Maurrassisme in Argentina

[4] Aside from strictly orthodox maurrassistes and those who can not be classified in any particular tradition, the Argentine variant of the movement can be roughly divided in two main schools or "genealogies" which adapted Maurras' ideas to the country's context using different selective readings.

[6] Cordoban publication La Nueva Provincia, closely related to Thomas Molnar, defended such ideological system as "the most brilliant synthesis of traditionalist ideas in what has passed of this century".

One of the most important exponents of the populist movement was Jacques-Marie de Mahieu, a post-war French exile in Argentina who, after drawing most of his political formation from Action Française during his youth, tried to expand his ideas at his new country while working as a professor at the National University of Cuyo.[n.

[9] De Mahieu wrote the prologue to the Prisoner's Soliloquy, Maurras' first published work in Argentina, in which he praised his figure as a theorist of "national revolutions" who could be useful to the development of peronism.

Populist maurrassistes would eagerly embrace maurrasian national syndicalism, a trend mostly related to the Cercle Proudhon which attempted to fuse Maurras' reactionary criticism of modern capitalism with the ideas of Marxist Georges Sorel in order to create a third position between "liberal bourgeois individualism" and the "state collectivism of materialist socialism".

[10] As in other Latin American nations, maurrassisme was initially introduced into Argentina by upper-middle class students who were ideologically influenced by the movement's political elitism during their studies in Europe, particularly due to the widespread availability of Maurras' works in France.

[17] Alfonso renounced his pro-Allied position during the interwar period and ranted against Woodrow Wilson whom, due to his "evangelical and kantian education", had supposedly planned an excessively idealistic solution to World War I and paved the way for a "repetition of the tragedy".

Julio would write numerous articles in praise of the French author on Argentine press media, considering him to be the restorer of the "eternal truths of politics" and the "most extraordinary journalist of all ages and places".

[24] Ramiro de Maeztu named Maurras among his intellectual precursors, along with other integral nationalist figures such as António Sardinha or Henri Massis, and Catholic thinkers such as G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc.

Fascism as a theory was generated in a laboratory of intellectuals with the socialist sperm–totalitarian and secular–of the twentieth century; instead Argentine nationalism feeds on the ancient Hispanic cult of the personality, where the Catholic tradition sprouts like a well watered seed under the earth.

The author, considering Argentine society to be deeply deviant, subsequently attempted a meticulous study of history in order to find the country's "origin and destiny" which would lead to the formulation of his restorationist program.[n.

Individualism and economic liberalism, incarnated in the values of Romanticism and of the French Revolution, were portrayed as central factors of the moral crisis and as harmful to hierarchy, the natural order and the Catholic Church.

After decades of "cultural barbarism" caused by the abandonment of the Latin and Christian civilization and the promotion of a vulgar and disordered worldview, the "spiritual counter-revolution" was to be carried out by an aristocratic nationalist elite with enough political will to search for the common good.

[36] Palacio praised Joseph de Maistre's analysis of the French Revolution and supported an integralist conception of lawmaking, stating that "men cannot dictate their own laws because their autonomous conscience threatens the Christian order".

'The Frond') was a conservative newspaper led by Francisco Uriburu, an anti-Yrigoyenist politician who had supported the Anti-Personalist Radical Civic Union and strived to create a "republican system" free "of the distortions" introduced by Yrigoyen.[n.

[39] Neo-republicans Rodolfo Irazusta, Ernesto Palacio, Juan Carulla and Lisardo Zía were part of the former group, while other maurrassistes such as Roberto de Laferrère had already been collaborating with Uriburu for a long time.

After 1929, due to his prolonged absence during his long trips to Europe, the young maurrassistes took over La Fronda's editorial direction and turned it into an explicitly anti-democratic and maurrasian publication, which would have a great influence in the country's future events.

[40] In September 1929, the neo-republicans in charge of La Fronda founded the Republican League (Spanish: Liga Republicana), a violent organisation resembling the Camelots du Roi,[15] with the objective of carrying out anti-Yrigoyenist activism in the streets.

After the first results of the elections were published, the newspaper called to[43][...] form a league of armed patriots, a holy brotherhood of decent people, willing to contain by whatever means appropriate the overwhelming advance of the horde of outlaws [...] yes to batons, no to votes!

The Legion attempted to absorb other nationalist associations, what caused a division in the Republican League: while Carulla accepted to be fused with the governmental group, de Laferrère wanted to remain independent.

[46] After the ousting of Juan Perón by the Liberating Revolution, maurrassisme found its place among the nationalist sectors of the coup that had supported Eduardo Lonardi, the general who would subsequently assume power for a few months up November 1955, when he was supplanted by the liberal-conservative Pedro Eugenio Aramburu.

One of the main nationalist media that incorporated maurrasian style and terminology was Azul y Blanco, directed by Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, that repeatedly denied its maurrassiste character due to the great discredit suffered by the movement, and preferred to identify with the ideas of Maurice Barrès.

Azul y Blanco reinstated the pays réel-pays légal dichotomy on religious grounds, and counted with the contributions of Jean-Henri Azéma, an old member of Action Française exiled in Buenos Aires due to his nazi collaborationism.

[49] Alberto Falcionelli (1910–1995) was a French legitimist monarchist and traditionalist Catholic who, after receiving most of his political formation in interwar Europe, travelled to Argentina once World War II had ended and served as professor at the University of Cuyo from 1947 to early 1970s.

Alberto considered Maurras to be the modern equivalent to Thomas Aquinas, and held a close relationship with the Eastern Orthodox community of the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, mostly composed of exiles from the White Army, in which he started to develop his interest about Russia.

Alberto considered Maurras his maître à penser from the age of 17 and never repudiated his ideas, to the point that during the papal ban on Action Française, both him and his father attended church services with the orthodox community.

[52] Falcionelli had at first fled to Spain, fearing reprisals against those who had sympathized with the Vichy Regime, and finally reached Argentina during Juan Perón's administration, which, due to his third positionist views, had become a popular destination for World War II French collaborationists.

Despite stating Perón had committed "a truly impressive cumulus of errors", he praised the president for "knowing how to keep the proletariat out of communist snares", acknowledging the relevance acquired by marxism in the Argentine intelligentsia after the 1955 coup.

[57] Zuleta's maurrasian beliefs were supported by the arrival at the university of Falcionelli and De Mahieu, recently exiled from post-war France, both of whom helped greatly to popularize maurrassisme in the country.

[60] Zuleta praised Maurras continuously, describing him as his intellectual "father", as the "most important political thinker arousen in France in the last two centuries, and one of the greatest figures of western literature and thought of all ages".