Claiming to adhere to theses close to socialism, La Libre Parole is mainly known for its denunciation of various scandals, including the Panama scandal, which owes its name to the publication of a file about it in Drumont's newspaper. With the emergence of the Dreyfus affair, La Libre Parole enjoyed considerable success, becoming the principal organ for Parisian antisemitism. In the aftermath of major Hubert-Joseph Henry's suicide it sponsored a public subscription in favour of the widow in which the donors could express a wish. La Libre Parole advocated a virulent anti-capitalism due to the link perceived by Drumont and his collaborators between Jews and capitalism. Drumont left the management of the newspaper in 1898 when he made his entry in politics. Around 1908, wishing to sell La Libre Parole to Léon Daudet, Drumont tried to merge the newspaper with L'Action française, but this project failed. Starting in 1910, the newspaper was published by ultraconservativeCatholics and never regained the level of success it had enjoyed with the belligerent style of Drumont. Gaston Méry was one of its editors in chief. In January 1919, he published a statement by the Marquis de l'Estourbeillon in favour of the teaching of Breton in school. Anti-Semitism in France declined during the 1920s, in part because the fact that so many Jews died fighting for France during World War I made it more difficult to accuse them of not being patriotic. La Libre Parole, which had once sold 300,000 copies per issue, closed in 1924.
Legacy
The legacy of Drumont's daily newspaper was claimed by several ephemeral publications that reused the title La Libre Parole for nationalist and xenophobic organizations:
La Libre parole, later La Libre parole républicaine.
La Libre Parole de Paris represents itself in 1929 as being the continuation of Drumont's daily newspaper;
La Libre parole, "Monthly review", later "Anti-judeo-masonic review", edited by Henry Coston. In April 1935 it absorbed the biweekly Le Porc-épic and then appeared as La Libre parole et le Porc-épic. In October 1937, it was replaced by Le Siècle nouveau, a monthly magazine published by the National Office of Propaganda. This Libre parole was published in parallel with the following:
La Libre Parole, "Independent nationalist body", monthly magazine, edited by Henry Coston. It also appeared in the same year under the name La Libre parole politique et sociale.
*It later became La Libre parole populaire, "Monthly publication continuing the work of Édouard Drumont".
*It changed name again to Libres paroles, "Journal de propagande nationaliste".
*Yet another change to La Libre parole "Journal hebdomadaire". In 1938, Coston officially took over the volume numbers of Drumont's La Libre parole.
Algiers deputy candidate Coston renamed his newspaper to La Libre parole d'Alger, "Anti-jewish weekly of latin action" and sometimes La Parole enchaînée. Henry Coston invoked, to justify the cessation of publication, the seizure of publications, leaflets, archives and documents in its offices.
In 1940, the authorities of Nazi occupied France did not permit the newspaper to reappear. Coston used the title as a publishing label to publish, starting in 1943, the Bulletin d'information anti-maçonnique, and Bulletin d'information sur la question juive.
