René Binet

Who was René Binet?

René Valentin Binet was a French militant political activist who was linked to both Trotskyism and fascism.

During the 1930s, René Binet was involved With the Communist Youth in Le Havre. Expelled from that group in 1935, he moved towards the Fourth International: he joined "the Commune" group of Pierre Frank and Raymond Molinier, then was a founder member of Molinier's Parti communiste internationaliste in March 1936, being elected a member of the party's Central Committee. When the party was dissolved in 1938 to become part of the Workers and Peasants' Socialist Party Binet withdrew from the group. Instead he became involved in the Parti ouvrier internationaliste.

Binet was taken prisoner by the Germans early in World War II and whilst in a POW camp he moved from being opposed to Stalinism to supporting Nazism. Having converted to Nazism he saw action for the SS Charlemagne Division during the war.

After the war he returned to political activism and collaborated with Marc Augier in setting up the journal Combattant européen in 1946. He also set up a number of political parties and organizations, notably the Parti républicain d'unité populaire in 1946, the Forces françaises révolutionnaires in 1947 and the Mouvement socialiste d'unité française in 1948, the latter banned by the government the following year, before ultimately he joining Jeune Nation.