ABSTRACT — At the beginning of year 1932, François Coty, a fabulously wealthy manufacturer and an admirer of Mussolini and fascism, launches the first antisemitic campaign of the thirties, in a popular daily which he edits and expansively finances with his own moneys, L’Ami du Peuple. The paper provides his numerous readers (some millions) with a quite simple and fantastical explanation of the problems of the day brought by the international economic and financial crisis : everything arouses from a zionist-capitalistic and Bolshevik plot hatched by a mysterious Jewish banker of the United States. This campaign, unique in the history of the national popular press, presents key figures of the antisemitic activism whose influence up to that time was much restricted, and who will come back to the foreground many years later, during the Occupation. Coty’s money until German money comes...
At the beginning of year 1932, François Coty, a fabulously wealthy manufacturer and an admirer of Mussolini and fascism, launches the first antisemitic campaign of the thirties, in a popular daily which he edits and expansively finances with his own moneys, L’Ami du Peuple. The paper provides his numerous readers (some millions) with a quite simple and fantastical explanation of the problems of the day brought by the international economic and financial crisis : everything arouses from a zionist-capitalistic and Bolshevik plot hatched by a mysterious Jewish banker of the United States. This campaign, unique in the history of the national popular press, presents key figures of the antisemitic activism whose influence up to that time was much restricted, and who will come back to the foreground many years later, during the Occupation. Coty’s money until German money comes...
