ABSTRACT
This chapter is an examination of the ideas of two major French fascist writers and theorists of the Thirties (one stemming from the Action Française tradition, the other taking a far more universal fascist line) and of their differing ways of placing French fascism within the European context. It also offers an assessment of the fluctuation in their ideas according to changing circumstances in interwar and wartime France. In some respects, they typify the difference between two traditions. In others, we perceive the extent to which, by the Thirties, these could overlap. They also had, however, a basic difference of emotional approach to fascism, with Brasillach full of youthful enthusiasm, sentimentalism and joy, and Drieu pessimistically seeing fascism as merely one possibility for escaping the mediocrity of modern society.
