Maurice Barrés and Charles Maurras argue for…

Maurice Barrés and Charles Maurras argue for the supremacy of the national State.

In 1890, Maurras had approved Cardinal Lavigerie's call for the rallying of Catholics to the Republic, thus making his opposition not to the Republic in itself, but to "sectarian Republicanism"

Beside this Orleanist affiliation, Maurras shared some traits with Bonapartism.

In December 1887, he had demonstrated to the cry of "Down with the robbers!" during the military decorations trafficking scandal, which had involved Daniel Wilson, the son-in-law of President Jules Grévy.

Despite this, he initially opposed the nationalist-populist Boulangist philosophy, but in 1889, after a visit to Maurice Barrès, Barrès voted for the Boulangist candidate; despite his "anti-Semitism of the heart" ("anti-sémitisme de coeur"), he decided to vote for a Jew.

During 1894–95 Maurras briefly worked for Barrès' newspaper La Cocarde (The Cockade), although he sometimes opposed Barrès' opinions concerning the French Revolution.

La Cocarde supported General Boulanger, who had become a threat to the parliamentary Republic in the late 1880s.

During a trip to Athens for the first modern Olympic Games in 1896, Maurras came to criticize the Greek democratic system of the polis, which he considers doomed because of its internal divisions and its openness towards métèques (foreigners).

Maurras had become involved in politics at the time of the Dreyfus affair, becoming a well-known Anti-Dreyfusard.

He endorsed Colonel Henry's forgery blaming Dreyfus, as he considered that defending Dreyfus weakened the Army and the justice system.

According to Maurras, Dreyfus was to be sacrificed on the altar of national interest, but while the Republican nationalist thinker Barrès accused Dreyfus of being guilty because of his Jewishness, Maurras had gone a step further, vilifying the "Jewish Republic".

While Barrès' anti-Semitism originates both in pseudo-scientific racist contemporary theories and Biblical exegesis, Maurras decries "scientific racism" in favor of a more radical "state anti-Semitism."

Maurras assists with the foundation of the nationalist and anti-Dreyfusard Ligue de la patrie française at the end of 1898, along with Maurice Barrès, the geographer Marcel Dubois, the poet François Coppée and the critic and literature professor Jules Lemaître.