The
Far-right leagues (
Ligues d'extrême droite) were several
French far-right movements opposed to
parliamentarism, which mainly dedicated themselves to
military parades,
street brawls,
demonstrations and
riots. The term
ligue was often used in the 1930s to distinguish these
political movements from parliamentary
parties. After having appeared first at the
end of the 19th century, during the
Dreyfus affair, they were common in
France in the 1920s-1930s, and famously participated in the
6 February 1934 riots which overthrew the second
Cartel des gauches (a center-left coalition government). For a long time, the French left wing had been convinced that these riots had been an attempted
coup d'état against the
Republic. Although contemporary historians have shown that, despite the riots and the effective overthrow of the governing left wing, there had been no organized plan to overthrow
Édouard Daladier's
Radical-Socialist government, this belief led to the creation of the
anti-fascist movement in France, and later to the dissolving of these leagues in 1936 by the
Popular Front government headed by
Léon Blum.