1. Pierre Sidos was a French far right nationalist, neo-Petainist, and antisemitic activist.
24 Facts About Pierre Sidos
1. 2.
Pierre Sidos was convicted in 1946 of joining the fascist Mouvement Franciste at 16 years old in the midst of WWII and Nazi occupation of France.
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The movement was banned a year later, making it the fourth association founded by Pierre Sidos to be dissolved by the French authorities, and the fifth he had been part of, in a 70-year period of political activism.
4.
Pierre Sidos was born on 6 January 1927 in Saint-Pierre-d'Oleron, the son of Francois Sidos and Louise Rocchi.
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Pierre Sidos grew up in a familial background strongly tainted with nationalism and far-right ideologies.
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Pierre Sidos has asserted that the death of his brother was the event that made him swing into political action.
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In 1943, then 16 years old, Pierre Sidos joined the youth movement of the Parti Franciste, one of the main collaborationist movements under the Vichy regime.
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The conviction was reduced as Pierre Sidos was still a minor at the time of the events.
9.
Pierre Sidos met Marcel Bibe, a former Bezen Perrot militant who initiated him in Celtic esoterism.
10.
Pierre Sidos refused the proposition, while hundreds of former Nazi collaborators were sent to fight within the French army in southeast Asia, diffusing Wehrmacht and SS songs they had learnt during their internment in Natzweiler-Struthof.
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Pierre Sidos nonetheless benefited from an early release on 4 August 1948.
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Pierre Sidos quickly found a job and contacted another of his brothers, Francois.
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Pierre Sidos then decided to reach out to Jeanne Pajot, the wife of a rich industrialist.
14.
From January 1960, Pierre Sidos lived in clandestinity in a house of Neuilly, in the western suburbs of Paris.
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Pierre Sidos stayed in contact with putschist generals and pro-colonial politicians like Jean-Marie Le Pen, and was eventually arrested on 13 July 1962.
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Pierre Sidos was released on 19 June 1963 following his trial, and sentenced to a suspended 3-year jail sentence and a 2,000 Franc fine.
17.
Pierre Sidos initially supported the project but eventually dismissed the influence of Dominique Venner on the association, as well as their neo-pagan and euro-nationalist leanings.
18.
Together with other activists opposed to the FEN, Pierre Sidos decided to found Occident in 1964.
19.
Pierre Sidos then seemed to endorse a blend of Catholicism, pan-European nationalism and anti-Semitism, with some Third Position influence, as his ideology of choice.
20.
Pierre Sidos attempted to run in the 1969 French presidential election on this platform, seeking to stand as a nationalist and anti-Zionist candidate, but his candidacy was rejected by the Constitutional Council on a technical basis.
21.
Pierre Sidos was said to have met Antonio Salazar for a short encounter in the 1960s, king Faisal of Saudi Arabia for a one-hour meeting on 28 April 1971 in Riyadh, as well as Juan Peron on 22 October of the following year in Madrid, and former SS colonel Otto Skorzeny in the same city.
22.
Pierre Sidos subsequently sought co-operation with the Front National although at other times he would dismiss the party as too moderate.
23.
On 28 November 2013, the association Les Amis de Pierre Sidos was created to "make the works of patriot Pierre Sidos and that of his family known".
24.
Pierre Sidos died in Bayeux hospital on 4 September 2020.