Homegrown Fascism

The history of right-wing nationalism and anti-Semitism in Quebec, particularly in the interwar years, has been the subject of much research, critical writing and angry controversy in the last couple of decades. Although Esther Delisle was certainly not the first historian to take up this delicate subject, her Le traître et le Juif: Lionel Groulx, Le Devoir et le délire du nationalisme d’extrême droite dans la province de Québec, 1929–1939—I wrote a preface to the English translation—did cause both an academic and a popular uproar. Some critics claimed that her scholarship was careless, but the loudest objections came from professors and journalists who were offended by her insistence that the much admired, although often misunderstood, abbé Lionel Groulx was a racist anti-Semite. Soon, more research resulted in more nuanced studies. Esther Delisle, bloodied but unbowed, was the first to uncover the quasi-fascist and anti-Semitic dalliance of the youthful Pierre...