The name of Pierre Poujade
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Poujade does not come up too often here. Yet the Poujadists got 12.88% of the vote in the French 1956 legislative election--*much* more than the Gaullists (who were in a steep decline due to the General's temporary retirement from politics), more than the (Christian Democratic) MRP, and almost equal to the showing of any other political party except the Communists.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_legislative_election,_1956
Writing around 1960 in *Political Man* Seymour Martin Lipset summarized the recent Poujadist movement as follows:
"Before the Algerian revolt of May 1958, postwar France had witnessed the growth of two relatively large movements, each of which has been labeled fascist by its opponents— the Gaullist Rassamblement du Peuple Frangaise (RPF) and the L'Union de Defense des Commercants et Artisans (UDCA), most generally known as the Poujadist movement. When the Poujadists secured a large vote...in the 1956 elections and temporarily replaced the Gaullists as the principal "rightist" foes of the Republic, this suggested to some analysts that Poujade had inherited the support which De Gaulle had given up when he dissolved the RPF and retired to Colombey-les-deux Eglises to await his recall by the French people.
"The ideologies of the two leaders and their movements are sharply divergent, however. De Gaulle is a classic conservative, a man who believes in the traditional verities of the French right. He has sought in various ways to give France a stable conservative regime with a strong president. In advocating a strong executive he follows in a tradition which in France has been largely identified with monarchism and the Church. In his appeal to rebuild France, De Gaulle never set the interests of one class against another; neither he nor his movement ever sought to win the backing of the middle classes by suggesting that their interests were threatened by big business and the banks or by the trade-unions. Rather, De Gaulle identified himself with all that advanced France as a nation: the growth of efficient large industry, the nationalizations which had occurred under his regime before 1946, and the strengthening of state power. He also ostentatiously maintained his identification with the Catholic Church. De Gaulle falls directly in the tradition of strong men of the conservative right. He has sought to change political institutions in order to conserve traditionalist values...
"In the election of 1956, much to the surprise of many political observers, the Poujadist movement rose to important proportions. Some saw Poujadism as the latest response of the more authoritarian antirepublican elements on the French right to an opportunity to vote against democracy and the Republic. In fact, Poujadism, like Nazism in Austria and Germany, was essentially an extremist movement appealing to and based on the same social strata as the movements which support the "liberal center." While it is impossible to know whether in power it would have resembled Nazism, its ideology was like that of the Nazis and other middle-class extremist populist movements. Poujadism appealed to the petty bourgeoisie, the artisans, merchants, and peasants, inveighing against the dire effects of a modern industrial society on them. It opposed big business, the trusts, the Marxist parties, the trade-unions, department stores and banks, and such state control over business as social security and other welfare state measures which raised the taxes of the little man. But while Poujadism explicitly attacked both the left and right, it strongly linked itself with the revolutionary republican tradition. Appealing to populist sentiments—-the idea that the people rather than parties should control the government—-Poujade praised the French revolutionaries who did not "hesitate to guillotine a king," and demanded the revival of various revolutionary institutions like the Estates-General, to which would be presented lists of grievances submitted by local bodies of citizens in the fashion of 1789. Combined with its attacks on big business, left parties, and unions, were attacks on the Jews and a nationalist defense of colonialism....
"The relationship of Poujadist ideology to the anticlerical liberal rather than the right tradition in France has been well summed up by the British writer Peter Campbell:
'In its various forms the traditional anti-democratic Right has held that the Republic has betrayed France: according to Poujadism it is the politicians and the administrators who have betrayed the Republic and the honest folk it ought to protect. The task of the Poujadists is to reconquer the Republic in the spirit of the Revolution of 1789-1793. The Poujadists demand a new States-General with new cahiers of the people's grievances and instructions. . . . The Poujadists have preferred the motto of the Republic to the various trinities of the extreme Right (such as Marshal Petain's "Work, Family, and Fatherland") but they have stressed their own special interpretations of "liberty, equality, and fraternity."
'Its attachment to the Republic and to the principles and symbols of the Revolution place Poujadism in the democratic tradition. . . . Nevertheless, its psychology is very near to that of Fascism, or rather, that of the rank and file's fascism in contrast to that of the social elite's fascism. In Poujadism there is the same fear of being merged into the proletariat (a fear associated with hostility to both the organized workers below and the social ranks above the threatened lower-middle class), desire for scapegoats (domestic and foreign), and hostility towards culture, intellectuals, and non-conformists.'
"The ideological differences between Gaullism and Poujadism do not necessarily demonstrate that these two movements represented different strata of the population. Many have argued that "the essential core of Poujadism was its 'opposition to the [democratic] regime,' so that it could absorb the Gaullism of 1951." But a look at a map of France upon which is superimposed the Gaullist vote of 1951 and the Poujadist vote of 1956 quickly challenges this theory. Poujadist strength lay largely in areas of France, principally the south, where the Gaullists had been weak, while the Gaullists were strong in areas which resisted Poujadist inroads. Although Poujade received fewer votes in the country as a whole than De Gaulle— 2,500,000 as against 3,400,000— the 1956 Poujadist ticket was far stronger than the 1951 Gaullist one in many southern districts." Gaullist strength centered in the more well-to-do, industrialized, and economically expanding regions of France, while the geographical core of Poujadism was in the poorer, relatively underdeveloped, and economically stagnant departments.
"In addition to the ecological evidence, a considerable amount of more direct survey or voting data demonstrates that Poujadism drew its backing from the traditional social base of liberalism—-the anticlerical middle classes—-and that it was a revolutionary movement, not a conservative one."
https://archive.org/stream/politicalmansoci00inlips#page/154/mode/2up
(BTW, although Jean-Marie Le Pen got his start in politics as a Poujadist deputy, Poujade's later career, after the fading of his movement, was not "extremist" at all--he supported Mitterand in 1981 and 1988 and Chirac in 1995. He called Le Pen a "liar" and said that his sponsorship of him as a deputy was 'the worst thing I did in my life. It would have been better if I'd broken my leg.'
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/apr/28/france.paulwebster
Even if the Poujadists had done better in 1956--as I noted, it is quite conceivable that they could have come in second place, behind the Communists--they would not remotely have enough members to form a government. (Not even if Poujade got the support of the Communists--and some Communists actually did support his tax protest movement in its early stages! [1]) The only thing I can think of is this--if De Gaulle dies in an accident in the mid-1950's, could some desperate coup-plotting generals use Poujade as a populist figurehead to preserve Algérie française?...
[1] Richard Vinen in *Bourgeois Politics in France, 1945-1951* observes that "Poujadism was notable for its indifference to anti-Communism. The Poujadists and the Communists actually collaborated in some campaigns, and Maurice Bardeche, a sympatheitc right-wing commenter on Poujadism, recognized that Poujade did not subscribe to 'the anti-Communist feeling, that is so common among the French bourgeoisie.'
"The reasons for Poujadism's indifference to anti-Communism were rooted in the social structure of France. Anti-Communism was strongest in the northern industrial regions of France. It was these areas that felt the military threat of the red army most deeply. More important, the social threat of Communism was strongest in the industrial regions. It was in the industrial cities that the bourgeoisie confronted a large anonymous proletariat, trade unions, strikes and the visible threat of revolution. In the small market towns of southern France, where Poujadism flourished, social structures were very different. These were areas of artisans and shopkeepers where the bourgeoisie still defined themselves by contrast to the peasantry rather than in opposition to proletarians. In this context. Communists were more likely to be bloody-minded artisans, like Poujade's associate Frégeac, than threatening revolutionary proletarians..."
https://books.google.com/books?id=urcpK3my6CYC&pg=PA273