Gabriel Jeantet
| Gabriel Jeantet | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1906 |
| Died | 1978 |
| Known for | Far right activist |
| Political party |
Action Française Ordre Nouveau |
| Movement |
La Cagoule Party of New Forces |
| Relatives | Claude Jeantet (brother) |
Gabriel Jeantet (1906–1978) was a French far right activist, journalist and polemicist. Active before, during and after the Second World War, Jeantet's links to François Mitterrand became a source of controversy during the latter's Presidency. His brother Claude Jeantet was also a far right activist.
Jeantet's early political involvement was with the ultra-conservative Action Française and he served as a student leader for this group. He joined La Cagoule when the movement was established, citing his fear of an imminent communist revolution as the main reason for his decision to join.
As the group's main theoretic writer during its existence, Jeantet sought to steer the group towards a socialist economic position, arguing in 1942 in favour of a "national and socialist revolution" similar to that associated with Strasserism. This was despite the fact that Jeantet was fully aware of La Cagoule being funded by wealthy industrialists such as Jacques Lemaigre-Dubreuil and Louis Renault, all of whom despised the concept of socialism. Ultimately Jeantet and La Cagoule leader Eugène Deloncle came to endorse a form of national syndicalism in which corporatist trade unions involving workers and management would be central to a planned economy.
As well as his extensive writing on behalf of La Cagoule Jeantet also played a leading in gun-running for the organisation, smuggling weapons into France from like-minded groups Fascist Italy and Nationalist Spain, as well as Belgium and Switzerland.
Following the Battle of France and the establishment of the Vichy Regime Jeantet, who became a supporter of collaboration with the Nazis, was brought into Philippe Pétain's government as inspecteur général à la propagande. However, when his initial enthusiasm for collaboration waned, due in large part to the high degree of control exercised by the occupying Germans, Jeantet followed the lead of Deloncle in resigning from the Vichy government in 1942. He would later make contact with the French Resistance, such was his disillusionment with Nazism.
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