Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour

Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour (1938)

Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour , born as Jean Louis Gilbert Tixier, (born October 12, 1907 in Paris , † September 29, 1989 ibid) was a French lawyer and politician .

Tixier-Vignancour was from 1936 to 1940 (and from 1956 to 1958 for the independent list républicaine d'action sociale et paysanne ) a member of the Basses-Pyrénées department . In the Vichy regime , he was secretary for information from 1940-1941 ( Secrétaire général adjoint à l'Information de l'État français ). As a lawyer, he was best known for defending OAS members in the early 1960s. In 1962 he represented General Raoul Salan (1899-1984), where he was able to avert the death penalty through his defense speech, which was widely admired in France for its rhetorical brilliance (it also appeared on records) , and the de Gaulle assassin Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry 1963, which was executed , however.

In 1965 he ran as the right-wing candidate in the French presidential elections . Two years earlier, Jean-Marie Le Pen had founded the Comité d'initiative pour une candidature nationale (initiative committee for a national candidacy) to unite the radical right of French politics. Tixier-Vignancour was seen as the ideal candidate for this: On the one hand, he was known to the general public, on the other hand, he was able to address both traditional strands of the right - both the supporters of a “French Algeria” who felt betrayed by Charles de Gaulle , as well as the supporters of the former Vichy regime. Young nationalists such as Dominique Venner and Alain de Benoist also supported the committee, which from then on was also called Comité TV after the candidate's initials . Le Pen acted as campaign manager.

Finally, Tixier-Vignancour received 5.27% of the vote, which was seen as a big disappointment in view of the high expectations. The defeat was mainly explained by the fact that Tixier-Vignancour had not formulated a clear election program other than his hostility to de Gaulle and that the heterogeneous Comité TV was organizationally inferior to the conventional party organizations. The fact that another candidate, Jean Lecanuet, appeared at the last moment also harmed Tixier-Vignancour, as Lecanuet positioned himself as a moderate right wing and cost Tixier many votes. In the second ballot he voted for François Mitterrand , as his dislike of de Gaulle because of the abandonment of Algeria was too great. The organizational structure of Comité TV collapsed quickly after the failure of the 1965 presidential election, so that the radical right remained fragmented until Le Pen founded a new, long-term, much more successful collection movement with the Front National .

In 1979 he was on the first list of the “ Eurodroite ” of the right-wing PFN (Parti des forces nouvelles) in the election to the European Parliament .

literature

• Alexandre Croix "Tixier-Vignancour, ombres et lumières", Saint-Ouen: Éditions du Vieux Saint-Ouen, 1965.
• Louis-Ferdinand Céline "Lettres à Tixier: 44 lettres inédites à M. Tixier-Vignancour" (editor Frédéric Monnier), Paris, La Flûte de Pan, 1985.
• Tixier-Vignancour "La France trahie, plaidoirie de M. Tixier-Vignancour dans l'Affaire des fuites", Paris 1956.
• Tixier-Vignancour “Plaidoirie pour Salan”, published on two LPs.
• Tixier-Vignancour "J'ai choisi la défense", Paris: La table ronde, 1964.
• Tixier-Vignancour "Des Républiques, des justices et des hommes: mémoires", Paris, Albin Michel, 1977.
• Tixier-Vignancour “Le Contre-mal français”, Paris, Albin Michel, 1977.
• Tixier-Vignancour "Si j'avais défendu Dreyfus", Paris, Jean-Claude Simoën, 1978.

Remarks

1. ↑ as a young lawyer he added his mother's maiden name
2. ↑ Michael Böhm: Alain de Benoist and the Nouvelle Droite: a contribution to the history of ideas in the 20th century . Lit Verlag, Berlin 2008 ISBN 978-3-8258-1711-4 p. 101ff.
3. ↑ James Shields: The Extreme Right in France: From Pétain to Le Pen. Routledge, London 2007 ISBN 978-0-415-09755-0 pp. 125ff.