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Colonialism and Neocolonialism 40
distinguished him from Bidault and by what aberration they had unanimously voted him
the discretionary powers which, as he was already announcing, he could use against
them.
In the twilight moments – frequent in our history – which precede coups d’état,
something has always struck observers: the confusion of feelings and ideas. From a
distance one imagines that there are a few competing groups – the supporters of the
future dictator, the defenders of the old one – and that they slog it out until the latter have
been liquidated by the former. From close up, nothing could be more deceptive: everyone
hesitates, everyone is afraid, the dissidents as much as the government, everyone is for
and against everybody at the same time. One has such deadly enemies that servitude or
death is preferred to alliance with them, even against a more deadly but newer enemy.
Coups d’état are greatly facilitated when everybody gives themselves up deliberately to
the enemy rather than lose a certain thing that they place above all else, rather than
produce a certain other thing that they particularly detest. Finally everyone becomes
paralysed and paralyses everyone else, the least paralysed carries out the coup d’état by
chance, trembling.
Here in France, as early as the third day, I realized that there was one thing in the
world that the socialists detested more than servitude, death and the degradation of the
country; it was the Popular Front. On the first day, the FO, the CFTC and the CGT trade
unions decided to resist together. Immediately, the Assembly cried with one voice: ‘It’s
coming back, there it is!’ On that day the ‘spectre of the Popular Front’ dragged its chains
through all the columns of the terrified Le Monde. It was on the next day that the CFTC
and FO published a joint warning: the workers, by keeping their composure and
remaining calm, by refraining from premature demonstrations, would save the Republic.
Each trade union, except for the CGT, each political party, except for the Communist
Party, exclaimed: ‘Better the regime should perish!’ There was no trace of a Popular
Front. There were just a few agreements, a few strictly defensive measures taken jointly.
That was enough for Monsieur Guy Mollet, jostling and interrupting Monsieur Pflimlin,
to beg General de Gaulle, via an intermediary, to deign to offer a few words to appease
public opinion.
This procedure suited everybody: on the previous day a rather stiff declaration from the
General had only half pleased people. Charles de Gaulle had not made any allusion to the
Republican institutions; if he would be so good as to say, in passing, a few words like: ‘I
would not touch them!’ or ‘I do not wish them any harm’, France would acclaim him as
in 1945, and Monsieur Mollet, in return, would find a way of ousting Monsieur Pflimlin:
perhaps the General would reserve a few portfolios for the socialists in a cabinet of
national unity. Soon after this, Monsieur Pflimlin discovered, with indignant stupefaction,
that the communists had taken the liberty of voting for him. He grabbed their votes and
threw them to the back of the Assembly. And in a generous gesture of eloquence he went
as far as to deny them the right to defend individual liberties: they were not worthy. The
effect of this escalation of anti-communism in the ‘two great republican parties’ was to
reduce each of them to powerlessness and solitude. The angry outbursts of Maître Isorni
proved that, despite the earlier attempt at reconciliation, the Pétainist right will never
forgive de Gaulle for sentencing Pétain. On the left, on the contrary, hypocrites drew
some reassurance from this brilliantly clear argument: can the Saviour of the Republic