PARTISAN REVIEW
evident to people at large that some other political choice does not exist."
"At the bottom of all this I can see social stagnation and apathy,
but I don't see that people are possessed by the feeling of a dire emer–
gency threatening them, which requires a miracle of energy on their
part. People today don't believe in miracles of any kind any longer,
much less in political messianism. What they really feel is that history
is being made without them anyway, and that performing some sym–
bolic act of worship to some traditional idol, like the Revolution or the
Fatherland, is about all they can do to assert their presence on the scene.
That is why Europe today resembles a ghetto, rather than a gallant
three-master tossed by a storm."
I must say that the type of arguments I had heard from a number
of people, especially Gaullists and Communists, tended to confirm my
friend's diagnosis. I asked, for example, a well-known French scholar
and publicist who has recently joined the Rassemblement du Peuple
Fran~ais,
what reasons he would give to prove that De Gaulle does not
mean fascism. He answered that, in his opinion, a fascist ideology con–
tains four ingredients: 1) anti-Communism; 2) reinforcement of the
State; 3) nationalism; 4) a war of conquest as the final issue. "Now,"
argued this intellectual, "De Gaulle certainly stands for the first two
points, but not for the other two. He accepts
th~
idea of a united Europe,
and when he thinks of war, he simply thinks of the necessity to do every–
thing possible to make France ready
to
withstand Stalin's probable on–
slaught."
"But," I retorted, "are you sure that De Gaulle is not a nationalist
in the sense that he conceives of France as a monarchic entity requiring
a certain type of behaviour and rejecting certain others, and whose
commands can finally be interpreted only by the leader? After all, this
is the essence of nationalism. Besides, don't you think that De Gaulle's
insistence, whenever he speaks of Europe, on -the notion that Europe's
unity can be achieved only under French leadership, reveals more than
a little national egocentrism? As for war, does it really matter whether
the war one prepares for is a defensive or an offensive one, once the
danger of war is considered to create a state of emergency and authorize
a methodically drastic action on the part of the government?"
"I won't deny," said my interlocutor, "what everybody knows, name–
ly that De Gaulle has a somewhat hermetic, and possibly outdated,
notion of France's mission, as well as of his own with regard to France.
But what is politically relevant is the fact that this notion gives him the
singlemindedness which is needed to break the present political stale–
mate. I might even agree that De Gaulle is a poor politician, .and not
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