FRANCAISSolidarités - Comments
4) Links to politics
-The reputation of being a “right-wing” organisation comes from the fact that the name Solidarités reminds of the “solidarist” group of the Mouvement Jeune Révolution (“Young Revolution Movement”) which, in 1970, succeeded the OAS-Jeunesse (“Youth Organisation of the Secret Army”, opposed to the independence of Algeria). Alain Boinet himself participated, on the 14th of February 1977, in an attack against the head office of Aeroflot Soviet Airline in Paris, where Alain Escoffier, the editor of the nationalist newspaper Impact, had just sacrificed himself. Apart from his underground missions in Afghanistan during the struggle against the Red army, Alain Boinet has also, in 1988, organized a relief operation among the rebels fighting against the communist government in Laos; out of forty Laotians, two were killed after eight days and the mission was soon to stop. For his part, Patrice Franceschi fought with Amin Wardak’s Mujahidin against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan. In a documentary movie directed by Christophe de Ponfilly, produced by Interscoop, broadcast on France 2 TV channel and called Vies Clandestines (“Clandestine lives”), Patrice Franceschi explained he wanted “to give them what I knew and what I could do in the field of armed struggle, to help them defend themselves better”. However, most of the volunteers of Solidarités do not have a military past, and some of them were conscientious objectors. Moreover, in 2002, Patrice Franceschi, who was the president of the organisation, was replaced by Bernard de La Villardière, the presenter of the television shows “Zone interdite” and “Ça me révolte” on the French TV channel M6.
