About Dominique Venner
Dominique Venner (French: [vɛnɛʁ]; 16 April 1935 – 21 May 2013) was a French journalist and essayist. Venner was a member of the Organisation armée secrète and later became a European nationalist, founding the neo-fascist Europe-Action, before withdrawing from politics to focus on a career as a historian. He specialized in military and political history. At the time of his death, he was the editor of the La Nouvelle Revue d'Histoire, a bimonthly history magazine. On 21 May 2013, Venner, outraged by the recent legalization of same-sex marriage in France, killed himself inside the cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris. In a suicide note, he said his death was an act in "defence of the traditional family" and in the "fight against illegal immigration". Venner believed that the far-right had become too soft and that peaceful demonstrations against same-sex marriage were not enough to prevent a "total replacement of the population of France, and of Europe". The leader of the far-right National Front, Marine Le Pen, described the suicide as the act of a broken man desperately seeking to "re-awaken" his countrymen. In January 1963, he created with Alain de Benoist a movement and magazine called Europe-Action, which he later led. He also created, with Thierry Maulnier, the Institut d'études occidentales (IEO) (Institute of Western Studies), and its revue, Cité-Liberté (City-Liberty), founded in 1970. His Histoire de l'Armée rouge (History of the Red Army) won the Prix Broquette-Gonin of history awarded by the Académie française in 1981.
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