Guère franco-française: the nationalist right, civil war discourse and the 2021 tribunes des militaires

Abstract

The French Army has not always enjoyed a harmonious relationship with its political leadership. Its sobriquet, the ‘Great Mute’ is something of a misnomer, as it is an institution that has certainly made its voice heard at several junctures in modern French history. Recently, the two Tribunes des Militaires (soldiers’ tribunes) expressed the fear among several retired and active officers and enlisted servicemen and women, that France is headed for ‘ruin’ and civil war. This study represents the first in-depth analysis of the tribunes, its connections to the far right, putschist pretentions and civil war rhetoric. This article positions these tribunes within the historical context of previous French military political interventions, examine its rhetoric and establish the extent to which it presents a far-right sponsored call to military insurrection. This analysis is of importance, given the seriousness of the claims made in the tribunes and the central significance of civil-military relations for any state.

Keywords:

• France
• Tribune des Militaires
• military
• far right
• French Army

Since the establishment of the Third Republic in 1870, the French Army has had a tumultuous relationship with their civilian masters. Colloquially known as the ‘Grande Muette’ (the ‘Great Mute’) given the requirement of political neutrality in the French military, a quick glance at the history of civil-military relations over the past 150 years would suggest that this has not always been an accurate sobriquet. From the populism of General Georges Boulanger in the 1880s through to the Algerian War, the army has often forcefully expressed it opinions, sometimes with disastrous consequences. The 2021 Tribune des Militaires (soldiers’ tribune), the name given by the weekly news magazine Valeurs Actuelles to an open letter published on the website Place d’Armes and signed by a multitude of retired generals and officers, provided another example of the ‘Great Mute’ once again finding a political voice. It represented the first major partisan political intervention of a section of the military since 1988. This open letter warned of the possibility of civil war and ethnic conflict and raised the prospect of the army entering the political sphere. This article argues that the tribune employed the rhetoric of the nationalist right and demonstrated how civil war discourse has become mainstream. The tribune was therefore partisan rather than purely political in nature. However, it  also posits that the tribune did not represent an attempted putsch but instead a campaign to concentrate media and government attention on this prospect of civil war and the mounting ethnic, cultural and religious tensions in the country. This threat of civil war was not simply fearmongering by the right, but a matter taken seriously by both the French state and apparently by a majority of the French public. The current study represents the first detailed analysis and historical contextualisation of the Tribune des Militaires. It is also the first to include as a source, an interview with the chief instigator of the tribunes, Captain Jean-Pierre Fabre-Bernadac. The value of this article is that it provides academics and students with an interest in French military studies with an overview of the latest development within civil-military relations. The importance of highlighting the evolving discourse on civil war, increasingly frequent following the 2015 terror attacks in France, is apparent given the serious nature of declarations on the subject from high-ranking military and civilian decision-makers. The first section provides an overview of the tribune affair, the second the historical context, the third and fourth examine the nationalist right rhetoric of the tribunes and civil war discourse respectively, while the final section discusses their wider importance.

The 2021 Tribune des Militaires: Timeline of the affaire

‘The hour is grave, France is in peril, and several mortal dangers threaten her.’¹ The Tribune des Militaires, addressed to the French President, cabinet and parliament, began in an alarmist tone. According to its signatories, the situation in France had degenerated to a level where the spectre of civil war loomed on the horizon. The tribune itself was the brainchild of retired army and gendarmerie officer, Jean-Pierre Fabre-Bernadac. He had previously been sanctioned by the army in the 1980s for a ‘lack of impartiality’ (the devoir de réserve), and eventually retired at the same rank (captain) he had held on entry to the Gendarmerie. Fabre-Bernadac later served as head of security for the National Front (FN) from July 1993 – May 1994.² The rhetorical similarity of the tribune to that of the Front National (now Rassemblement National, RN) is therefore unsurprising. Indeed, in an open letter published in the journal Valeurs Actuelles on 23 April 2021, the President of the RN, Marine Le Pen, officially endorsed the tribune des militaires and called on the generals who had signed the tribune to ‘join her in the battle for France’, thus mimicking the bellicose and alarmist language of the original document.³ The tone of Le Pen’s response was deferential; she clearly communicated that she shared their analysis of the situation in France, and praised their initiative.

Le Pen also referred to an interview given by President Emmanuel Macron with US TV channel CBS on 18 April 2021, during which he claimed that France needed ‘in a certain way to deconstruct our own history’.⁴ This again mirrored the rhetoric of the tribune which bemoaned the ‘decolonial theories’ being propagated to stir up hatred of France.⁵ Le Pen’s interventions did not go unnoticed by those in government. Gérald Darminin, Minister of the Interior, accused Le Pen of having ‘inherited her love of the sound of military boots from her father’, the controversial ex-parachute lieutenant and founder of the FN, Jean-Marie Le Pen.⁶ Similarly, Junior Minister for Citizenship, Marlène Schiappa, described the RN as a ‘party of putschists’.⁷

Fabre-Bernadac maintained, however, that the tribune was concerned with the defence of the country against an existential menace, as opposed to a politicisation of the army.⁸ For Fabre-Bernadac, the letter was not a ‘putsch’ as claimed by several of its detractors, but instead a warning that if the government continued to address the issue of civil unrest in France inadequately, that a civil war could ensue. Therefore, from his perspective, the letter was merely an exhortation to the government to take action to avoid such an eventuality. This contrasted with the position adopted by the minister of the armed forces, Florence Parly, who described the open letter as a call for insurrection and disclosed her shock at Le Pen’s endorsement.⁹ She was, though, careful to reiterate that the overwhelming majority of soldiers defended Republican values. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the then-leader of the leftist La France Insoumise (France Unbowed, LFI) party, joined the chorus of voices denouncing the tribune. His tweets on 24 April and 26 April 2021 attacked the signatories as putschists and called for judicial proceedings to be taken against those who had signed the petition in accordance with Article 413-3 of the Penal Code, which entails punishment for those who provoke disobedience from military personnel.¹⁰ Mélenchon even considered the possibility of purging politically unreliable elements within the army, in the event of his election as President in 2022.

A co-signatory of the tribune and former commander of the Foreign Legion (1994–9), retired General Christian Picquemal sent an inflammatory open letter to the Chief of Staff of the French Army, General François Lecointre on 30 April 2021, accusing him of careerism, and of failing to protect his comrades from attack.¹¹ The letter expressed Picquemal’s ‘immense disdain’ for Lecointre, shared by ‘many Frenchmen and military personnel’. ‘I can look at myself in the mirror, I fear that’s not the case for you’, the legionnaire general continued. Picquemal bemoaned Lecointre’s subjugation to political power, making him ‘more of a technocrat than a soldier’.¹² Picquemal had previously been arrested and removed from the second section for protesting along with the far-right ‘Pegida’ group against the ‘Calais jungle’ and mass migration, thereby violating the military’s requirement for neutrality. (Generals who retire from active service are immediately placed in the ‘second section’ (2e section/2S) - a type of military reserve, in place since 1830, and may be recalled to active service in the event of war. Financial advantages as outlined in the statut de militaires (military statute) include a ten per cent discount on income tax and significant reductions on train ticket fees. A requirement of Article 79 of the statute is that generals in the second section must maintain political neutrality, ‘l’obligation de réserve’.¹³) In 2018, Picquemal had also been a co-signatory, with General André Coustou, of a letter which accused Macron of ‘denying democracy and of treason against the nation’, following the President’s signing of the ‘global pact on regular assured and organised migration’, a treaty much criticised by the right for facilitating immigration.¹⁴ Picquemal’s February 2016 speech to far-right protestors, which resulted in his dismissal from the ‘Second Section’ bemoaned the ‘gangrene’ spreading throughout France of which the policy of family reunification was emblematic.¹⁵

Valeurs Actuelles claimed that the impetus for the second tribune des militaires originated among ‘young officers’ returning from deployment abroad, who contacted the journal on 4 May 2021 to make known their intentions.¹⁶ The journal claimed, that like the first letter, these subalterns sought to raise the alarm about what they viewed as the degradation of the country, rather than threaten a pronunciamento. The following day, the armed forces’ ministry became aware of the planned second tribune and enlisted the aid of the French secret service to identify the instigators and signatories. The second tribune was eventually circulated on 9 May 2021. The Minister of the Interior again took to the offensive, querying ‘is anonymity courageous?’. Meanwhile Florence Parly, the armed forces’ minister, described the tribunes as a ‘crude political machination’ and opined that ‘the rhetoric, the tone and the vocabulary are far right’. Captain Fabre-Bernadac maintained nonetheless that the tribunes were apolitical, with the signatories’ only concern being ‘the nation’.¹⁷ In an interview with Le Parisien, Prime Minister Jean Castex, commented:

What are we talking about? It’s a far-right political tribune, let’s call a spade a spade. They pretend to talk in the name of the army. Anyone can claim to be a soldier and sign a petition. What proves that they’re really in the military? Who are they? They should reveal themselves and take responsibility if they believe that it is important. I certainly believe that it is political manoeuvring. Myself, I have confidence in the army of my country. It is the honour of France.¹⁸

Six of the twenty generals who had both signed the tribune and spoken publicly in the media, were called before the Conseil Supérieur des Forces Armées (Superior Council of the Armed Forces) on the grounds of ‘lack of impartiality’ (‘devoir de réserve’), as outlined in the ‘statut de militaires’.¹⁹ As was the case in 1988, when forty-five generals were brought before the council for their open support of Jacques Chirac in the presidential election, no disciplinary sanctions were taken against any of the generals brought before the Conseil.²⁰

The tribunes’ action drew international attention to the spectre of French military disobedience, largely unheard of since the Algerian War. Indeed, as we have seen, many journalists and politicians made a direct comparison between the tribune and the wave of military insubordination and praetorianism during this war. The tribunes also prompted discussion in France about the possibility of civil war, an increasingly common theme in public discourse since the Charlie Hebdo and Bataclan terror attacks in January and November 2015 respectively. The following two sections will explore these issues further and examine whether the tribunes are inherently far right in nature.

Historical contextualisation of the tribunes

‘Our tricolour flags aren’t simply a piece of cloth, they symbolise tradition, throughout the ages’.²¹ A historical overview of civil-military relations in France is essential to understanding the tribunes. The French military has had a somewhat difficult relationship with the Republic. This can be largely attributed to the officer corps’ historical conservatism and Catholicism. Arguably, the army was, and continues to be, imbued with this spirit. This was reflected in the words of an anonymous high-ranking French officer quoted in Jean Guisnel’s Les Généraux (1990): ‘you must be married, have a minimum of three children, go to mass every Sunday to hope for a post as bureau head in the general staff in the army’.²² While certainly hyperbolic, it alludes to the largely traditional and Catholic makeup of the French officer corps. The largely rural and Catholic makeup of the French Army explains, to a large degree, its political preferences as an institution. Their anti-progressivism is not, therefore, a novel phenomenon but rather indicative of a deeply entrenched stance. The post-war period demonstrated the measures that the armed forces’ officer corps was prepared to take in order to enforce its worldview of a West under assault from Moscow instrumentalising nationalist movements in the colonies and progressive ‘useful idiots’ in the metropole to spread communism. This flourishing of anti-Marxist and progressive thought among what would become known as the ‘political officers’ occurred against the backdrop of an army in crisis. The 1946–62 period represented their nadir, as the military fought in two harrowing wars of decolonisation in Indochina and Algeria.

A post-war deterioration in working conditions, pay and a loss of prestige compounded these worsening civil-military relations. The Indochina War saw a further souring of this relationship. Fighting a conflict against a communist revolutionary movement for eight years (1946–54) with inadequate support from successive governments of the Fourth Republic, nurtured a new sense of betrayal amongst the officer corps. This resentment felt following this war was matched with a determination never again to suffer a similar defeat. As described by Colonel Lucien Poirier:

I am from the ‘never again’ generation: never again the defeat of (19)40, and the occupation of our territory. Never again Indochina and Algeria. Never again Suez. My generation has only received kicks up the arse. But trauma is at the origin of all the great schools of thought….²³

The Algerian War saw this determination in action. During the conflict, Algeria essentially became a ‘military fiefdom’, with the army pooling political, judicial, and military power in the name of pacification operations. Two major interventions by the army into the realm of politics (13 May 1958 and 21 April 1961) became frames of reference for many political and media responses to the 2021 tribune. The army’s actions during the May 1958 crisis brought France to the brink of civil war, with plans such as Operation Resurrection (Opération Résurrection) aiming to employ military assets to topple the Fourth Republic and create a ‘Government of Public Safety’.²⁴ De Gaulle was brought to power with the help of the army, but they quickly became disillusioned by his Algerian policy. The 21 April 1961 putsch was a last-ditch attempt by a die-hard pro-French Algeria faction within the military to block Algerian independence. Within days, however, this attempt had collapsed, with the four instigating generals either surrendering to the authorities (Challe, Zeller) or going into hiding (Salan, Jouhaud).

It would appear that the publication of the tribune by Valeurs Actuelles on 21 April 2021 was intentional, as this date marked the sixtieth anniversary of the putsch. Indeed, the expression ‘quarteron de généraux’ (‘a foursome of generals’) previously employed by de Gaulle to describe the rebel generals, was reused by Agnes Pannier-Runacher, Minister for Industry, who labelled them a ‘foursome of generals in slippers’.²⁵ Mélenchon also spoke of the tribune in language reminiscent of the Algerian War. In his view, the generals were ‘factious’, ‘seditious’, ‘putschist’, and his characterisation of the tribune itself as a ‘military pronunciamento’ was a not-so-subtle regurgitation of de Gaulle’s famous rallying televised speech, in response to the generals’ putsch on 22 April 1961.

Historical comparisons to the Algerian War were not made exclusively by opponents of the tribunes, nor was the ‘putsch des généraux’ of 1961 the sole event of the war cited by those involved in the affair. Prior to a march organised by supporters of the tribunes, Fabre-Bernadac criticised the government’s commemoration of the Evian Accords: ‘How can we celebrate a defeat, a political and not a military one, agreements which the FLN have never respected’?²⁶ References to the Algerian War continued. Fabre-Bernadac noted that the government had acknowledged the role of the Harkis and the FLN but not that of French soldiers − 23,000 of whom died over the course of the conflict. Further, Fabre-Bernadac evoked ‘the reversals of Indochina, Algeria and Mali, en passant Afghanistan, disorienting the army and resulted in the deaths of servicemen’. The Tribune des Militaires affair provided ample evidence that the Algerian War and other wars of decolonisation continue to be topics capable of evoking strong responses in contemporary France.

In the aftermath of the 1961 putsch, the army underwent a further purge, with the most political officers being transferred, ‘put out to pasture’, forced to resign, or imprisoned for membership of the Organisation de l’Armée Secrète (Secret Army Organisation; OAS) or participation in the putsch. The Army’s radical new ‘revolutionary war doctrine’, which found great popularity among far-right organisations for its anti-communist worldview, was banned from French military schools, although it continued to have an influence on French internal security strategy, as demonstrated by Mathieu Rigouste.²⁷ Indeed, Rigouste argued that the French army and security forces have replaced the revolutionary Marxist with the ‘internal enemy’ of the immigrant/Islamist in doctrine, rhetoric which was repeated in the 2021 tribune.²⁸

With the experience of subordination and demoralisation following the Algerian War, the army once again became the Grande Muette. De Gaulle released those officers who had been imprisoned for insurrection in May 1968 during the height of the student uprising, when a potential deployment of the military to the streets was being considered.²⁹ The full re-integration of putschist officers remained though a thorny issue in French politics into the 1970s and 1980s. Ironically, it was François Mitterrand of the Socialist Party (Parti Socialiste) who spearheaded these efforts to rehabilitate factious officers and restore their pensions. While an attempt was made in 1974 to this effect, it failed to gain sufficient support.³⁰ Nevertheless, in March 1981 in the run-up to the presidential election, Mitterrand made the extraordinary decision to contact, through an intermediary, the aged general Raoul Salan, ex-leader of the OAS through an intermediary. This was done in order to elicit his support, along with that of the retired pro-French Algeria officers, for his election campaign in return for the promise of their re-integration into the army and full restoration of their pensions.³¹ In 1982, despite considerable resistance, Mitterrand fulfilled this promise.³² This did not, however, mean that civil-military relations were harmonious during Mitterrand’s tenure. On 3 May 1988, a group of general officers in the ‘second section’, led by the ex-Chief of Staff (CEMA) of the French military, François Maurin, penned a letter, published in Le Figaro, advocating for Presidential candidate Jacques Chirac.³³ In spite of this, the signatories of the 1988 letter escaped with just a reprimand.

The 1980s and 1990s saw the growth of the far-right political party Front National, founded and led by ex-paratrooper lieutenant, Jean-Marie Le Pen. This phenomenon took on new proportions from 2012 onwards, when his daughter, Marine Le Pen assumed control of the party and began a process of ‘de-stigmatisation’ (‘dédiabolisation’) which aimed to make it more palatable to mainstream French political opinion. A 2021 article by Le Monde claimed that forty per cent of military personnel voted for the far-right, which was corroborated by an earlier 2019 IFOP/Fondation Jean Jaures survey.³⁴ Far-right agitation and speculation in National-Catholic circles even led to fears of a coup d’état in 2013, to prevent the legislation for gay marriage.³⁵ An article published on the Revue de l’Arsenal website called for an army insurrection to counter the alleged ‘freemason’ cabinet of armed forces’ minister Jean Yves Le Drian.³⁶ Three high-ranking generals were described as supporters of the movement by the dissident publication: Generals Benoît Puga, chief of the military staff of the president of the republic (chef d‘état-major particulier), Pierre de Villiers, future chief of staff (chef d’état major des armées, CEMA) and Bruno Dary, ex- military governor of Paris. The article’s author hoped that these generals would rise up against the republican regime. General Dary referred to those who spoke of a putsch as ‘dreamers’. He continued: ‘I remind young officers that there were other painful episodes, it must be put in its context. We could ask what it served to have 20,000 French soldiers die in Algeria’.³⁷ It is interesting to note this reference to Algeria, thus demonstrating the longevity of its traumatic memory within the military. It further explains why political and media figures were quick to link the tribunes to the 1961 general’s putsch.

General de Villiers, former Chief of Staff of the French military, was subsequently involved in a political clash with President Emmanuel Macron shortly after his election in July 2017 in relation to defence cuts. It was speculated that de Villiers himself would run for election in 2022, but this did not materialise.³⁸ Interestingly, while acknowledging that the general was a ‘good man’, Captain Jean-Pierre Fabre-Bernadac, the main instigator of the tribunes, remarked that de Villiers had hesitated and thus lost a great opportunity to run for the presidency in 2022. He also questioned the logic of a supposedly patriotic French general joining a US multinational company, in reference to the General’s decision to sit on the board of the Boston Consulting Group in 2018.³⁹ In 2020, de Villiers gave several interviews warning of a possible civil war in France, just a few months before the release of Fabre-Bernadac’s first tribune des militaires, to be discussed in the next section.⁴⁰

The nationalist right and the rhetoric of the tribunes

‘So, ladies and gentlemen, enough procrastination, the hour is grave, the work is colossal; there is no time to lose and know that we are at the disposal of any politicians that care about the safeguarding of the nation.’⁴¹ Much has been written of the two tribunes which shook the French political scene in late-April–May 2021. Are the tribunes a call to military disobedience? Do they represent a growing putschist tendency in the French Army? Are they truly the regurgitation of far-right theses and presuppositions? Or are they, as claimed by Fabre-Bernadac and other signatories, simply an advanced warning to the French political class to take seriously the threat of civil war?⁴² To address these questions, repeatedly posed and debated in the media, an analysis of the tribunes is required.

The justifications for the public expression of the opinions of retired French military personnel is outlined in the opening paragraph or the first tribune: ‘We who, even in retirement, remain soldiers of France, cannot, in current circumstances, remain indifferent to the course of our beautiful country’.⁴³ In other words, their decision to express their opinion regarding the trajectory of France was prompted by the perceived gravity of the current situation. The letter attempted to legitimise their intervention through references to the two words gilded on French military banners: ‘honour and fatherland’.⁴⁴ For these retired officers and soldiers, it is therefore a matter of honour to speak out regarding the ‘disintegration’ of France.⁴⁵ It is interesting to note that the first type of ‘disintegration’ identified in the letter is that of ‘a certain anti-racism’, the main goal of which is to ‘create on our territory an ill-feeling, even a hatred, between communities’.⁴⁶ The tribune argues that these anti-racist theories, including the ‘racialist, nativist and decolonial’ forms, aim to sow division and stoke ‘racial war’ through the creation of ‘hateful and fanatical’ supporters.⁴⁷ Such hatred, they posit, is aimed at French culture, traditions and history, which they aim to sweep away. The tribune also referred to the attacks on statues, which had increased following the worldwide wave of protests led by Black Lives Matter and other ‘anti-racist’ groups. In France, several statues were vandalised or removed during 2020, including one of the famous French enlightenment philosopher Voltaire.⁴⁸

The second type of ‘disintegration’ described by the tribune is that of both ‘Islamism and the hordes of the suburbs (banlieue)’. In France the ‘banlieues’ are typically associated with socio-economic disadvantage and insecurity. Fabre-Bernadac commented that he could easily envisage how a CRS (Republican Security Companies, French riot police) officer, accidentally discharging his weapon during a confrontation in the banlieues resulting in fatalities, could degenerate into a full-blown civil war.⁴⁹ The pejorative ‘horde’ employed in the tribune is reminiscent of the barbarian invaders of the late Roman Empire. The tribune claims that an alliance between Islamists and the ‘hordes of the banlieues’, is creating areas within these banlieues where French law no longer applies, a reference to the phenomenon of ‘no-go zones’. Recent terror attacks were also mentioned, in particular the decapitation of teacher Samuel Paty by an Islamist. The tribune asked whether such an attack would have been conceivable ten years previously.⁵⁰

The most contentious paragraph of the first tribune, envisaged the threat of ‘an explosion and the intervention of our active-duty comrades in a dangerous mission to protect our civilisational values and compatriots on the national soil’, should the ‘laxity’ of the government’s response continue.⁵¹ The fiery conclusion to the tribune reached its crescendo with a stark warning: ‘We see it, it is no longer the time to procrastinate, for if not, tomorrow civil war will put an end to this growing chaos, and the death toll, for which you will be responsible, will be counted in the thousands’.⁵² The overall tone of the tribune, particularly towards its end, is undeniably alarmist. The use of terms such as ‘civilisational values’, while not exclusively the preserve of the far right, are certainly concepts frequently used by those politically right-wing.

The dramatic invocation of civil war and the prospect of intervention by the army to protect French civilisational values can be regarded as right-wing political viewpoints. As already discussed, Fabre-Bernadac dismissed such putschist connotations, insisted that the tribune aimed only to raise the alarm about the dangers facing France, and to exhort the current political class to act. He also claimed that the letter was not written with partisan politics in mind, but for the sake of France.⁵³ The ambiguity in the wording of the tribune around the phrase ‘intervention of our active-duty comrades’ allows for the possibility of plausible deniability with regards to possible military intervention.⁵⁴

Indeed, these ‘active-duty comrades’ subsequently published their own tribune. The introduction of the second tribune clarified that the goal was not to attack French political institutions, but to alert the public regarding the gravity of the situation in France. The document bemoaned the reaction to the first tribune both within sections of the media and the political establishment. They claimed that the authors of the first tribune had merely tried to act as whistle-blowers warning of the perilous condition of France. According to the signatories of the second tribune, the retired members of the military who had first spoken out, were not seditious traitors nor putschists, but patriots.

Of particular interest, is the discussion in the document of the issue of ‘Islamisation’. For the authors, the fight against Islamism is a constant one; from the deserts of Mali, where the French Army had been deployed between 2013–22 under the aegis of Operation Serval and then Operation Barkhane, to the streets of French cities with the deployment of troops to protect French civilians from terror attacks during Operation Sentinel (Opération Sentinelle). They also refer to the military fatalities incurred during these operations: ‘They sacrificed themselves to destroy the very Islamism that you now make concessions to on our own territory’.⁵⁵ The nature of these alleged concessions to Islamists by the French government is not explicitly outlined. Operation Sentinel, the tribune alleged, alerted active-duty soldiers to the ‘abandoned banlieues and accommodations with delinquency’.⁵⁶ Again, the polemic issue of the banlieues and sectarianism is raised, as well as a claim of growing ‘hatred of France and her history’, that the tribune describes as becoming ‘the norm’.⁵⁷

Significantly, the tribune turned the issue of the army’s politicisation on its head. It argued that as the army was ‘apolitical’, the tribune merely offered a professional analysis of the situation. Many service members had witnessed similar phenomena in countries where they had been deployed, which ‘preceded a collapse’, and marked the beginning of ‘chaos and violence’, which contrary to that assumed by Parly, Melenchon and others, would come from a ‘civil insurrection’ and not a ‘military pronunciamento’.⁵⁸ Indeed, this viewpoint was echoed by Fabre-Bernadac in an interview with the author.⁵⁹ This appears to clarify the tribunes’ position with regards to a military intervention, which in the first tribune, remained comparatively vague. The second tribune also responded to rebukes from the government and CEMA in relation to the ‘duty to impartiality’, and to comments by Jean Castex, deriding the signatories’ anonymity:

To quibble about the form that the tribune of our elders took instead of recognising the truth in their assertions, you must be a real coward. To invoke a poorly interpreted ‘duty to impartiality’ with the goal of silencing French citizens, you must be truly deceitful. To encourage the upper echelon of the army to take a position and expose themselves, before sanctioning them ferociously the minute that they start writing anything other than battle reports, you must be seriously perverted.⁶⁰

The second tribune clarified that in the event of a civil war, the army would uphold public order because it would be ordered to do so.⁶¹ The rhetoric on civil war was no less alarmist in the second tribune than that of the first tribune, lambasting the government: ‘civil war is brewing in France and you know this perfectly well’.⁶² In a strange reversal of historical symbolism, the tribune identified with the ‘resisters’ of Free France ‘who continued the fight while the legalists, frozen by fear, bet on concessions with evil to limit the damage’.⁶³ Clearly, the tribune regarded the refusal to acknowledge the current troubled state of France as analogous to support for Vichy. This also appears to contradict previous assurances that the army would not interfere politically, or commence a civil war, since the Free French-Vichy conflict is widely viewed as a French civil war.⁶⁴ It could also serve as a justification for military intervention: if France were menaced by evil (whether of Nazi or Islamist origin) then it would be legitimate for the army to act, despite its illegality. This juxtaposition of legality and legitimacy was notably advanced by Gaullists to justify the Free French cause and denigrate Vichy, which de Gaulle famously declared ‘null and void’. The tribune ended with an appeal to the government: ‘This time this is not about emotion on command or ready-made proposals or mediatisation. It is not about lengthening your mandates or conquering those of others. It is about the survival of our country, your country’.⁶⁵ Additionally, the article claimed that the army, rather than trying to assume political power, was simply alerting the public to the impending dangers facing France.

The nationalist right reaction and civil war discourse

‘They despise our country, her traditions, her culture, and want to see it dissolved by taking its past and history away from her.’⁶⁶ As discussed, the far right have often sought support within the military, proposing substantial funding and lauding the armed forces in their political programmes. An article published in the left-wing paper Libération in 1996 outlined how Jean-Marie le Pen, then leader of the FN, attempted to curry favour in military circles, by offering to increase the defence budget to five per cent of GDP. This came at a time of significant defence cuts under the Chirac presidency, in the wake of the end of the Cold War.⁶⁷ Further, the Socialist deputy Christian Doux raised concerns about the appeal of FN, Pétainist and Catholic fundamentalist rhetoric to many within the army. Indeed, the army is still regarded as a bastion of traditionalist Catholicism. It was under the leadership of Marine Le Pen that the FN has had the greatest success in winning over the military vote. She has achieved this through a policy of de-stigmatisation (dédiabolisation) of her party. This involved aligning her party more closely with Republican values and figures (such as de Gaulle, a former antagonist of her father), the exclusion of more radical FN members, and a rebranding of the party in 2018 as ‘Rassemblement national’ (National Rally).

Le Pen’s open support for the tribune is unsurprising as the army is a key demographic for the party. A 2019 study by the Jean Jaurès Foundation found that the share of the RN vote in those communes with a military garrison to be 7.9–17 per cent higher than that of each department as a whole.⁶⁸ The study argued that Operation Sentinel and terror attacks have had the effect of pivoting many within the military towards the RN.⁶⁹ This is nonetheless consistent with the historical leaning towards right wing parties and policies within the French military. However, Fabre-Bernadac was not optimistic that meaningful change in government policy would take place if the RN were to come to power. He predicted that in this event, hundreds of thousands of protesters on the streets and hostile reactions by other western governments would make it impossible for the party to govern. He argued that this would then force the RN to ‘normalise’ their policies, much like Italian Prime Minister and leader of Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia), Giorgia Melloni, had done.⁷⁰

Far-right news sources did not remain silent on the tribunes des militaires. In addition to Valeurs Actuelles, which published both tribunes, the eponymous journal of Action Française (AF), an ultra-right monarchist organisation founded in 1899, published several articles and opinion pieces on the subject. General Lecointre, the CEMA, attracted restrained criticism from AF. In one article, Lecointre was described as a ‘great soldier’ who had taken a stance against military mutism, who had even paid his respects to ex-CEMA Airforce General François Maurin (a signatory of the 1988 tribune) at his funeral in 2018.⁷¹ However, the article politely criticised General Lecointre’s reaction to the 2021 tribune, concluded with an appeal to readers not to regard the general as a traitor, and a rebuttal of Lecointre’s framing of the tribune: ‘General, sir, no there is not any risk of a putsch, but there is great pity in the kingdom of France’.⁷² Other independent commentators, such as General François Chauvancy, a psychological warfare expert and now researcher, more robustly opposed Lecointre’s legalism. In particular, Chauvancy contested the CEMA’s comments that a general would not have the necessary skills to be President of France, expressing doubt that a general would be less competent than a politician, such as Mélenchon, as head of state.⁷³

Jean-Yves Camus, a researcher at the Institut de Relations Internationales et Stratégiques (IRIS), remains unconvinced of any collaboration between the far right and the Army, for a number of reasons. The first is that the army now recruits from a wider and more diverse portion of the population than before.⁷⁴ Indeed, Fabre-Bernadac echoed this by pointing to the diverse religious and ethnic backgrounds of current French military personnel, insisting that this was not an issue.⁷⁵ Secondly, Camus argued that the duty of a soldier is to obey, irrespective of their political or religious leaning. Thirdly, Camus pointed to the overwhelmingly loyalist and republican nature of the French military. In support of this argument, he cited the historical example of the Armistice Army, claiming that many officers did not follow Pétain in his policy of collaboration.⁷⁶

There are several difficulties in relation to this assertion. A refusal to collaborate with Germany did not preclude far-right political opinions. In fact, most armistice and colonial officers serving under Vichy, while anti-collaborationist and anti-German, were nevertheless enthusiastic supporters of Marshal Pétain’s ‘National Revolution’, which saw a traditionalist, authoritarian and corporative system implemented in the Free Zone.⁷⁷ Additionally, Camus’ reference to the non-intervention of the army on 6 February 1934, to support his claim, failed to acknowledge the existence of the anti-Communist Corvignolles network within the French Army during the Cagoule crisis of the 1930s, which maintained informal ties to the Fascist terror organisation.⁷⁸ Indeed, researcher Stéphane François, in contrast to Camus, asserted that connections between the far right and the army date back to the beginning of the twentieth century.⁷⁹

There have been a number of scandals involving the infiltration of the military by far-right groups. This is not, however, a phenomenon unique to the French Army. The 2022 arrest of several active-duty Bundeswehr soldiers, including KSK special forces, allegedly members of the far-right monarchist ‘Reich citizen’ (Reichsbürger) movement, is one of several recent examples of insurrectional right-wing movements finding willing recruits within the ranks of the army.⁸⁰ In France, far-right group ‘Recolonisation France’ was dismantled with several members of the military, including a Gendarmerie colonel, arrested along with the seizure of 130 rifles, 200 kilos of ammunition and neo-Nazi documentation.⁸¹ Stéphane François outlined how far-right groups actively favour the outbreak of a racial civil war and that the recruitment of soldiers is a key step in preparing for this.⁸²

The far-right infiltration of the French military should not be overstated here. The tribunes were not so much a reflection of this infiltration but rather of the army’s historical tendency to lean to the right. The mainstreaming of civil war rhetoric can be seen as a response by both the nationalist right and even mainstream political parties (the centre-right Les Républicains and the centrist La République en Marche) to the series of terror attacks perpetrated since 2015 and the perceived growth of Islamism, sectarianism, polemics over culture and qualms over immigration. The tribunes clearly played on such fears. Additionally, the support of the RN, now the second most popular party in France, has helped to amplify and normalise such discourse. It has also presented the party with the opportunity to defend the army, which Le Pen, like her father in the past, was very willing to do. This allowed her to present the RN as defenders of the military and further shore up her support amongst active and retired service members.⁸³ The army’s next major battle may occur domestically. In many ways it is already underway with Operation Sentinel. The deployment of troops to patrol major French cities would have been dismissed as an unthinkably alarmist proposition prior to 2015.

The putschist intentions of the tribunes’ signatories have been widely discussed. But as pointed out by François, the instigators of a military putsch do not announce their intentions publicly in an open letter, in advance. Consequently, it can be concluded that the tribunes des militaires were never intended as a coup, coup in preparation, nor a pronunciamento. They were intended more as a warning to the government that the situation in France is becoming perilous and that action is needed. There are suggestions, however, within the tribunes that the military could independently intervene were the situation in relation to the banlieues or Islamist terrorism to degenerate to a point where the government was incapable of an effective response.

Undeniably, both tribunes are replete with warnings regarding impending civil war. These claims are not new, nor are they the exclusive preserve of the far right. Fear of such an internecine conflict has even been explored in popular media, with Netflix releasing a series called Athena, portraying a France on the edge of civil war, following the police killing of a thirteen-year-old in a banlieue. Indeed, Captain Fabre-Bernadac referred to this film in his interview with the author, describing the film’s portrayal of the situation in the banlieues as ‘very apt’ (‘très juste’).⁸⁴ The political mainstream has also voiced its concern in relations to civil conflict, including several members of Macron’s centrist party La République en Marche (The Republic on the Move, LREM). In an interview with Valeurs Actuelles (February 2018), former Minister of the Interior, Gérard Collomb predicted that in five years, France ‘could be beyond the point of no return’.⁸⁵ Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin used rhetoric similar to that of the tribune by warning about the ‘rewilding’ (‘ensauvagement’) of a section of the French population.⁸⁶ Indeed, following the 13 November 2015 attacks, Patrick Calvar, then head of internal French Intelligence (Direction genérale de Securité interieure, DGSI) declared to a parliamentary inquiry that the country was on the edge of civil war: ‘I think it will happen. One or two more attacks and it will come. Therefore, we have to anticipate and block all groups that would want at one time or another to begin intercommunity attacks’.⁸⁷ Similarly, General Pierre de Villiers raised the prospect of civil war in France, defining radical Islam as the enemy, with whom France was ‘at war’.⁸⁸ De Villiers also heavily criticised the laxity in modern democracies with their excess of self-gratification and individualism: ‘Our soft democracies, focused on immediate gratification, crazed individualism, and seeking purely individualist material pleasure, are in danger’.⁸⁹ According to the general, this trend emerged in French society in the aftermath of May 1968.⁹⁰

In an interview conducted by Telegram channel Gallia Daily, the views of an anonymous paratrooper officer, referred to as ‘Commandant François’, mirrored this belief that a civil war was almost inevitable.⁹¹ The commandant adopted an even more radical view of the threat of civil war than that of the tribune, claiming that the situation was more serious than that envisaged by its signatories. The anonymous commandant also claimed that both he and his colleagues had been wargaming potential civil war scenarios and believed that the French General Staff had prepared war plans for such an eventuality.⁹² Indeed, Fabre-Bernadac claimed that in November 2022, the French army conducted an exercise simulating a civil war scenario between the majority native population of ‘Country A’ and a minority residing in Country ‘A’, originally from Country ‘B’.⁹³ For Fabre-Bernadac, this is ample evidence that in spite of the government’s strong reaction to the tribunes, the threat of civil war is taken seriously. He also claimed that in mess halls, officers have often discussed what he saw as the current insecurity in France, and the disconnect between the military and political elites.⁹⁴ Indeed, right-wing 2022 Presidential candidate and polemical journalist and writer Éric Zenmour claimed in a book published in 2016 that the French high command did indeed have plans for such a possibility, named Operation Bramble (Općration Roncel).⁹⁵ Researcher Hacène Belmessous seemed to substantiate this in his 2010 book Opération Banlieues, comment l’état prépare la guerre urbaine dans les cités français, with the use of the military in this context having been considered under Nicholas Sarkozy.⁹⁶

‘Commandant François’ further claimed that the army could ‘solve the problem in ten days’, that ‘the country and her institutions could be purged within a month’, with just ‘a company of infantry needed to hold a ‘sensitive city’ (‘cité sensible’), a euphemism for parts of the suburbs associated with higher rates of crime), with only three judges required to ‘judge thousands of traitors’.⁹⁷ Commandant François concluded the interview by harshly castigating the ‘soft dreamers’ who believed in the possibility of ‘le vivre ensemble’ (i.e. cohabitation with other ethnic and cultural groups).⁹⁸ If this is a genuine source, it reflects the extreme end of political opinion within the army in relation to civil conflict.

A poll conducted by Harris Interactive found that fifty-eight per cent of Frenchmen and women surveyed endorsed the tribunes; eighty-six per cent believed that in certain towns and neighbourhoods, the laws of the republic were not being applied; eighty-four per cent agreed that violence is on the rise in France; seventy-four per cent believed that anti-racist discourse produces hatred between communities and seventy-three per cent supported the view that French society is falling apart.⁹⁹ What these figures demonstrate is that far from being a fringe minority, a significant minority of those polled believe the most controversial claim of the tribune to be true, i.e. that France is on the brink of civil war (forty-five per cent) and that the French army should intervene without government approval (forty-nine per cent). The majority are therefore generally sympathetic to the theses raised by the tribunes. The most likely reason for this is a combination of growing discontent with the rate and effects of immigration, high profile terror attacks since 2015 and the perception of French secularism coming under attack from Islamism. This potent combination of circumstances has helped to create an atmosphere allowing such alarmist pronouncements about civil war to resonate. Perhaps France’s characteristically polarised political landscape, coupled with the breakthrough of the RN explains why such discourse has been mainstreamed in France and not in other European countries with similar contexts, such as the United Kingdom, where the two-party system has remained intact.

Within the army, it is not possible to determine the extent of the support for the tribunes as no polls have been conducted among service members. The professional army’s legacy as a right-leaning institution would suggest that support across all ranks for the tribunes may be even higher than among the civilian population.

The importance of the 2021 tribune

What made the 2021 tribunes significant and distinguishes them from previous civil-military disputes since the Algerian War? The 2021 tribunes differed from the 1988 tribune, and perhaps justified comparisons with the 1961 putsch, in that they did not simply call for increased defence spending, or the backing of a presidential candidate, but raised the spectre of an ethnic civil war in France. This fear of civil conflict between immigrant and non-immigrant populations of the country has continued to grow since the terror attacks of 2015, as we have seen. The resulting climate of insecurity has brought into the mainstream theses that previously were the preserve of only the hard right. Additionally, as demonstrated in the previous section, these theses appear to enjoy the support of a significant proportion of the French population. Indeed, another element that differentiates the 1988 and 2021 tribunes is the ideological language employed in the latter. Rather than representing an almost purely political move to defend the institution of the French military, the second tribune was ideological in nature, and clearly represented the rhetoric of the nationalist right. It was alarmist, inflammatory and disparaging towards identified enemies, namely Islamism and the postmodern theories of anti-racism.¹⁰⁰ The 2021 tribune was therefore explicitly partisan, as it espoused this ideological language of the nationalist right. Indeed, the explicit support of Marine Le Pen and the RN further highlights the partisan nature of the tribunes.

For those who would dismiss these tribunes as the rantings of a few retired officers, it would be prudent to remember the historical example of the 1961 putsch des généraux: the four leading generals of that attempted coup were all retired high ranking generals.¹⁰¹ The politicised officers in Algeria, the infamous ‘soviet of colonels’, as then-Prime Minister Michel Debré described them, represented a minority of the French Army, and yet had a disproportionate influence. Similarly, the OAS’s military component contained a tiny minority who nevertheless managed to cause significant chaos in the closing years of the Algerian war. Given the presence of so many retired and active military signatories in both tribunes, it would be unwise to dismiss the tribunes as insignificant. Their public endorsement of such an energetic denunciation of government policy vis-à-vis the ethnic tensions in France, could be indicative of the strength of feeling within the military community. Additionally, the significance of so many retired superior officers signing and endorsing the tribune is that it legitimised its message. Furthermore, given that the prospect of civil war is a threat to national security, the generals and other ranks could justifiably present themselves as experts on the matter, having devoted their professional careers to the protection of the country. The second tribune, signed by active members of the military, provides further evidence that these views are shared across generations and ranks.

The tribunes were not a call to putsch, as claimed by so many political voices at the time of the scandal. Rather, they represented a clear threat to the government, that if the domestic situation in France were to deteriorate to the extent that ethnic, cultural, or religious tension boiled over into open conflict, that the army could take the political destiny of the country into its own hands. The last time it did so, emboldened by weak central government that had failed to curtail the growth of its political power, France came close to a civil war.¹⁰²

Conclusion

On the Place d’Armes website, Fabre-Bernadac continued the alarmist tone of the tribunes in his 2023 New Year’s letter. He described 2022 as an ‘annus horribilis’ for France, citing increased immigration and delinquency, poor economic performance, energy price increases, the collapse of French diplomatic influence, and even commented on the ‘infantile behaviour’ of the French president at the 2022 World Cup final in Qatar. He also expressed the wish that the focus of 2023 would be on a campaign entitled ‘Let’s save France’.¹⁰³ Those responsible for the tribunes des militaires have continued to publish articles and polemics lambasting the French political establishment with increasing energy and vitriol. Indeed, Fabre-Bernadac revealed that he intended to hold a ‘French pride march’ on 13 May 2023. The date was chosen by him to remind the French public that the Fifth Republic had been founded by a coup d’état (which began on 13 May 1958), which brought de Gaulle to power in May 1958, a fact that he believes is not widely known.¹⁰⁴ Moreover, because of the uproar caused by the publication of the first tribune on the sixtieth anniversary of the putsch des généraux (21 April 1961), Fabre-Bernadac’s choice of the 13 May was a deliberate one. The legacy of the foundational moment of the Fifth Republic is significantly more complex, and in many ways remains a taboo subject in France. The proposed 13 May 2023 march did not proceed, however, as the Paris Prefecture of Police failed to provide approval in advance of the date.

The tribunes have once more displayed the political leanings within sections of the French Army. Indeed, Fabre-Bernadac opined that one cannot be a French soldier without loving the French nation.¹⁰⁵ The tribunes can be described as being emblematic of the nationalist right as they employ its characteristic language and themes and were the inspiration of a former member of the Front National. The analysis depicted by the tribunes is supported not only by the far right, but also apparently by a significant proportion of French citizens. With fifty-eight per cent of the French population seemingly supporting the message of the tribunes, and several members of the political administration having mirrored its rhetoric in the past, it is clear that these ideas have broken into the mainstream. This appears to be largely due to growing internal insecurity in France. The authors have achieved their objective of alerting the French public to the threat of civil war, thanks largely to their high-profile interventions and the political and media storm that ensued. The tribunes were neither an overt threat of a military putsch, nor a politically neutral warning. It remains an open question as to whether the dire predictions of the tribunes and of several high-ranking politicians and generals will materialise. What is perhaps most worrying, is that so many among them regard civil war to be a possibility.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Cian Cooney

Cian Cooney is a PhD Candidate at Trinity College Dublin, conducting research on the far right and the army’s fight to maintain French control over Algeria during the Algerian War (1954–1962). His research interests include revolutionary warfare, the post-war far right, geopolitics and war studies.

Notes

1 All quotations in French have been translated into English by the author. The tribune was published online by Valeurs Actuelles on 21 April 2021 after having been originally posted to the website of Place d’Armes, an association for French military veterans of which Fabre-Bernadac is the President. ‘Pour un retour de l’honneur de nos gouvernants: 20 généraux appellent Macron à défendre le patriotisme’, Valeurs Actuelles, 21 April 2021, <https://www.valeursactuelles.com/politique/pour-un-retour-de-lhonneur-de-nos-gouvernants-20-generaux-appellent-macron-a-defendre-le-patriotisme/>. [accessed 13 January 2023].

2 ‘Le passé sulfureux de Fabre-Bernadac, ancien officier de gendarmerie à l’origine de la tribune des généraux’, L’Essor de la Gendarmerie, 26 April 2021, <https://lessor.org/societe/le-passe-sulfureux-de-jean-pierre-fabre-bernadac-le-gendarme-a-lorigine-de-la-tribune-des-generaux>. [accessed 13 January 2023].

3 ‘Marine Le Pen: “Messieurs les généraux, rejoignez-moi dans la bataille pour la France”‘, Valeurs Actuelles, 23 April 2021, <https://www.valeursactuelles.com/politique/marine-le-pen-messieurs-les-generaux-rejoignez-moi-dans-la-bataille-pour-la-france> [accessed 13 January 2023]; ‘Marine Le Pen applaudit la tribune controversée d’anciens militaires publiée dans “Valeurs actuelles”‘, Le Monde, 26 April 2021, <https://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2021/04/26/marine-le-pen-applaudit-la-tribune-des-anciens-militaires-publiee-dans-valeurs-actuelles_6078123_823448.html> [accessed 15 January 2023].

4 ‘Full interview: French President Emmanuel Macron on “Face the Nation”‘, YouTube, April 2021, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGBWkWkOFxI> [accessed 20 February 2023]. Note: this is not available in all countries.

5 ‘Pour un retour de l’honneur de nos gouvernants’.

6 ‘La véritable histoire de la tribune des militaires’, Valuers Actuelles, 12 May 2021, <https://www.valeursactuelles.com/politique/la-veritable-histoire-de-la-tribune-des-militaires> [accessed 16 January 2023].

7 ‘Chronique d’un procès en sorcellerie’, Valeurs Actuelles, May 2021, 17–18.

8 Jean-Pierre Fabre-Bernadac, interview with the author, 8 March 2023.

9 ‘Tribune de militaires dans Valeurs Actuelles: “C’est une insulte jetée à la figure de milliers de militaires”, estime Florence Parly’, France Info, 26 April 2021, <https://www.francetvinfo.fr/politique/marine-le-pen/tribune-de-militaires-dans-valeurs-actuelles-c-est-une-insulte-jetee-a-la-figure-de-milliers-de-militaires-estime-florence-parly_4387191.html> [accessed 20 January 2023].

10 Jean-Luc Mélénchon, Twitter thread, 27 April 2021, <https://twitter.com/JLMelenchon/status/1386715178524413956>.

11 Général de corps d’armée (ER) Christian Piquemal, ‘Lettre ouverte adressée au général d’armée François LECOINTRE Chef d’Etat-Major des Armées (CEMA)’, 30 April 2021, Theatrum Belli, 2 May 2021, <https://liguedumidi.com/lettre-ouverte-adressee-au-general-darmee-francois-lecointre/> [accessed 23 March 2024].

12 Ibid.

13 ‘RAPPORT FAIT au nom de la commission des Affaires étrangères, de la défense et des forces armées sur le projet de loi, ADOPTÉ PAR L’ASSEMBLÉE NATIONALE, portant statut général des militaires’, Le Sénat, 26 January 2005, <https://www.senat.fr/rap/l04-154/l04-15420.html#:∼:text=La%20deuxi%C3%A8me%20section%20se%20d%C3%A9finit,du%20ministre%20de%20la%20d%C3%A9fense.> [accessed 2 February 2023].

14 Jean-Pierre Maulny, ‘La lettre ouverte à nos gouvernants des militaires: la France, l’armée et l’extrême droite’, Rosa Luxembourg Stiftung (2021), 5.

15 ‘Avec le général Piquemal, l’extrême droite s’est trouvé une icône quatre étoiles’, France Info, 9 February 2016, <https://www.francetvinfo.fr/france/hauts-de-france/migrants-a-calais/avec-le-general-piquemal-l-extreme-droite-s-est-trouve-une-icone-quatre-etoiles_1305496.html> [accessed 16 January 2023].

16 ‘La véritable histoire de la tribune des militaires’.

17 Jean-Pierre Fabre-Bernadac, interview with the author, 8 March 2023.

18 ‘Nouvelle tribune de militaires: Jean Castex évoque un texte “politique d’extrême droite”‘, Le Parisien, 10 May 2021, <https://www.leparisien.fr/politique/nouvelle-tribune-de-militaires-jean-castex-evoque-un-texte-politique-dextreme-droite-10-05-2021-VBWERRAKBBGKLLOHPS2COL7JSI.php> [accessed 17 January 2023].

19 ‘Tribune des militaires: 6 généraux convoqués par le ministère des Armées’, Le Point, 16 June 2021, https://www.lepoint.fr/politique/tribune-des-militaires-6-generaux-convoques-par-le-ministere-des-armees-12-06-2021-2430681_20.php#11> [accessed 2 February 2023].

20 Jean-Pierre Fabre-Bernadac, interview with the author, 8 March 2023.

21 ‘Pour un retour de l’honneur de nos gouvernants’.

22 Jean Guisnel, Les Généraux – Enquête sur le pouvoirs Militaire en France (Paris: La Découverte Enquêtes, 1990), 272.

23 Guisnel, 181.

24 For more on the May 1958 crisis and Operation Resurrection: Christopher Nick, Résurrection (Paris: Fayard, 1998).

25 Previously the terms ‘foursome of generals’ and ‘military pronunciamento’ had been employed during the Spanish Civil War to describe the four main generals of the military directorate that launched the coup against the newly-elected left-wing government of the Spanish Second Republic: ‘Tribune de militaires dans “Valeurs Actuelles”: Agnès Pannier-Runacher fustige “un quarteron de généraux en charentaises qui appellent au soulèvement”‘ France Info, 26 April 2021, <https://www.francetvinfo.fr/politique/front-national/video-tribune-de-militaires-dans-valeurs-actuelles-agnes-pannier-runacher-fustige-un-quarteron-de-generaux-en-charentaises-qui-appellent-au-soulevement_4386783.html> [accessed 18 January 2023].

26 ‘Tribune des militaires: les organisateurs prévoient une marche le 26 mars à Paris’, Valeurs Actuelles, 1 March 2022, <https://www.valeursactuelles.com/societe/tribune-des-militaires-les-organisateurs-prevoient-une-marche-le-26-mars-a-paris> [accessed 29 March 2023]. For a critique of de Gaulle’s handling of the Algerian War: Henri-Christian Giraud, Algérie: le piège Gaulliste. Histoire secrète de l’indépendance (Paris: Perrin, 2022).

27 Mathieu Rigouste, L’ennemi intérieur: la généalogie coloniale et militaire de l’ordre sécuritaire dans la France contemporaine (Paris: La Découverte, 2014).

28 Ibid.

29 Jean Lacouture, De Gaulle T3: Le Souverain (Paris: Sueil, 1986), 692–3.

30 Guisnel, 68–9.

31 Ibid., 69–70.

32 ‘Rapport fait au nom de la commission des lois constitutionnelles, de la législation et de l’administration générale de la République (1) sur le projet de loi (no. 1124) relatif au règlement de certains conséquences des évènements d’Afrique du Nord’, La Contemporaine, Fonds Jacques Delarue, F/DELTA/RES/896/2.

33 Guisnel, 60–1.

34 ‘Quatre militaires sur dix votent pour l’extrême droite’, Le Monde, 30 April 2021, <https://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2021/04/30/quatre-militaires-sur-dix-votent-pour-l-extreme-droite_6078648_823448.html> [accessed 10 February 2023].

35 ‘Quand une revue d’extrême droite rêve d’un putsch militaire’, Le Monde, 7 June 2013, <https://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2013/06/07/quand-une-revue-d-extreme-droite-reve-d-un-putsch-militaire_3426078_823448.html> [accessed 10 February 2023].

36 Ibid.

37 Ibid.

38 ‘Présidentielle 2022: 20% des Français prêts à voter pour le général de Villiers’, Le Figaro, 20 November 2020, <https://www.lefigaro.fr/politique/presidentielle-2022-20-des-francais-prets-a-voter-pour-le-general-de-villiers-20201120> [accessed 10 March 2023].

39 ‘Pierre de Villiers rejoint le géant américain Boston Consulting Group’, Les Echos, 22 March 2018, <https://www.lesechos.fr/2018/03/pierre-de-villiers-rejoint-le-geant-americain-boston-consulting-group-987316#4ckCkBPTf3LgVKIr.99> [accessed 27 February 2024]; Jean-Pierre Fabre-Bernadac, interview with the author, 8 March 2023.

40 ‘Général de Villiers: “Ma crainte, c’est la guerre civile”‘, Le Figaro, 6 December 2020, <https://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/general-de-villiers-ma-crainte-c-est-la-guerre-civile-20201206> [accessed 10 February 2023].

41 ‘Pour un retour de l’honneur de nos gouvernants’.

42 Jean-Pierre Fabre-Bernadac, interview with the author, 8 March 2023.

43 Ibid.

44 Ibid.

45 ‘Délitement’ in French.

46 ‘Pour un retour de l’honneur de nos gouvernants’.

47 Ibid.

48 ‘À Paris, le retour de la statue de Voltaire se fait longuement attendre’, Le Figaro, 10 July 2022, <https://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/a-paris-le-retour-de-la-statue-de-voltaire-se-fait-longuement-attendre-20220710> [accessed 10 March 2023].

49 Jean-Pierre Fabre-Bernadac, interview with the author, 8 March 2023.

50 ‘Pour un retour de l’honneur de nos gouvernants’.

51 Ibid.

52 Ibid.

53 Jean-Pierre Fabre-Bernadac, interview with the author, 8 March 2023.

54 When questioned on this issue, Fabre-Bernadac categorically ruled out any possibility of a military intervention in the political sphere, claiming that any potential initiative would not come from the armed forces: Jean-Pierre Fabre-Bernadac, interview with the author, 8 March 2023.

55 ‘[Exclusif] Signez la nouvelle tribune des militaires’, Valeurs Actuelles, 11 May 2021, <https://www.valeursactuelles.com/societe/exclusif-signez-la-nouvelle-tribune-des-militaires> [accessed 20 January 2023].

56 Ibid.

57 Ibid.

58 Ibid.

59 Jean-Pierre Fabre-Bernadac, interview with the author, 8 March 2023.

60 ‘Signez la nouvelle tribune des militaires’.

61 Ibid.

62 Ibid.

63 Ibid.

64 Henri Rousso, The Vichy Syndrome: History and Memory in France since 1944 (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1991), 6, 8. The first time that the Free French forces fought against non-Frenchmen was not until two years into the war at the battle of El-Alamein. Robert O. Paxton, L’armée de Vichy: le corps des officiers français 1940–44, (Paris: Tallandier, 2004),152.

65 ‘Signez la nouvelle tribune des militaires’.

66 ‘Pour un retour à l’honneur de nos gouvernants’.

67 ‘L’extrême droite investit les casernes’, Libération, 2 May 1996, <https://www.liberation.fr/evenement/1996/05/02/l-extreme-droite-investit-les-casernes_172715/> [accessed 1 February 2023].

68 ‘Pour qui votenet les casernes’, Fondation Jean Jaurès, 15 July 2019, <https://www.jean-jaures.org/publication/pour-qui-votent-les-casernes/> [accessed 2 February 2023].

69 Ibid.

70 Jean-Pierre Fabre-Bernadac, interview with the author, 8 March 2023.

71 ‘Expliquer, sans approuver, la réaction du Général Lecointre’, Action Française, 18 May 2021, <https://www.actionfrancaise.net/2021/05/18/expliquer-sans-approuver-la-reaction-du-general-lecointre/>. General François Maurin served as Chief of Staff of the French Army between 1971–5. [accessed 2 February 2023].

72 Ibid.

73 ‘Que penser du départ prématuré du chef d’état-major des armées François Lecointre? Un échec personnel ou simplement l’usure de la fonction? ‘ Theatrum Belli, 15 June 2021, <https://theatrum-belli.com/que-penser-du-depart-premature-du-chef-detat-major-des-armees-francois-lecointre-un-echec-personnel-ou-simplement-lusure-de-la-fonction/> [accessed 2 March 2023].

74 ‘Tribune de militaires dans “Valeurs Actuelles”: “L’intervention de l’armée est un vieux fantasme d’extrême droite”‘, 20 minutes, 27 April 2021, <https://www.20minutes.fr/politique/3030207-20210427-tribune-militaires-valeurs-actuelles-intervention-armee-vieux-fantasme-extreme-droite>. [accessed 23 March 2024].

75 Rather, Fabre-Bernadac pointed to the proliferation of ‘woke’ ideology as one of the main targets of the tribunes: Jean-Pierre Fabre-Bernadac, interview with the author, 8 March 2023.

76 ‘Tribune de militaires dans “Valeurs Actuelles”: “L’intervention de l’armée est un vieux fantasme d’extrême droite”‘.

77 Paxton, L’armée de Vichy.

78 Jean-Raymond Tournoux, L’histoire secrète: la Cagoule, le Front populaire Vichy; Londres; Deuxième Bureau; l’Algérie française; l’O.A.S, (Famot: Geneva, 1976), 27.

79 ‘Pourquoi y a-t-il autant de militaires dans les groupes d’ultradroite?’, Slate, 6 December 2021, <https://www.slate.fr/story/220095/pourquoi-souvent-militaires-officiers-gendarmes-groupes-ultradroite-terrorisme-extreme-droite>, [accessed 19 January 2023].

80 ‘KSK: German army elite force and its links to the far-right’, Deutsche Welle, 13 December 2021, <https://www.dw.com/en/ksk-german-army-elite-force-has-a-history-of-links-to-the-far-right/a-56964218>, [accessed 20 January 2023].

81 ‘Pourquoi y a-t-il autant de militaires dans les groupes d’ultradroite?’.

82 Ibid.

83 Indeed, the defence of the army has been a rallying cry for many far-right parties and movements since the Dreyfus Affair.

84 Jean-Pierre Fabre-Bernadac, interview with the author, 8 March 2023.

85 ‘Gérard Collomb sur l’insécurité et l’immigration’.

86 ‘Gérald Darmanin: “Il faut stopper l’ensauvagement d’une partie de la sociét锑, Le Figaro, 24 July 2020, <https://www.lefigaro.fr/politique/gerald-darmanin-il-faut-stopper-l-ensauvagement-d-une-partie-de-la-societe-20200724> [accessed 2 February 2023].

87 ‘“La nouvelle guerre d’Algérie n’aura pas lieu”: réponse au spectre de la guerre civile’, Le Monde, 18 January 2017, <https://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2017/01/18/la-nouvelle-guerre-d-algerie-n-aura-pas-lieu-reponse-au-spectre-de-la-guerre-civile_5992906_823448.html> [accessed 1 February 2023], ‘Le patron de la DGSI évoque un pays “au bord d’une guerre civile”‘, L’Express, 22 June 2016, <https://www.lexpress.fr/societe/le-patron-de-la-dgsi-evoque-un-pays-au-bord-d-une-guerre-civile_1804877.html> [accessed 1 February 2023].

88 ‘Nous sommes assis sur un volcan’, Valeurs Actuelles, November 2020, 22.

89 Ibid., 24.

90 This critique not only shares common ground with that of written warnings by officers during the Algerian War who viewed ‘individualism’ and ‘atomisation’ as part of a communist plan to ‘subsume the West’ and demoralise her inhabitants through psychological action. During the Algerian War, a conference hosted by the Pacification and Counter-Guerrilla Training Centre (Centre d’instruction à la pacification et à la contre-guérilla, CIPCG) discussed how urban living, lack of community and loneliness led to the end of ‘objective values’ of ‘good and bad’. This was argued be a consequence of the ‘rupture of tradition’ and a ‘de-christianised Europe’, topics of discussion which remain popular amongst the right and far right: Pourquoi la guerre psychologique est-elle possible?, (S)ervice (H)istorique de la (D)éfense GR 1H 1115 D1.

91 ‘“La guerre civile est inevitable” selon un officier français’, Gallia Daily Telegram channel 9 May 2021 <https://telegra.ph/La-guerre-civile-est-in%C3%A9vitable-selon-un-officier-fran%C3%A7ais-05-09> [accessed 1 February 2023].

92 Ibid.

93 Jean-Pierre Fabre-Bernadac, interview with the author, March 2023.

94 Ibid.

95 ‘Le mirage d’une intervention’, Valeurs Actuelles, May 2021, 21.

96 Ibid., 21.

97 ‘“La guerre civile est inévitable” selon un officier français’.

98 Ibid.

99 ‘Réaction des Français à la Tribune des Militaires dans Valeurs Actuelles’, Harris Interactives, 29 April 2021, <https://harris-interactive.fr/opinion_polls/reactions-des-francais-a-la-tribune-des-militaires-dans-valeurs-actuelles/> [accessed 2 July 2023].

100 The 1988 tribune did not contain ideological language, but rather saw François Mitterrand’s plans for the military as threatening France’s security.

101 Generals Raoul Salan and Maurice Challe had been Commander-in-Chief in Algeria, André Zeller had been Chief of Staff of the French Army, while Edmond Jouhaud had been Chief of Staff of the Air Force.

102 The government’s failure to prosecute any of the generals of the second section, despite its earlier aggressive response could be interpreted as a fear of further damaging civil-military relations.

103 ‘Vœux 2023 du Président de Place d’Armes’, Place d’Armes, 1 January 2023, <https://www.place-armes.fr/post/v%C5%93ux-2023-du-pr%C3%A9sident-de-place-d-armes> [accessed 11 March 2023].

104 Fabre-Bernadac confessed that the choosing of this date was tongue-in-cheek, as it was also his birthday: Jean-Pierre Fabre-Bernadac, interview with the author, 8 March 2023.

105 Ibid.