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The Analysis of the Referendum* 71
of the cost of the war. And then, the right is not ready either. It has too many internal
divisions to surmount.
All fascisms were popular at the start because they gave people something, illusory
though it may have been. In Germany, there was the defeat to wipe out and
unemployment to combat. But the French people will not be mobilized by saying to
them: ‘Our defeat in Algeria is intolerable. Let’s put at end to it! Let us kill all the
Algerians. We shall double taxes and pursue the war.’ It is unthinkable. With fascism, the
complicity of the masses is very important. A short-lived complicity, but one which, via
fascist parties like the German SA, allows a permanent link to be established, between the
masses and the dictator. There are activists, agitators who terrorize the masses, but who
can at the same time pass on precious information to the top: ‘Careful, we must not push
that line too hard, but instead move this way.’
There is no fascist party in France capable of playing that role. The kids from the 16th
Arrondissement will not do it. For that, you need those who have emerged from the
people, unemployed workers like those of Berlin, who took the Nazis’ side because they
provided better soup than the communists. When I was there in 1934, many of the
workers who had became Nazis had retained Marxist vocabulary without realizing it, and
offered me a Marxist interpretation of Hitler’s supremacy. None of this exists in France.
Moreover, French fascism or pseudo-fascism would constitute such an international
danger that it would stand no chance of lasting. The first thing the Americans would think
is that the inevitable repercussions among the people would bring victory to the Front
Populaire and the communists. They would try to get rid of the fascist Government as
quickly as possible before it was overturned by a groundswell from the people. It is even
to be wished that they do not make our chances of a real democracy disappear.
In any case, a test of strength is necessary because it is inscribed de facto in the
situation. People resolve de facto situations by acts, not by recourse to prestige. If you
like, we must fear what would happen if de Gaulle went, but with hope. And we must
fear a little more what will happen if he stays, above all with a majority of ‘yes’ votes
which would not force him to do anything or even increase his authority over the people
who contest it.
To vote ‘yes’ is to refuse to wake up, it is to preserve the dream. To vote ‘no’ is an
awakening. It means: we are tired of having been mystified by this fellow for two years.