Action française

   A political movement of the extreme Right, founded during the Dreyfus Affair by charles maurras, jacques bainville, and Léon daudet. The movement published a newspaper, L'Action française, which was at first a bimonthly. The founders of this journal created a Committee of French Action, which was nationalistic and anti-Dreyfusard (see alfred dreyfus) and soon transformed it into the League of French Action (Ligue d'action française). under the influence of Maurras, the movement sought "integral nationalism," the reestablishment of a monarchy that was "hereditary, antiparlia-mentary, and decentralized," and the establishment of the Catholic Church as the guarantor of order. The vendors of the newspaper l'Action française (which became a daily in 1908) quickly evolved into a royalist street force known as the "camelots du roi." Pope Pius XII lifted the 1926 condemnation of the Action française movement by the church in 1939. Having given support to the vichy regime during World War II, the newspaper itself was banned after the Liberation. Later, its supporters regrouped and rallied to the Aspects de la France of Pierre Boutang.