Tag: Vichy

Family Values Fascism, from Vichy to Donald Trump

Fascists often soften their call for national purification and the deportation of alien elements with invocations of family values. In 1942, as the Vichy regime began handing over the foreign-born Jews of France to the Nazis, it made the decision to deport their children (about six thousand) with them. In order to fulfill the Nazis’ quota—but also, Vichy proclaimed, to keep the families together. At the time, Robert Brasillach wrote, “We must separate from the Jews en bloc and not keep any little ones.” Defending his position after the liberation of France, he explained: “I even wrote that women must not be separated from children and that we must arrive at a human solution to the problem.” A month later, he doubled-down on the notion that family values might somehow soften his fascism: I […]