page_title: Pierre Poujade
section_title: Poujadism
hierarchical_section_title: Pierre Poujade / Biography / Poujadism
caption_attribution_description: English: Pin's de l'Union de Défense des Commerçants et des Artisans
context_page_description: Pierre Poujade was a French populist politician after whom the Poujadist movement was named.
context_section_description: After the war, Poujade was the owner of a book and stationery store.
  On 23 July 1953, with a group of about 20 persons, Poujade prevented inspectors of the tax board from verifying the income of another shopkeeper. This was the start of a tax protest movement by shopkeepers, first in the Lot department, then in the Aveyron department, and finally the whole south of the Massif Central.
  On 29 November 1953, Pierre Poujade created the Union de Défense des Commerçants et Artisans (UDCA; Defense Union of Shopkeepers and Craftsmen), to organize the tax protesters. This movement would soon be called "Poujadism" (French: Poujadisme). Poujadism flourished most vigorously in the last years of the Fourth Republic, and articulated the economic interests and grievances of shopkeepers and other proprietor-managers of small businesses facing economic and social change. The main themes of Poujadism concerned the defense of the common man against the elites.
  In addition to the protest against the income tax and the price control imposed by finance minister Antoine Pinay to limit inflation, Poujadism was opposed to industrialization, urbanization, and American-style modernization, which were perceived as a threat to the identity of rural France. Poujadism denounced the French state as "rapetout et inhumain" ("thieving and inhuman").
  The movement's "common man" populism led to antiparliamentarism (Poujade called the National Assembly "the biggest brothel in Paris" and the deputies a "pile of rubbish" and "pederasts"), a strong anti-intellectualism (Poujade denounced the graduates from the École Polytechnique as the main culprits for the woes of 1950s France and boasted that he had no book learning), xenophobia, and antisemitism especially aimed against Prime Minister Pierre Mendès-France (claiming "Mendès is French only as the word added to his name"), who was perceived as responsible for the loss of Indochina.  Poujadism also supported the cause of French Algeria.
caption: Logo of the organisation
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