Christian Bouchet | |
|---|---|
.JPG) Bouchet in 2012 | |
| Born | (1955-01-17)17 January 1955 (age 70) Angers,Maine-et-Loire, France |
| Occupation(s) | Journalist, politician |
Christian Bouchet (French pronunciation:[kʁistjɑ̃buʃɛ]; born 17 January 1955) is a Frenchfar-right journalist and politician.
Coming from a far-right family with monarchist andOrganisation armée secrète links, in 1970 Bouchet joined the monarchist groupRestauration nationale, and, in 1971, a member ofNouvelle Action française which was a split (called in France a "Mao-maurrassien" group) of the former.[1]
In 1973, he served in theOrganisation lutte du peuple, a nationalist revolutionary splitter group of the far-right movementOrdre Nouveau intended to defend the nationalist movements of the Third World, particularly the Arab states opposed toZionism and what they perceived as American imperialism. He subsequently became a member ofFrançois Duprat'sGroupes nationalistes révolutionnaires and of theRevolutionary Nationalist Movement [fr] (Mouvement nationaliste révolutionnaire) ofJean-Gilles Malliarakis[2] After a spell in theTroisième Voie he set upNouvelle Résistance in 1991, whilst also refounding the European Liberation Front.[3] This group was absorbed byUnité Radicale in 1998. He then went on to lead the study groupRéseau Radical which emphasisedanti-Zionism[4] and after that the association Les Nôtres. He also led the 'radical' tendency within theNational Republican Movement and has sat on its national council. Bouchet, who was an exponent of theThird Position until 1990, was later influenced byAleksandr Dugin and advocatedNational Bolshevism and thenEurasianism.
After declaring that he had broken with his former activism, he joined theFront National in 2008 and became a local branch leader from October 2010 to May 2011 and from March 2013 onwards.[5] He has been a Front National candidate in every election since 2008 and in 2013, the Front National chose him to lead its list for the municipal elections inNantes (the 6th town of France).[6][7] He is the father of Gauthier Bouchet, the FN municipal councillor of Saint-Nazaire.
He published journals likeLutte de Peuple andRésistance which focused onultra-nationalist and anti-Zionist themes. He owned the publishing house Ars magna and Avatar which published volumes ofSavitri Devi,Jean-François Thiriart,Francis Parker Yockey,Gabriele d'Annunzio,Aleksandr Dugin and others.[8]
In the original edition of his bookHitler's Priestess, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke wrote that Bouchet has been associated withNazi mysticism and that, whilst spending a year inIndia, he met Savitri Devi to studyKali Yuga and her ideas aboutAdolf Hitler as anAvatar.[9] These claims did not however appear in theFrench language edition of the same work.[10] In the postscript to the bookLe national-socialisme et la tradition indienne, Bouchet claimed that Goodrick-Clarkes's allegations were false, that he had met Savitri Devi only once and considered her to be acrank, and that he has no personal interest in Nazi mysticism.[11] Bouchet, who claims he is not an Islamophobe, has advocated a closer link between European nationalist groups and Muslim traditionalists.[12]
Christian Bouchet wrote a doctoral thesis in anthropology in theUniversity Paris Diderot onAleister Crowley and has written many books about extremist involvement in politics and religion.[13]
