Where Is Charles De Gaulle When France, Amid Escalating Unrest, Needs Him?

The disturbances in France are in part the confirmation of the centuries-old addiction of the French, periodically in that rich and splendid country, to hurl paving stones at the police, burn piles of garbage and automobiles in the streets, and barricade whole districts.The numerous non-Republican interludes in French history were generally too oppressive to enable such outbreaks other than when the regimes themselves were overthrown, starting with the Bastille in 1789 and including the revolutions of 1830 and 1848. The Paris Commune of 1871 was an unsuccessful bloodbath, and the brush with civil war that brought Charles de Gaulle back to power in 1958 avoided serious violence.It is an irony in France — where French is spoken beautifully even by uneducated people, where the landscapes and the cityscapes are generally a pleasure to the eye, and the cuisine and wine are always good — that the perversity of the French requires them from time to time to resort to violence in protest against the governments that they have themselves elected.French students set fires as they clash with police during a march through the streets on October 1, 2026 at Aubervilliers, a northern suburb of Paris. Tom Nicholson/Getty ImagesMany are comparing the current events to those of 1968, but the two are easily distinguished. In 1968 the spark came from the international left among the university students and spread quickly to unionized labor and a general strike. At the moment, although the left-wing coalition, France Unbowed, or La France Insoumise, is clearly feeding the unrest, it does not appear to be attempting to generate a general strike. Nor, unfortunately, is there a political leader of such prestige, authority, and astuteness as General de Gaulle to deal with these events.The second element of the current discontent, apart from the generational reflex of the French to demonstrate their dislike of authority, is that the French state is effectively almost bankrupt. Secondary school students launched these demonstrations in protest against crumbling and unsanitary schools especially in less prosperous neighborhoods, an insufficient number of teachers (which is something students are normally grateful for), and insufficient heating in winter and lack of air conditioning in the torrid summer just ended.In general, French society feels with some reason that students are overindulged and that we are wasting a lot of money to graduate people in fields where they cannot possibly make a living and that students are by their nature lazy ingrates. France has suffered from a low birthrate and the ailments of the welfare state as part of a sustained effort to give a placebo of Danegeld to the restive working and agrarian classes.Marine Le Pen addresses the press. Chesnot/Getty Images.The retirement age is 62 and lower in some of the state-owned enterprises such as the railways, and the public-sector share of GDP is 57 percent, some 20 points higher than the United States despite the very large American military establishment. Taxes are too high, there is insignificant economic growth, and what is needed is a full-scale Thatcherite revolution of privatization, reduced government, lower taxes, and a later retirement age.The last French leader who had the courage and authority to enforce such a program was Adolphe Thiers in the 1870’s, after the Paris Commune. President Emmanuel Macron, who has had his moments, is a lame-duck who should not be expected to engage in anything so ambitious.Finally there is an element in these days of disorder of Arab resentment against the comparatively authoritarian measures of integration that France is imposing upon them: All Muslim religious services are monitored and if anything judged seditious is uttered the mosques are closed sine die, and permits are not normally granted for groups of more than 20 seeking to demonstrate on any potentially contentious issue. French public security rules require that everyone be facially identifiable when in a public place. France has more experience with Arabs than any other advanced Western nation and it does not tolerate culturally or civilly separatist education. Everyone in France must learn French, study the history of France, and be meticulously taught the requirements of French citizenship. For the Muslim population, this outburst of discontent is a fine opportunity for them to get their own grievances off their chests.The aspect of the current disruptions that will be reminiscent of 1968 is that when disorder has gone on long enough that the average adult citizen is tired of it and the traditional bourgeois French fear that it might actually cost them something sinks in, it will collapse. In 1968, De Gaulle went to his village some 110 miles east of Paris and said nothing for two weeks.Then he ostentatiously assured himself of the loyalty of the Army, which was mainly stationed on the Rhine, returned to Paris, and spoke to the nation for eight minutes as “the sole legitimate repository of national and Republican power,” having “considered every means, I repeat every means for the conservation of that power.” President Charles de Gaulle at the Elysee Palace, April 9, 1969. APDe Gaulle dissolved the National Assembly and left little doubt that any attempt to interrupt the normal timetable of the general would be suppressed by the notoriously heavy-handed French army, which had only departed Algeria four years before. It would deal unphilosophically with the forces of “totalitarian communism” which had “prevented the students from studying, the teachers from teaching, and the workers from working.” He won the greatest electoral victory in 175 intermittent years of French elections.There will be no such dénouement on this occasion, but Marine Le Pen’s Ralliement National should win the presidential elections next year and start on the long and challenging process of radical reconstruction of the economy — including abandoning Madame Le Pen’s own misguided proposal to lower the retirement age back to 60.

Where Is Charles De Gaulle When France, Amid Escalating Unrest, Needs Him?

Where Is Charles De Gaulle When France, Amid Escalating Unrest, Needs Him?

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