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Adrien Arcand

Adrien Arcand (October 3, 1899 – August 1, 1967) was a Canadian journalist who led a series of fascist political movements between 1929 and his death in 1967. During his political career, he proclaimed himself the Canadian Führer.

Biography[]

Early life[]

Arcand was the son of Marie-Anne (Mathieu) and Narcisse-Joseph-Philias Arcand, who was a carpenter and trade union leader. In 1923, he joined the Châteauguay regiment of the militia. On 14 April 1925, he married Yvonne Giguère. In the late 1920s, he became active in organizing for Catholic trade unions and became president of the first union local at La Presse. His trade unionism led him to be fired in 1929.

Political career[]

In November 1929, Arcand launched his own political movement, the Ordre Patriotique des Goglus for the "general purification, on preserving our Latin character, our customs and our habits, on protecting our rights and our privileges". In December 1929, Arcand launched a sister newspaper for Le Goglu, the Sunday weekly Le Miroir, which was more serious. In March 1930, Arcand launched a third newspaper, Le Chameau that soon folded in 1931 as it was unprofitable. He published and edited several newspapers during this period, most notably Le Goglu, Le Miroir, Le Chameau, Le Patriote, Le Fasciste Canadien and Le Combat National.

Arcand shared the idea widely accepted in French-Canada that Confederation in 1867 was a "pact" between two "nations" that agreed to work together for their common betterment. Arcand added his spin to the idea of two founding "nations" by arguing Canada existed only for the "two founding nations" and to accept the claim by any other group to "nationhood" would by necessity reduce the living standards of the "two founding nations". In this way, Arcand argued "to recognize the Jewish race as an official entity would violate the Confederation pact, eliminate our rights, and force us to officially recognize as national entities all the other groups, such as Polish, Greek, Syrian, Russian, Serbian, German who may request it later". Arcand's antisemitism was at least in part motivated by the fact that the majority of Ashkenazim (Yiddish-speaking Jews) immigrants from Eastern Europe usually arrived in Montreal, where a great many chose to settle. Arcand saw the Jews as economic competitors, drawing a contrast between his idealized, rural French-Canadian Catholic small grocer who was honest and hard-working, and the stereotype of the greedy and unscrupulous big city Jewish immigrant capitalist who only succeeded because of "his dishonesty, not his skill or ability".

Adrienarcand 1933

Adrien Arcand in 1933.

Like many other French-Canadian intellectuals at the time, Arcand had considerable hatred for "godless" France, seen as having abandoned Roman Catholicism, leaving Quebec as the last remnant of the "true" France that ended in 1789. In October 1932, Arcand first made contact with the German Nazi Party when its representative, Kurt Lüdecke, visited Montreal, and told Arcand that the two movements had much in common and should cooperate. In his report to Adolf Hitler about his visit, Lüdecke described Arcand as a "man of lively intelligence" whose movement was growing in support and who was very close to Prime Minister Bennett.

Arcand was always a staunch federalist and an anglophile. He received secret funds from Lord Sydenham of Combe, former governor of Bombay and a prominent fascist sympathizer in the British Conservative Party, after he translated into French Sydenham's pamphlet "The Jewish World Problem". He also maintained correspondence with Arnold Spencer Leese, chief of the Imperial Fascist League. Arcand was most strongly influenced by British fascism, as he maintained an active correspondence with various British fascists such as Lord Sydenham, Henry Hamilton Beamish and Admiral Sir Barry Domvile. With the aim of forming a fascist leadership for the British Empire, Arcand started a correspondence that continued until his death with Sir Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British Union of Fascists (BUF). Many of the articles that appeared in Le Fasciste Canadien were translations of articles from Action and Blackshirt, the two journals of the BUF.

In 1934, Arcand established the Parti National Social Chrétien (Christian National Social Party), which advocated anti-communism and the banishment of Canadian Jews to the Hudson Bay Area. The latter idea was inspired by his friend, noted British Rhodesian fascist Henry Hamilton Beamish, who suggested sending Jews to Madagascar. In 1935 the desperate Bennett ministry again turned to Arcand, who was appointed at the urging of Senator Rainville to the post of Tory publicity director in Quebec. However, many of Arcand's friends were more sympathetic to the Reconstruction Party, so Le Patriote supported H. H. Stevens while its editor was campaigning for Bennett. Bennett secretly hired Arcand as his chief electoral organizer in Quebec for the 1935 federal election.

In 1938, Arcand was chosen as the leader of the fascist National Unity Party of Canada, born of the fusion of his Parti National Social Chrétien with the Prairie provinces' Canadian Nationalist Party and Ontario's Nationalist Party, which had grown out of the Toronto Swastika Clubs of the early 1930s. On May 30, 1940, he was arrested in Montreal for "plotting to overthrow the state" and interned for the duration of the war as a security threat. His party, then called the National Unity Party, was banned. In the internment camp, he sat on a throne built by other prisoners and spoke of how he would rule Canada when Hitler conquered it.

Arcand never wavered in his belief in Adolf Hitler, and, in the 1960s, was a mentor to Ernst Zündel, who became a prominent Holocaust denier and neo-Nazi propagandist in the latter part of the 20th century. Arcand often corresponded with Issa Nakhleh, a Palestinian Christian who served as the chief of the Palestine Arab Delegation.

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