It was on this day in 1934 that a collection of "fascists" in France known as the Far-Right Leagues attempted to take down the Third Republic in a coup at the Palais Bourbon. Obviously, it failed but it did prompt the leftist government of the French Third Republic to pass a law banning political militias, restricting the freedom of association and outlawing any party or group that aimed at overthrowing the French Republic. This, in itself, illustrates a common hypocrisy with most major European republics still today which is that they glorify the will of the people and majority rule and political freedom while at the same time saying, basically, that the French people have a republic that gives them the right to have any government they want
except for anything other than the republic. However, it gets better than that because the law was never fully put into effect.
In the end, the Far-Right Leagues were untouched by this new law and the ONLY political organization that was actually dissolved because of it was the monarchist movement known as "French Action". And what was the result? Well, as we know, the French Third Republic did fall but it certainly was not the lonely royalists of French Action that destroyed it, it was Adolf Hitler who destroyed it and it was replaced by the State of France which was dominated by many of the same people of those Far-Right Leagues of the 1930's who the law was supposedly aimed at eliminating. Had it not been the for the ultimate Allied victory, the State of France might still be around today and yet the left in France (as in many, many other western countries) have not learned the lesson. They still routinely suppress reasonable debate and thus clear the field of everyone but their most unreasonable enemies who otherwise moderate people are then forced to turn to as their only option for survival.
Thank you for the history lesson!
ReplyDeleteWhenever a legitimate thing is suppressed, a corrupt form of it attempts to break out of that suppression, leading to false dichotomies--belief either in the suppression of the legitimate thing or in its corrupt form.
People act as if the thing they want already exists and so claim oppression where none exists until what they want comes into existence.
And in my experience, leftism is more ideological than historical, practical, logical, and certainly moral.
Ultimately the Feudal Monarchy of France before the Bourbon rule was more representative of the commoners of France than the Republic. The regions and localities of France were self-governing and their lords had for centuries ruled these realms: they knew the people, the soil, and their neighbors. It was a familial affair. What can a Republic do that the truly Ancient Regime could not do?
ReplyDeleteFrance's future is in the Altar and Throne. There can be no other alternative; there was no France before that and France after has been either the world's boogeyman or joke ever since it left it.