Scholars see that as a tactic to funnel extreme and separatist frustrations caused by an economic disparity between European settlers and the local Algerian people.

It organised popular demonstrations in reaction to the Stavisky Affair in the hope of overthrowing the Second Cartel des gauches, a left-wing coalition government.

Along with Volontaires Nationaux and others, the Croix de Feu used the political developments in Metropolitan France like the election of Léon Blum, a Jewish Prime Minister, and the Popular Front to inflame anti-Semitic sentiment in the colony.

The 1936 elections saw the victory of anti-Semitic municipal governments, boycotts against Jewish business (heavily promoted by the Radical Party newspaper Le Republicain de Constantine) and physical violence and attacks against Jews.

As one of the most essential paramilitary associations and because of its anti-Semitic position, the Croix-de-Feu and La Rocque were considered by the political left to be among the most dangerous imitators of Mussolini and Hitler.

[citation needed] However, as a result of La Rocque's actions during the riots, it subsequently lost prestige among the far-right before it was dissolved by the Popular Front government on 18 June 1936.

Historians now consider that he paved the way for the French Christian democratic parties: the postwar Popular Republican Movement (MRP) and the Gaullist Rally for France.

In the 1968 third edition of "La droite en France", his major work[9] he defines fascism in Europe as a revolt of the declassés, a movement of those on half-pay, civilian and military.

[10] The Israeli historian Zeev Sternhell, on the other hand, has argued for the existence of a native French fascism and for groups like the Cercle Proudhon of the mid-to-late 1910s being among the more important ideological breeding grounds of the movement.

Robert Brasillach called them "old cuckolds of the right, these eternal deceived husbands of politics.." and claimed that "the enemies of national restoration are not only on the left but first and foremost on the right.l".

1, the chief potential French March-on-Romer" but added that he was "a rather pallid Fascist", did not attempt to seize power during the 6 February riots and peacefully complied with the government's ban of the Croix de Feu.

[14] Other scholars, such as Robert Soucy and William D. Irvine, argue that the La Rocque and the Croix de Feu were in fact fascist and a particularly "French" fascism.

La Rocque, however, if tempted by a paramilitary aesthetic and initially advocating collaboration with the Germans during the Second World War, finally came out against the more radical supporters of Nazi Germany.