ABSTRACT
If the Algerian War marked the high point of extreme-right activism in post-war France, the years following it were once again those of disorientation and bitter recrimination. This was also a period of disintegration as the various ‘fronts’ which had coalesced to defend French Algeria fragmented. While there was a war to prosecute, the immediacy of the cause promoted action over ideology. In the wake of the Evian Agreements, extreme-right groups found themselves challenged to redefine their ideological raison d’être – and, in so doing, to reassert their old divisions. In responding to this challenge, these groups fell broadly into three categories: those which groped instinctively for the ideas that had epitomised extreme-right thinking in the post-Vichy years; those which sought to combine these ideas with undying commitment to Algérie Française; and those which resolved now to reset their ideological compass, taking account of the new domestic and global realities of the early 1960s.
