The French intellectual of the late nineteenth century Henri Vaugeois, known as one of the founders of the monarchist organisation Action Française, was an advocate, as he put it himself, of an “anti-Semitic, anti-Masonic, anti-parliamentary and anti-demo

The French intellectual of the late nineteenth century Henri Vaugeois, known as one of the founders of the monarchist organisation Action Française, was an advocate, as he put it himself, of an “anti-Semitic, anti-Masonic, anti-parliamentary and anti-democratic” nationalism. In short, the full set of an obscurantist politician. In other respects, I confess, his biography is rather dull, even by the standards of French monarchists. I came across a mention of this gentleman in one of the issues of the “International Review of Secret Societies” for 1929. It relates an absurd and most disagreeable episode in which he spoke of his allergy to Jews, which, he claimed, went as far as a violent skin rash. Given such details, I can only rejoice that this brisk nationalist was destined for an inglorious end.