Jean Pol Yves Jacques Mabire was born in Paris on 8 February 1927,[1] to a bourgeois family originally from Vire, Normandy.

[2] In 1949, at the age of 22, Mabire created the regionalist magazine Viking and in 1951 left Paris to settle in Cherbourg, Normandy, where he founded a graphic arts workshop.

[5] Between 1963 and 1965, he wrote articles in Philippe Héduy's L'Esprit public, and was a contributor in Cahiers universitaires, the magazine of the Federation of Nationalist Students (FEN).

In 1965, he was part of the grassroots committees of far-right presidential candidate Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour, and wrote in January a book to explain his endorsement.

[8] His shift towards the radical right was confirmed in many articles Mabire published in Le Spectacle du Monde, Valeurs Actuelles or Minute.

[2][6] In 1968, Mabire became a founding member of the Mouvement Normand,[9] and the following year he helped Georges Bernage establish Heimdal, a regionalist magazine and intellectual successor of Viking.