The prodigal sons of communism: Parti-Populaire-Francais narratives of communist recruitment for the Spanish Civil War and the everyday functioning of party ideology

During the Spanish civil war, the fascist Parti Populaire Francais (PPF) ca rried out an extensive propaganda campaign against French Communist recruit ment of volunteers for the Spanish Republican International Brigades. This article exposes the manner in which PPF propaganda simultaneously presented a calculated, analytical, political policy favoring Franco's Nationalists alongside a complex coming-of-age narrative built around young Frenchmen vo lunteering to fight in Spain, returning disillusioned, and finally joining the fascist PPF. This political narrative had three functions: to lead the PPF's former Communist members to the party's new fascist ideology; to cons truct an image of the new fascist man; and finally to portray the PPF's lea der, Jacques Doriot, as the archetypal fascist man. This political parable reveals a great deal about the nature of masculine identity in fascist ideo logy and about how political ideologies were embedded in narratives of ever yday life in mass-party newspapers and political speeches in the French Thi rd Republic.