A Decisive Encounter

Wednesday 9 July 2008. I don’t believe in chance. I think all of us are born with potentials that wait for the right moment to reveal themselves (at least if we’re willing to let them).

I’m often asked how the boy I was, born in a very good family (my father, a doctor, was also the local mayor and a departmental councillor), brought up in a peaceful village in Calvados (Normandy) far from all the world’s troubles, could become what he is today. Then I tell the following anecdote:

Once when I was still quite young (I must have been nine or ten), my parents took me to Paris for Christmas; on December 24^th we went to see the animated displays at one of the big stores (the Nouvelles Galeries, I think). There I was with my sister, a year older, gazing in wonderment at the mechanical figures moving in their magical setting. The street was crowded with people carrying bags full of presents, food, etc. It was all celebration… At one point, I turned round and saw, sitting on the pavement, a poor old lady in a grey coat and a kerchief. In front of her lay a bit of cardboard with a few small coins. I knew then the meaning of the expression “heart rending”, for my heart was rent.

The child I was couldn’t understand how a society that offered everything to some – amongst whom me – could leave others languishing in blackest misery. Afterwards, at my aunt’s house, Christmas Eve was spoilt for me by the image of that poor old woman, an image that’s stayed with me ever since. Why did I have this thought in my head when it would have been far easier to tell myself: “You’re lucky: make the most of it and never mind that old woman.”? Doubtless because Providence wanted to make me choose a certain path… For I became a socialist – even though I didn’t know the word – from that moment. And although I was to evolve, this socialism has always stayed anchored within me. I dreamed of a society where there would no longer be people like that little old lady… Later on, at about fourteen, I had the occasion to contemplate photos of Third Reich Germany. I quickly understood that true socialism, the one I wished for, had been realised by Adolf Hitler. To me the fact appeared self-evident. When I came out with these thoughts of mine in conversation with adults, they answered by bringing up the “Nazi atrocities”. For a long time I believed in them. But I nonetheless admired Hitler for his social achievements and I used to say: “We’ll have to make a new National Socialist state, without the camps.” I was told it was impossible, for National Socialism led naturally to the death camps. In my mind, however, I couldn’t grasp how such a regime, so good for its people, had been able to lead to such atrocities. The clear-cut dichotomy troubled me, and sometimes even set me doubting. But everyone told me… So then I stayed alone, and a bit ashamed, with my “National-Socialism-without-the-camps.” What’s more, the adolescent I was believed all the “Nazis and collaborators” had been killed in 1945 and that today, everyone thought like those around me. Thus I believed myself to be alone in the world, alone in having understood that a new National Socialism could be made without the camps, alone with the little swastikas I used to draw on sheets of paper. I got no sense of pride from it all but rather an abysmal anxiety. Would I have to spend my whole life without anyone to share my views with?

The reader will understand why the discovery of revisionism and the certainty that it told the truth were a liberation for me. What I hadn’t dared envisage turned out to be correct. The “clear-cut dichotomy” was actually just a symptom of the prevailing lie. I was finally relieved of my misgivings. Then I made my discovery of Maurice Bardèche, which enabled me to develop the concept of deductive analogy.

I of course owe everything to the revisionists who have gone before me but I remain certain today that without the sight of that old woman on Christmas Eve in 1978 or ’79, the Catholic, National Socialist and revisionist Vincent Reynouard would not exist.

Source: Vincent Reynouard, “En passant par Fleury-Mérogis”,
in Sans Concession no. 30-31-32, April-May-June 2008 – excerpt from pages 186-188