François Fontan
Biography
François Fontan was born in
1929 in a family of Gascon origin. The house of family of
Fontan is with
the Roquefort-on-Garonne in the West of Muret.
His/her father, Fernand, worked in the railroads, which made it possible his/her son to frequently travel. His/her mother, Louise, born From Course from Entered was of a line of noble ruined Gascons.
Political training
It followed the Ecole of the Eastern Languages to Paris, and the Institut of political studies with
Toulouse.
Born in a family Monarchiste it engages in policy for the first time in the Socialist Mouvement Monarchist around his fifteen years, but it quickly gave up the monarchism to adhere to the ideas Anarchistes.
It leaves them then to support the Trotskistes group Socialisme or Cruelty. He moves with
Nice where he has of the family, and he attends a time the
French Communist party (PCF) which shocks it for its Stalinisme and chooses the Nouvelle Left which was one of the branches founders of the Socialist party Unified (PSU).
In spring
1959 it founds the nationalist Parti occitan in Nice.
Continued in Nice following lawsuit for assistance with Algerian FLN during the Guerre of Algeria he moves in the alpine valleys occitanes and established with Fraisse in valley Varacha (
Frassino, valle Varaita).
After having spent 2 years to establish the linguistic border of the occitan with the Piedmontese one, it founds in
1967 the Mouvement separatist occitan, Movimento autonomista occitano (MAO) in Italian.
From 1962, François Fontan entered in correspondence with the professor
Guy Héraud (correspondences to consult on http://www.p-n-o.org/correspondance_Heraud_Fontan.html which published two important documents thereafter:
What the ethnism and
Europe of the Ethnos groups .
Since Strawberry, it directs the PNO until its brain attack which resulted in its death in
1979 at the 50 years age, with Cuneo, in the
Piedmont occitan,
Italy.
Political thought occitane
The development of its thought is the fruit of a scientific research. The essence of its thought is fixed already in writings 8 to 10 years before creation of the PNO, at the beginning of the year
1950. It is the reflection on the Décolonisation of Vietnam, of Morocco, of Tunisia and especially of the Algérie which was used to him as concrete political framework. It is the discovery of the Marxist Sociologie and the study of the Psychanalyse, especially of the work of
Wilhelm Reich which leads it to the Ethnisme. Marx as Wilhelm Reich made him include/understand the major alienation of humanity and it is the study of the national question in the world which it year led to nationalism occitan. The essence of its ideas are established when the professor Pèire Bec, Pierre Bec, of Cazères close to Roquefort makes him discover the existence of the language occitane.
For Fontan thus, if there is a specific language, there is a nation which must be released.
It is by political logic that it founded PNO.
Mainly, three currents of thought pushed it to found the PNO. First of all, the criticism of
Wilhelm Reich, then critic of the
Marxism, and finally the criticism of the Impérialisme.