[5] Coston and his followers advocated racial supremacism for those of "French blood" and maintained ample contacts with the Nazi Party, which were facilitated by Georges de Pottere.
[8] According to scholar Miklós Horváth, the PFNC "was a near-perfect 'anti-party', in that it was almost entirely defined by its opposition to other persons or ideologies"; it was antisemitic, anti-Masonic, anti-capitalist, and anti-communist.
[1] In his notes on the subject, Clémenti suggested that a "state protective of man's labor" was his social and economic ideal, arguing that the Great Depression could be tackled once "the worker and the owner [are united] against their common enemy: the capitalist."
[6] Regards highlighted anti-communism as the leading component of all "French fascist" ideology, viewing all federated groups as united by an invisible thread and a shared belief in the "red peril".
[18] Scholar Dietrich Orlow notes that the PFNC was viewed as a potential ally by some agents of Nazi Germany, though even these observers "saw little future for [its] influence".
He thus entered a police file on "defeatist" campaigners, also featuring Nazi apologists (Louis Darquier de Pellepoix, Léon Daudet) and far-left pacifists (Marceau Pivert).
[6] In August, Clémenti was found guilty of distributing anti-Jewish tracts, which he claimed were in fact authored by the staff writers of Le Porc-épic.
[31] In the wake of sentencing, the PFNC submitted an open letter to the press, correcting the record by noting that Clémenti had been cleared of charges relating to Nazi propaganda.
"[32] Shortly after the Nazi invasion of Poland, as France began preparing for war, Clémenti issued public threats against Édouard Daladier, the Council President.
The name-change was done at the behest of Clémenti's German overseers,[36] but only made legal on September 10, 1940, when the PFNC inaugurated its new headquarters at Rue de l'Arcade, 20, in the 8th arrondissement of Paris.
[16][39] The usage of armbands with the "inverted arrow-cross" was nominally covered by a ban on political insignia, but PFNC members struggled to prove that they qualified as an exception.
[38] This interval witnessed the first tensions between party cadres and the occupation authorities: in August, the French Guards attacked youth hostels and Jewish-owned businesses along the Champs-Élysées, forcing the Germans to intervene as peacekeepers.
[42] By January 1941, German authorities had recognized the PNFC as one of five officially collaborationist parties, with a right to organize in occupied territory and with duties in persuading the regime of Vichy France to also embrace full collaboration.
"[48] Despite arguing that Germany and France were now equal allies within "Socialist Europe" and the Axis powers, Clémenti paid his homages to the subordinate government of Vichy; he himself declared war on the United Kingdom "in a private capacity".
[49] In mid 1941, he was a founding member and leading activist of the Legion of French Volunteers against Bolshevism (LVF), which became the main focus of his activity as a collaborator.
[52] A commentator for the Feuille d'Avis de Neuchatel et du Vignoble Neuchâtelois noted the similarity between Clémenti and his enemy Doriot, in that they both had "the originality of leaving chiefdom in their own movement and sign up for the Legion".
[53] Academic J. G. Shields also draws this parallel, suggesting that most other collaborators "contented themselves with 'defending Western civilisation' by being part of the LVF's organisational apparatus in Paris".
"[42] Hersant was actively pursuing a takeover of the PFNC; this attempt created tensions and violence, and caused Clémenti to view German occupation with less enthusiasm than before.
[55] He remains the only French collaborator to state a specific territorial claim on Belgium, and as such found himself "in direct conflict" with Degrelle's Rexist Party, which stood for Belgian nationalism under German tutelage.
[56] Colin's newspaper Cassandre depicted the PFNC as a subsidiary of the Action Française, and alleged that Clémenti took his pay from Henry du Moulin de Labarthète.
[60] Such ambitions were contrasted by outside verdicts: already in November 1941, frustrated German authorities reported that the PFNC and the similarly endowed Le Feu had become "phantom parties".
By December 1942, "Pierre T." of the PFNC and formerly of the Communist Youth had been installed as head of the Compulsory Labor Service in Calvados, where he ran a deceptive recruitment drive.
[50] Shortly after the Liberation of Paris, the PFNC and LVF were formally charged as "anti-national groups", and had their offices raided by the French Forces of the Interior.
[67] Following the full reconquest of France in 1944, Clémenti withdrew with other collaborators to safety in Germany;[68] he was then able to obtain asylum in Switzerland, where he continued to publish essays explaining his beliefs.
[45] Clémenti's European nationalism was revised to include talk of an anti-communist alliance between SS veterans and the right-wing of French, German and Italian resistance movements.
[71] In 1951, he became co-founder and publicist for the New European Order (NOE), which also included Gaston-Armand Amaudruz, René Binet, Pino Rauti, Fritz Rössler, and Paul van Tienen.
[72] Researchers Jean-Yves Camus and Nicolas Lebourg conclude that Clémenti fitted well with the Europeanist trend of neo-fascism: "Immediately after the collapse of the Axis powers, Fascist militants saw a united Europe as the justification for their previous positions and as the horizon of expectation that could legitimize their continued political struggle.
[73] Noting that he was on probation by 1953, the Communist paper La Défense alleged that the Fourth Republic was using his skills as a propagandist for the Special Air Service, which was fighting the war in Indochina.
[76] His hosting of readings from the Mein Kampf and attempts to establish contacts with the National Democratic Party of Germany sparked an exodus among REL members.
[78] Clémenti became a co-founder of Ordre Nouveau, a "revolutionary nationalist force" made up of former associates of Pierre Poujade with erstwhile conspirators in La Cagoule and Organisation Armée Secrète.