Françoise Dior
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Marie Françoise Suzanne Dior (7 April 1932 – 20 January 1993) was a French
Early life and family
Marie Françoise Suzanne Dior was born on 7 April 1932, the daughter of Madeline Leblanc and Raymond Dior, a left-wing journalist and the brother of French couturier Christian Dior and Resistance fighter Catherine Dior.[1] Her father Raymond, who had been employed at the family business headquarters in Paris for some years, was a Communist International sympathizer, to the despair of his own father Maurice Dior, a fertilizer industrialist. Raymond was involved with the satirical gazette Le Crapouillot and embraced radical ideas, advocating the '200 families ' conspiracy theory, that is the belief that 200 French industrial and financial families are responsible, in his own words, "for all the ills of the land".[2] Raymond was bisexual, and scholar Graham Macklin notes that Françoise's biological father could have been Valentin de Balla, a Hungarian nobleman.[1]
Dior's attraction to
On 27 April 1955,
World Union of National Socialists
Dior came to be disappointed by traditional aristocracy and her marriage turned out to be unhappy.
Dior used her fortune and social network to support the creation of the French chapter of the
Marriage to Colin Jordan
While Jordan was imprisoned following a 1962 conviction for establishing a paramilitary group, Dior became engaged for around a month in June 1963 to another NSM member and friend of Jordan,
After a civil ceremony held in Coventry on 5 October 1963, where demonstrators hurled rotten eggs and apples at the couple as they gave the Nazi salute,[14] Dior and Jordan had a second wedding on 6 October at the NSM headquarters in London. The photographs and newsreel footage of the ceremony – illustrating them mingling blood after cutting their ring fingers with a dagger before letting a "unity drop" fall over an open copy of Mein Kampf – were published widely by the press.[9][15] The guests gave the Hitler salute and the "Horst-Wessel-Lied" was played.[9] Dior also stated, "All I want is little Nazi children."[16] Dior's mother rejected the marriage, saying, "We want to have as little to do with this sad affair", and adding that she would not allow Jordan into her home.[3] Following the media coverage of the events, her aunt Catherine Dior, a Ravensbrück concentration camp survivor, issued a press release denouncing "the publicity given by the press and television to [her] niece Françoise Dior's nonsensical statements. The fame of [her] brother Christian Dior must not be used to highlight the scandal and risk tarnishing a name carried with honor and patriotism by members of my family."[17] Savitri Devi was unable to attend the wedding; she had been banned from Britain following the Cotswold founding camp of the WUNS in 1962.[9]
Only three months after her wedding to Jordan, the couple separated,[9] again attracting sensational coverage in the press. Dior-Jordan, as she was by then calling herself, was rapidly disillusioned by her husband's leadership qualities and publicly dismissed him as a "middle-class nobody". The Daily Mirror ran a front-page headline reading, "Nazi Told: 'Marriage is Over'", with the subheading "You're no Leader, says Françoise". The next day, the paper ran another story with the headline "Please – I love you says Führer", quoting Jordan as he reportedly begged Dior to "please, please, please come home".[18] Dior and Jordan reconciled once she was convinced of his ability to lead the NSM, which had proven to easily fall into factionalism.[9]
Arrests
Dior remained influential within the NSM in London. On 31 July 1965, she was involved in an arson committed by six NSM members against the Ilford and Lea Bridge Road synagogues.[19] Dior was also the official WUNS representative in France by that year.[20] On 4 June 1965, she was convicted in absentia to a 4-month jail sentence for having displayed neo-Nazi leaflets on the walls of the British embassy in Paris on a previous occasion. Dior then returned to France, where she was arrested in Nice on 4 October 1966 and held in custody for the Paris event.[21]
She was released in February 1967, then eloped to
In 1969 Dior entered in contact with French neo-Nazi Mark Fredriksen and the FANE to create an antisemitic movement called the Front Uni Antisioniste ('Anti-Zionist United Front').[12] A meeting was held on 6 February 1969 with Dior, Fredriksen, Henry Coston and Pierre Sidos in order to organise the fight against "Jewish influence and Zionist propaganda",[24] but the organisation never came to light.[12] In October 1970 Dior invited Savitri Devi to stay in her home in Ducey, Normandy.[22] Devi spent 9 months there, working on her memoirs; then returned to New Delhi in August 1971.[25]
Later life and death
Cooper and Dior lived together in Ducey, Normandy, in a home that had been a former presbytery, from August 1970 until July 1980, when their relationship ended.
She joined the mainstream right-wing
When British fascist Martin Webster started his short-lived group Our Nation following his expulsion from the National Front in December 1983, Dior allegedly paid some of his legal expenses.[29]
She died of lung cancer on 20 January 1993 in the American Hospital of Neuilly-sur-Seine, aged 60.[26]
In his 2013 autobiographical account of the relationship, entitled Death by Dior, Terry Cooper, her partner for 13 years, states that Françoise had incestuous relations with her daughter Christiane, who committed suicide in 1978. Cooper also claims in his book that Françoise was responsible for Christiane's death: after becoming displeased with her daughter, Dior allegedly "brainwashed" her into committing suicide.[30]
References
- ^ a b c d e Macklin 2020.
- ^ Pochna 1996, p. 35.
- ^ a b c d Jackson 2016, p. 122.
- ^ a b c Goodrick-Clarke 1998, p. 203.
- ^ Valynseele, Joseph (1964). Rainier III est-il le souverain légitime de Monaco ?: étude de droit dynastique (in French). p. 22.
- ISBN 978-2-7413-0068-7.
- ^ a b Walker 1977, p. 46.
- ISBN 978-2-348-03557-9.
- ^ a b c d e f Goodrick-Clarke 1998, p. 204.
- ^ Kaplan & Bjørgo 1998, p. 49.
- ^ Goodrick-Clarke 2001, p. 103.
- ^ a b c d Lebourg 2019.
- ^ Camus & Lebourg 2017, p. 99.
- ISSN 0362-4331.
- ^ Jackson 2016, pp. 122–123.
- ^ Staff (20 July 2005). "John Tyndall: Racist ideologue who led a succession of far-right groups". The Sunday Times. Archived from the original on 23 May 2011.
- ^ Staff (5 October 1963). "La télévision et les Nazis britanniques". Le Monde (in French).
- ^ Jackson 2016, pp. 124–125.
- ^ a b Jackson 2016, pp. 137–138.
- ^ Goodrick-Clarke 1998, p. 205.
- ^ M. V. (10 May 1966). "François Dior est arrêtée à Nice". Le Monde (in French).
- ^ a b c Goodrick-Clarke 1998, p. 208.
- ^ Jackson 2016, p. 138.
- ^ Staff (12 February 1969). "MM. Coston et Sidos créent une association destinée à lutter "contre les influences juives"". Le Monde (in French).
- ^ Goodrick-Clarke 2001, p. 104.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-5267-3154-8.
- ^ Lamy 2016, p. 192.
- ^ Duranton-Crabol, Anne-Marie (1 April 1986). "Le GRECE, creuset d'un discours élitiste". Le Monde diplomatique.
- ISBN 978-3-319-59668-6.
- ^ Guinness, Molly (10 August 2013). "Death by Dior, by Terry Cooper - review". The Spectator.
Bibliography
- ISBN 9780674971530.
- OCLC 38113227.
- ISBN 978-0-8147-3237-3.
- Jackson, Paul (2016). Colin Jordan and Britain's Neo-Nazi Movement: Hitler's Echo. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4725-1459-2.
- ISBN 978-1-55553-332-8.
- Lamy, Philippe (2016). Le Club de l'Horloge (1974-2002) : évolution et mutation d'un laboratoire idéologique (PhD thesis). University of Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis.
- OCLC 1103312626.
- Macklin, Graham (2020). Failed Führers: A History of Britain's Extreme Right. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-44880-8.
- Pochna, Marie-France (1996). Christian Dior : the man who made the world look new. Arcade Publishing. OCLC 34514436.
- ISBN 978-0-00-634824-5.
Further reading
- Cooper, Terry (2013). Death by Dior. London: Dynasty Press. OCLC 852256399.
External links
- Francoise Dior Neo-Nazi Footage: Designer's Niece Says Hitler Is Her Hero (VIDEO), Huffington Post(12 March 2011)
- Contemporary coverage of Dior and Jordan's wedding by British Pathé. (YouTube, British Pathé channel).