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Groupe Union Défense (Ultranationalist movement, France)

GUD

Flag of the GUD - Image by Tomislav Todorović & Mladen Mijatov, 22 April 2006

Presentation of the GUD
Flag of the GUD
Related flags

See also:

Presentation of theGUD

Groupe Union D&ecute;fense (GUD - Union Defence Group) is an extreme- rightist student's union, founded in December 1968 at the Assas Faculty of Law, Paris. The GUD (originally, Groupe Union Droit - Union Law Group) succeeded the Occident group, banned the same year by the authorities. In the 1970s, the GUD was often involved in very violent confrontations with extreme-leftist student's union, in an attempt to cleanse the Assas Faculty from the leftists - at the time, some members of the GUD proudly nicknamed themselves "Waffen Assas". The emergence of the Front National and of its youth branch, Front National de la Jeunesse, created in 1973, caused the marginalization of the GUD, that eventually dissolved on 17 June 1981, following the election of François Mitterrand at the Presidency of the Republic.
The GUD was subsequently refounded by a new team and registered under different names (Union de Défense des Étudiants d'Assas - UDEA, 29 December 1988; Union Droit - UD, 20 October 1995). The avatars of the GUD were eventually banned from the Assas Faculty after more violent confrontations.
The GUD reappeared in February 2010, when flyers announcing "GUD is back" were distributed in the Assas Faculty.
[L'odyssée des rats noirs: voyage au cœur du GUD, by Nicolas Lebourg]

Ivan Sache, 30 October 2011

Flag of the GUD

GUD uses a black flag with a white Celtic cross (photos). The black Celtic cross painted on walls is also a "trademark" of the GUD. Black and white are the traditional colors of the GUD, also used in their famous emblem, the rat.

Ivan Sache, 20 October 2011

Related flags

Different flags featuring the Celtic cross appear in different sources as used by the GUD, or related movements, in street demonstrations.

Issue #420 (dated "from 1990-03-31 to 1990-04-13") of Serbian fortnightly magazine Duga (name means "Rainbow"; no longer exists) contained an interview with Jean-Marie Le Pen titled "Three Le Pen's Words" (Serbian: Tri Le Penove reči), published on page 50. As an illustration, there was a photo with the subtitle "From the demonstrations of the youth of the National Front" (Serbian: Sa demonstracija omladinaca Nacionalnog fronta), showing crowded people with a lot of flags charged with Celtic crosses.
Flags with four different designs were visible on the photo. One of them had red field with a large white disk, set close to the hoist and charged with a black Celtic cross. The flag is clearly with the same design as the one which Maxime Brunerie used.

Another flag was black with a white Celtic cross, which had two fimbriations, the inner one black and the outer one white, as used by GUD. The flag with this design is often used by the neo-Nazis in different countries.

Ultranationalist flags - Images by Tomislav Todorović & Mladen Mijatov, 22 April 2006

All flags but those two described above had a design which I never saw anywhere else but on that photo: long triangular flags, charged with a white Celtic cross on the field which was either plain red or plain black. Both flags were shown on the photo in approximately equal numbers. Their width seemed to be rather smaller than that of two previously described ones.

National Front does not use Celtic cross as the symbol and does not officially regard itself as a Nazist/Fascist party, so the flags were probably not brought by its members, or at least, not with the official approval of the party.

Tomislav Todorović & Mladen Mijatov, 22 April 2006

Ultra-nationalist flag - Image by Tomislav Todorović & Mladen Mijatov, 24 November 2007

A French tricolour with a large blue Celtic cross on white field was carried by two men, who have spread it between them, on a photo which was published in a Serbian fortnightly magazine named 8 in September 1991. (I cannot remember precise date and number of the issue; the magazine ceased to exist by the middle of 1992, and my later attempts to find a copy of that issue were unsuccessful so far.) On another photo on the same page, some people were shown as waving with small paper flags charged with the tricolour flame emblem of National Front on white field. The intention was obvious to attribute the tricolour flag with the Celtic cross to the National Front as well, but there was no evidence from the photos even that they were both shot at the same place and time, so it remained unclear if the flag with the Celtic cross was indeed brought to a rally of the National Front. If it was, it must have been done without the consent of the organizers of the rally, as the National Front does not use neo-Nazi flags and symbols.

Tomislav Todorović & Mladen Mijatov, 24 November 2007

Ultra-nationalist flag - Image by Tomislav Todorović, 4 March 2012

Red flags charged with black Celtic crosses, the shape being square or nearly square, were used at the demonstrations organized in Paris on 7 May 1994, by the GUD and the Jeunesses nationalistes révolutionnaires. The photo from the event also shows one black flag with a white Celtic cross as used by the GUD and several others with black field which are not visible enough to reveal their charges, which might be the same as on the first one. Whether the red flags with black Celtic crosses are also used by the GUD, or by the Jeunesses nationalistes révolutionnaires, or maybe both, is yet to be found out.

Tomislav Todorović, 4 March 2012