Am I ready? Would I be? Am I trained enough? Do I have the principles and the passion that would perhaps allow me to make the right choice if History were to ask me to do so? Obsessing question for me and for many, but perhaps especially for the French, who keep the memory of the moral collapse.
When it came to choosing between crazy resistance and reasonable collaboration, some took paths to which their service record did not predispose them. In London and on French soil, French people brought to life this appeal which, however, not everyone heard: “There must be hope. The flame of the French Resistance must shine and burn somewhere” (June 24, 1940).
What could have determined the sometimes unpredictable paths of these men and women? How did they discern and how can we do so today? Not everyone could listen to London radio or receive the underground press. Today, note, information fog has replaced scarcity. The circumstances differ, the issue of discernment remains.
Resist when all seems lost
It is not insignificant that at this precise moment in our political and civic life the films Des rays et des ombres then La Bataille de Gaulle, before Jean Moulin, were released. Even if they respond to different timelines, disconnected from immediate news, this sudden conjunction has meaning. By summoning history, these works underline the density of present times.
The premiere could be criticized for presenting the collaborationist Jean Luchaire in too favorable a light. However, it remains instructive to follow the decline of a man when he is not an unequivocal bastard.
And how it contrasts, the portrait of this pacifist, press boss, ending up mired in his baseness, mediocrities and betrayals, with the remarkable de Gaulle of Antonin Baudry, madly faithful to honor, constantly fighting his own contingencies and those of France so that there may be hope! How to resist when everything seems lost? Will we know, in turn?
Nothing is certain. At the time of choice, presumed Gaullists do not know how to recognize what, to a certain extent, there is of de Gaulle in a Zelensky – him whom no one imagined holding, him whom Trump wanted to humiliate with a rudeness that even Roosevelt had not reserved for de Gaulle.
Amazing, no, that they do not see the flame of Resistance among these Ukrainian people who have held out for longer than the First World War in the face of a supposedly irresistible imperialist adversary and whose troops, like those who preceded them, do not neglect any war crime?
Paying tribute to the foreign story
Villiers, Guaino, Dupont-Aignan and Ferry, they appear: on the front page of JDNews, the magazine of press boss Bolloré. Like others before them, they present themselves in the name of peace, waving in anticipation the white flag of capitulation. Like others before them, these singular patriots put themselves in the service of the foreigner’s story.
Under their faces, a title – “the call for a start” – which speaks of their blindness since the start is also Ukrainian today. They see themselves as de Gaulle; we guess Luchaire. Even the absent one is present: we do not find Xenia Fedorova on this front page, but she nevertheless completes the poster well.
We think of Otto Abetz, Luchaire’s sidekick, future ambassador to Paris. Nor did he appear when, as an agent of the Third Reich, he invoked peace and Franco-German friendship like Fedorova did Franco-Russian friendship. Like Fedorova, her residence permit was called into question. He was expelled. To avoid following Luchaire’s destiny, our quartet of retired politicians still have time for a start, or for silence.
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