Family and education (1907–1935) Jean-Louis Tixier was born on 12 October 1907 in Paris, the son of Léon Tixier, a doctor, and Andrée Vignancour. His maternal grand-father,
Louis Vignancour, had been a member of parliament and senator. Tixier-Vignancour earned a degree in law in 1926 and the following year qualified as a barrister at the Paris Court of Appeal. He was an activist in the youth wing of the royalist movement
Action Française, the
Camelots du Roi. He took part in the anti-parliamentary riots of
6 February 1934.
Parliament, WWII and trial (1936–1952) Tixier-Vignancour entered politics and defeated the independent leftist Georges Moutet in the
French legislative election of the department of
Basses-Pyrénées in May 1936. His election was however declared non-valid after suspicions of fraud. Tixier-Vignancour was eventually re-elected on 27 September 1936. He was part of a parliamentary group which traveled to Spain to congratulate
Francisco Franco on his fight against the
Spanish Popular Front. Tixier-Vignancour married Janine Auriol in January 1938, the daughter of a lawyer and member of parliament for
Haute-Garonne. Enlisted in the army in 1939, he took part in fights near
Beuvraignes during the
Battle of France in 1940, On 6 October 1940, in charge of "applying the instructions of the armistice commission", he confirmed the banning of movies like
The Great Illusion or
Entente cordiale, accused of "incitement to hatred against Germany". Tixier-Vignancour served as the under-Secretary of State for Information under Nazi-collaborationist
Vichy France and as director of Pétain’s "Propaganda Committee". As the head of
Radio-Vichy, he offered a large broadcast time to
collaborationist Marcel Déat.'
While waiting for his electoral ban period to end, Tixier-Vignancou joined the neo-fascist party Jeune Nation soon after its creation in 1949. He helped Maurice Bardèche establish the magazine Défense de l'Occident'' (an important arena for the discussion of right-wing ideas and Holocaust denial text) and the
neo-fascist coalition
European Social Movement in 1951-52.
Amnesty and Algerian war (1953–1962) Tixier-Vignancour was granted amnesty in 1953 and became once again able to run for public office. Opposing the use of street violence promoted by
Jeune Nation, he left the group to found his own party with Bardèche in May 1954: the
Rassemblement National Français. Following the
May 1958 crisis and the return of
Charles de Gaulle to power, he refused to vote a law that would temporarily authorize the president to revise the constitution until a referendum occurs on a new one. Tixier-Vignancour declared ironically in parliament: "I would never have thought that, twice in my life, I will be asked to delegate the fraction of constituting power I held, and—even better—never would I have imagined that, for the second time, the man who asks for it will be the very same man who punished me for having delegated this power a first time." Salan was spared the death penalty and instead condemned to prison. Tixier-Vignancour’s defense credited for "saving Salan’s neck", this event boosted his standing among nationalists. He served also as a defense counsel for colonel
Jean Bastien-Thiry, executed for attempting to assassinate
Charles de Gaulle during the
Petit-Clamart attack of August 1962.
Presidential campaign (1963–1965) In November 1963, Tixier-Vignancour publicly announced his candidacy for the
1965 presidential election, presenting himself as the "militant of all the nationalist parties whichever they may be". On 17 July 1964, he established the
Tixier-Vignancour committees (
comités T.V.), a
grassroots movement to support his candidacy for president the following year, with
Jean-Marie Le Pen as a campaign director. Some 80 local "comités T.V." were set up throughout France and the Comité Jeunes ("Youth Committee"), directed by
Roger Holeindre and supported by the group
Occident, quickly attracted several hundred members. The first meeting in Paris gathered some 4,000 militants and led to violent clashes between Occident and the police. After a disagreement between Le Pen and Occident's founder
Pierre Sidos, the movement was replaced with
Dominique Venner's
Europe-Action volunteers, despite their own initial skepticism regarding Tixier-Vignancour’s candidacy. Tixier-Vignancour managed to rally diverse leanings that existed within the far-right, all united against
Gaullism: the young revolutionaries of Occident and
Europe-Action were present, along with "those nostalgic for
Vichy, descendants of
Action Française, fundamentalist Catholics,
Algérie française ultras, the residue of
Poujadism, embryonic fascists, and representatives of the
liberal right". Despite his conservative stance, the then president
Charles de Gaulle embodied in their eyes "‘the loss of Algeria, the end of the Empire, the weakening of the army, and closer ties with the communist world." At the height of the campaign, Le Pen and Tixier-Vignancour even went to
London to meet members of the
British Conservative Party and potentially use it as an example for a new conservative-nationalist party in France. Tixier-Vignancour's movement participated in the municipal elections of March 1965 and received 9.6% of the votes in Paris. This encouraging result was followed, in the summer of 1965, by poll predictions crediting Tixier-Vignancour with 19% of the presidential vote. The latter began to imagine a first-round score of up to 25%, and a victory in the second round. Acting as if he was already president, Tixier-Vignancour traveled during the campaign to
Saigon,
Bonn,
Rome and London. He abandoned his radical far-right rhetoric to court the moderate right, his campaign managers labeling him the "national and liberal opposition" against the extremist
Charles de Gaulle. After that, he publicly called for a vote in favor of
Socialist candidate
François Mitterrand in the second round. Deceived by his multiple renunciations—from the moderation of stance to his
support of Mitterrand—, Le Pen decided to quit the campaign.
Later life (1966–1989) Tixier-Vignancour participated in a pro-Israel demonstration in 1967 in Paris during the
Six-Day War. During the
May 1968 crisis, he endorsed re-elected president De Gaulle to put an end to the general disorder. In the
1969 presidential election, he supported
Gaullist candidate
Georges Pompidou. He joined the far-right
Party of New Forces (PFN) in June 1978, of which he became the honorary president and spokesman. In 1979, he unsuccessfully ran for the PFN in the
European elections and eventually left the party in February 1982. He died on 17 September 1989 at 81 in Paris. His funeral was celebrated in
Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet church, a stronghold of the Christian traditionalist
Society of Saint Pius X. == Views ==