Until 1914, the propaganda of the “Action Française” – a nationalist then a monarchist movement, born out of the Dreyfus affair – mainly targeted the Jewish “internal enemy”. But during the First World War, the League’s daily newspaper, L’Action française, managed by Léon Daudet and Charles Maurras, largely respected the “Union sacrée”, notwithstanding the occasional infringement on the principle, and it thus extended its influence over a large part of right-wing and extreme right-wing opinion. The “well-born Jew”, who paid the “blood-tax” in serving France was accepted as meritorious, and the doctrine of “Integral Nationalism” even made room for him. Antisemitism, for its part, swiftly became reconsidered from the “external” gauge of the Bolshevik Revolution – which was seen by the right as a “Jewish thing”. Before its exceptional social and political danger, assimilated French Jews – “Israelites”, as they were called – saw themselves further revalued, their loyalty to France counted upon by the League.
But if moderation of its former Antisemitism is obvious until the start of the Thirties, does this mean that the anti-Jewish conceptions of Maurras and his friends had really changed their nature? In truth, while the immediate context did not lend itself to classic anti-Dreyfusard Antisemitism, Jew-baiting nonetheless retained an important and symbolic place in the movement, as evidenced by the Schrameck affair in 1925. After 1936, the AF took up with its former pre-War tone, carrying on an extremely violent propaganda campaign against Léon Blum and the threat of a “Jewish war”. Under the Occupation, the newspaper supported Vichy Antisemitic policy, which itself was widely inspired by the theory of the “State Antisemitism”. This support, radical and never satisfied, goes against the legend of maurrassian Antisemitism being considered “reasonable and moderate”.