Jean-Baptiste Biaggi

Jean-Baptiste Biaggi (born August 27, 1918 in Ponce , Puerto Rico , † July 29, 2009 in Cagnano , Corsica ) was a French lawyer and right-wing politician who successively supported the Action française , the Resistance , Gaullism , the OAS and the front was active nationally .

youth

Like many other Corsicans, Biaggi's father was involved in overseas trade in the wake of French colonialism . Born in Puerto Rico, he grew up in Cagnano, the hometown of the family. According to his own account, he found his way into this monarchist-nationalist right-wing extremist movement through the priest of the small town and a sailor, both of whom were subscribers to the magazine Action française . During his law studies in Paris , he became president of the student association of Action française and in this role welcomed its founder Charles Maurras at the annual banquets of student sympathizers.

Time in the Resistance

In 1938 he volunteered for the army and was wounded during the Battle of France at the beginning of World War II . Declared incapacitated, he was sent to Marseille to recuperate , where he happened to meet Alain Griotteray , who recruited him for a resistance network and assigned him to organize secret correspondence with North Africa, and later he also organized the exchange of information with Spain . For this purpose he founded the network réseau Orion , which later merged into the réseau Saint-Jacques . Together with Robert Le Balle , Michel Alliot and Xavier Escartin , he mainly used this network to organize the escape of French people to Spain. The Gestapo agent Serge Marcheret infiltrated the network, which is why its leading figures, including Biaggi, were arrested by the Gestapo on December 14, 1943. After spending several months in various prisons and torture cellars, Biaggi and his comrades were sent on a train in Compiègne for deportation to Bergen-Belsen in March 1944 . Biaggi escaped from this train thanks to the help of a clergyman whom he met in the Fresnes camp and was then hidden by the prefect of the Haute-Marne department , who, although a supporter of the Vichy regime , was of Corsican origin. Armed with false papers, he was able to return to Paris, where he took part in the liberation of the capital alongside the Allied troops. He then moved with the paratroopers of the 4e commando de France to Germany , where he was involved in fighting near Belfort and in Alsace , in which he was wounded. For these military achievements he was awarded the Croix de guerre and the Médaille de la Résistance . Biaggi repeatedly stated that his commitment to the Resistance was a consistent continuation of the patriotic and nationalist ideas that he had internalized during the Action française.

Political career

In 1947 he joined the Gaullist Rassemblement pour la France and began a career as a lawyer. In 1956 he founded the Volontaires de l ' Union française , which saw itself as “patriotic and anti-communist ” during the beginning of the Cold War . In 1957 he founded the Parti patriote révolutionnaire together with the delegate Alexandre Sanguinetti , who was also of Corsican origin , which was supposed to prepare de Gaulle's return to power and which was banned during the domestic political crisis after the coup of the generals in Algiers on May 15, 1958. After de Gaulle's return to power, he was elected to the National Assembly in 1958 for his party Union pour la Nouvelle République for the 14th constituency of Paris and held this mandate until 1962. Together with the former Christian Democratic Prime Minister Georges Bidault and other Gaullist MPs founded he rassemblement pour l'Algérie française on November 20, 1959 , to give special emphasis to his rejection of the independence of Algeria after de Gaulle had announced in a televised address that the Algerians should "govern themselves" in the future. At the beginning of 1960 he resigned from the UNR in protest against de Gaulle's changed position on this issue and on January 24 of this year he was one of the most active rebels of the semaine des barricades, along with MPs Pierre Lagaillarde and Marcel Ronda and student Jean-Jacques Susini in Algiers . The outcome of the Algerian War made Biaggi a bitter opponent of Charles de Gaulle and in the following years he was also associated with the Organization de l'armée secrète .

In the 1965 presidential election he supported the nationalist candidate Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancourt , who was primarily the representative of the disappointed French Algerians ( pieds-noirs ). In later years he supported Jean-Marie Le Pen and his front nationally and campaigned for its reintroduction after the abolition of the death penalty in France in 1981. He also supported the Alliance générale contre le racisme et pour le respect de l'identité française et chrétienne by Bernard Antony , an organization from the right-wing Catholic environment that was close to the FN.

From 1965 to 1983 he was mayor of his home town of Cagnano in Corsica - a mandate that he retained even after retiring from active politics.

In 2003 he was appointed commander of the Legion of Honor by then Defense Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie , the wife of his former comrade in the Resistance .