General Charles de Gaulle, France’s second World War leader, complained prophetically of his American allies that “One day, the United States will try to be the moral authority of the entire world.”
He had every reason to be fearful. President Franklin D Roosevelt looked down on him as an arrogant fantasist, and barely tolerated his place in the anti-Hitler alliance. He demanded that postwar France be divided up, and effectively become hardly more than a glorified US dependency.
It was not to be, but de Gaulle’s distrust of all things American ran deep, a powerful anti-Atlanticism that divided Nato and drives France’s foreign policy to this day. His legacy still sets the agenda – questioning American reliability, debating strategic autonomy and wondering anew what sovereignty means in an age of military dependence and technological vulnerability.
In French cinemas over the summer, Homer’s epic tale of flawed Greek hero Odysseus vied with the two-part biopic of France’s own Homeric hero, de Gaulle. Based on British historian Julian Jackson’s biography, it had a poor early start but within weeks, 5 million people had flocked to see the film. To those weaned on Hollywood, it appealed as a 1960s-like classic war movie, with a dash of Casablanca’s stirring evocation of heroic subjugated French patriots standing up to the Nazis. Roosevelt does not come out well.
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There is a paradox embodied by the hero of Free France. Although omnipresent in public life, plastered on street names, inspirer of the constitution and a role model for the centre and right, de Gaulle rarely featured in films or TV.
As Agnes Poirier writes in the Financial Times, “Like all successful historical films, La Bataille de Gaulle tells us less about the past than about the needs of the present.” Six months out from the presidential election, a deeply divided France is disillusioned by the political mainstream and desperately looking around for another de Gaulle. His uprightness and unflinching man-for-all seasons persona would seem to accommodate all pretenders to his crown. His “ni droite, ni gauche, mais la France” (“neither right nor left, but France”) remains a perfect, meaningless rallying cry.
Step up far-right Rassemblement National (RN). Formerly the Front National (FN), with origins in the collaborationist Vichy regime and nationalist successors that de Gaulle fought so tenaciously, it has tried to co-opt his legacy. The French far-right was not built on admiration for de Gaulle – and for many years displayed persistent hostility to him.
Former leader of the FN, Jean-Marie Le Pen, persuaded a grandson of de Gaulle to run for the party in 1999.
But when in 2012, the party’s number two Florian Philippot laid a wreath at de Gaulle’s grave, its diehards turned on him.
When former president Jacques Chirac – a long-standing Gaullist – controversially went as far in 1995 as admitting a degree of French complicity in the Nazi rounding-up and deportation of Jews, he was confronting a long-standing de Gaulle myth
Le Pen’s daughter Marine, who is leader of the RN group in the National Assembly and topping polls as presidential candidate, has made reclaiming de Gaulle’s legacy the central element of her “de-demonisation” or normalisation campaign.
A poll for La Tribune Dimanche asked voters which political figure best embodies the de Gaulle legacy. Le Pen’s deputy, Jordan Bardella (14 per cent) and Le Pen herself (13 per cent) topped the list.
[ Who is Jordan Bardella, Marine Le Pen’s loyal lieutenant?Opens in new window ]
Le Pen’s strategy has been to invert the accusation. The usurpers of de Gaulle’s legacy are not those who suddenly declare themselves Gaullists, but those who, they claim, have betrayed the legacy they pretend to hold.
When former president Jacques Chirac – a long-standing Gaullist – controversially went as far in 1995 as admitting a degree of French complicity in the Nazi rounding-up and deportation of Jews, he was confronting a long-standing de Gaulle myth. In the interests of preserving postwar unity, de Gaulle denied French guilt on the basis that the Vichy government was illegitimate and could not represent France. France, the general suggested, was in essence a nation of resisters, with few Nazi collaborators.
Chirac’s attempt honestly to face up to deliberate historical forgetfulness was opportunistically attacked by Le Pen and the far-right as an insult to France’s honour. Far-right essayist and presidential candidate Eric Zemmour denounced it as the “death warrant of Gaullism”. Vichy’s inheritors shamelessly demanded the right to his mantle.
[ Marine Le Pen denies French guilt over HolocaustOpens in new window ]
To draw attention to the grotesque rewriting of history that is the hijack of de Gaulle is not entirely to equate RN with its antecedents in the brutal Vichy collaborationist regime. But the party’s determination to whitewash its past speaks volumes about its real nature. The French say “qui s’excuse, s’accuse”: excuses are self-incrimination.
True to form, the party is also currently involved in another shameless whitewashing exercise, implausibly denying allegations that a young Bardella circulated poisonous anti-Semitic Facebook messages. Few will believe him, but will cynical young voters care?
