed after the 1917 October Revolution in the Russian Empire, and it reached global dimensions during the Cold War, when the United States and the ...

, and joined instead Amaudruz in establishing the Zurich-based

New European Order The New European Order (NEO) was a neo-fascist, Europe-wide alliance set up in 1951 to promote pan-European nationalism. The NEO, led by René Binet and Gaston-Armand Amaudruz, was a more radical splinter group that broke away from the European S ...

(NEO) as a more radical alternative in 1951. The group called at its founding for a "European racial policy" in order to improve the European gene pool via

eugenicist Eugenics ( ; ) is a fringe set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter human gene pools by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior or ...

interventions and control of ethnic inter-marriages. Binet aimed at federating the nationalists of Europe – from former Waffen-SS members to former resistance fighter – against what he called the Russo-American occupation of the continent by "niggers", "Mongols" and "Jews".

Later life and death

In the later years of his life, Binet worked as a librarian, running the small publishing house ''Comptoir National du Livre'', then led a property development company called Baticoop. He died in a car accident on 16 October 1957 in

Pontoise Pontoise () is a commune in the northwestern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the centre of Paris, in the " new town" of Cergy-Pontoise. Administration Pontoise is the official ''préfecture'' (capital) of the Val-d'Oise ''dépa ...

, the day of his 44th birthday. Binet was buried in a mass grave until one of his followers bought him a burial place in 1971. Noted for his domineering personality, Binet was not always popular among his

far right Far-right politics, also referred to as the extreme right or right-wing extremism, are political beliefs and actions further to the right of the left–right political spectrum than the standard political right, particularly in terms of being ...

colleagues, leading to allegations that some of them may have arranged his death. Rees, Philip (1990). ''

Biographical Dictionary of the Extreme Right Since 1890 The ''Biographical Dictionary of the Extreme Right Since 1890'' is a reference book by Philip Rees, on leading people in the various far right movements since 1890. It contains entries for what the author regards as "the 500 major figures on the ...

'', Simon & Schuster. p.36 Fellow fascist writer

described him as a "fascist of the

puritan The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to purify the Church of England of Catholic Church, Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should become m ...

type who spends his life founding parties and publishing roneotyped newspapers".

Views and influence

Binet advocated the "inequality of the human races" and "social racism", calling for the "purification of the French race of the elements which pollute it". His 1950 book ''Théorie du racisme'' ('Theory on racism') promotes the concept of "biological realism", that is the establishment of individual and racial inequalities based upon pseudo-scientific observations. Binet argued that "interbreeding capitalism" (''capitalisme métisseur'') aimed at creating a "uniform inhumanity" (''barbarie uniforme''), and that only "a true socialism" could "achieve race liberation" through the "absolute segregation at both global and national level." In ''Contribution à une éthique raciste'' ('Contribution to a racist ethics'), published posthumously in 1975, Binet defended the "superiority of the European man and the white race" and advocated a "racist revolution" to implement a "dictatorship of races". Binet's ideas, characterized by a worldwide "biological-cultural deal" where each group would remain sovereign in its own region, foreshadowed both the

of ''

Europe-Action ''Europe-Action'' was a far-right white nationalist and euro-nationalist magazine and movement, founded by Dominique Venner in 1963 and active until 1966. Distancing itself from pre-WWII fascist ideas such as anti-intellectualism, anti-parliame ...

'' (1963–1966) and the

ethno-pluralism Ethnopluralism or ethno-pluralism, also known as ethno-differentialism, is a political concept which relies on preserving and mutually respecting separate and bordered ethno-cultural regions. Among the key components are the "right to difference" ( ...

GRECE The Groupement de Recherche et d'Études pour la Civilisation Européenne ("Research and Study Group for European Civilization"), better known as GRECE, is a French ethnonationalist think tank founded in 1968 to promote the ideas of the Nouvelle ...

(1968–present). Scholars have also linked Binet's concept of "interbreeding capitalism" with

Renaud Camus Renaud Camus (; ; born Jean Renaud Gabriel Camus on 10 August 1946) is a French novelist, Conspiracy theory, conspiracy theorist and White nationalism, white nationalist writer. He is the inventor of the "Great Replacement", a Far-right politic ...

' idea of "global replacism" – a "replaceable human, without any national, ethnic or cultural specificity" –, which forms the foundation of his

Great Replacement The Great Replacement (french: links=no, Grand Remplacement), also known as replacement theory or great replacement theory, is a White nationalism, white nationalist Far-right politics, far-right conspiracy theoryPT71 disseminated by French a ...

conspiracy theory.

Works

* ''Théorie du racisme'', 1950. * ''L'Évolution, l'homme, la race'', 1952. * ''Socialisme national contre marxisme'', 1953; published again in 1978 with a preface by

. * ''Contribution à une éthique raciste'', 1975; with a preface by Amaudruz.

References

Bibliography

* * * * * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Binet, Rene 1913 births 1957 deaths People from Seine-Maritime French collaborators with Nazi Germany French fascists French neo-Nazis French Trotskyists Pan-European nationalism Road incident deaths in France French Waffen-SS personnel French Army personnel of World War II Former Marxists French prisoners of war in World War II World War II prisoners of war held by Germany