Algerian reveries on the far right

thinking about Algeria to change France in 1968

Todd Shepard

pp. 76-92

in: Julian Jackson, Anna-Louise Milne, James Williams (eds), May 68, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011

Abstract

May 1968, for the small numbers of French people who continued to think of themselves as on the far Right, seemed to have a lot to do with Algeria. This is hardly surprising; during the 1960s, the experience of pro-French Algeria activism — its seeming triumph in May 1958, its subsequent alignment with the terrorist Secret Army Organization (OAS) and then its defeat in 1962 — had been crucial in defining what the strands of the so-called national/nationalist camp had in common. It had also anchored the political allegiances of many on this factionalized fringe of French political life. Yet attending to how references to Algeria saturated far-right media discussions of the events of May 1968 illuminates the specific ways that 1968 re-situated French right-wing radicals. A series of shifts in the Algerian focus of the far-right press from the Algerian War to Algerians as a current danger to France helped reconnect key elements of the far Right to more broadly shared agendas.