May 1968 Paris - The Riots That Saved De Gaulle

wikipedia ^ | 5/11/05 | staff

[Southack]

May 1968

It's good to remember History. Old tricks should be remembered, lest they be played on us again.

During most of the month of May in 1968, France had riots not unlike today. De Gaulle's government was even at its lowest point of popularity back then...strikingly similar to the 23% French approval rating today (in 2005) of Chirac.

A general insurrection broke out across France that month in 1968. It soon began to reach revolutionary proportions before being discouraged by the French Communist Party, and finally suppressed by the Government. This rebellion was an important revolutionary event of the Twentieth Century because it appeared to be a purely popular uprising, superseding ethnic, cultural, age and class boundaries.

It began with student strikes that broke out at a number of universities and high schools in Paris following confrontations with the police. The de Gaulle administration's attempts to quash those strikes by further police action appeared to inflame the situation further... leading to street battles (with the police) in the Latin Quarter. Ten million French workers, roughly two-thirds of the French workforce, then led a protest strike.

The protests caused De Gaulle to create a military operations headquarters to deal with the unrest, dissolve the National Assembly, and call new parliamentary elections for June 23, 1968.

The French government again appeared close to complete collapse at that point, but then something interesting happened; the revolution evaporated almost as quickly as it arose.

Upon urging by the Confédération Générale du Travail, the leftist union federation, and the Parti Communiste Français, the French Communist Party, workers simply went back to their jobs.

But the Left was not rewarded in the polls. When the elections were finally held in June, it was the Gaullist Party that emerged even stronger than before.

De Gaulle won the elections, not the Communists and assorted Leftists who were blamed for instigating the protests and who admittedly called for "their" protests to cease.

Which is to say, a French government with horrendous popularity (lack thereof, really), benefitted from the very riots against it.

[Graymatter]

I remember 1968. The entire planet passed through a cloud of something like red kryptonite.

[Clemenza]

Protesting against Euro-peon culture aint such a bad thing.

Of course, if you add protesting in favor of Islam, all I can say is shoot to kill and bury them in pig skins.

[Clemenza]

Don't know if anyone has told you this, but Sarkozy, while Catholic, is of Hungarian, Greek, and Sephardic Jewish ancestry, not Polish.

[adamsjas]

Chirac is ineffectual and will not run again. The French are not ready to forget that it was Chirac who, in 2002, was the first French leader, with hat in hand, to make an official visit the Grand Mosque in Paris since its opening in 1926. And even the French have tired of the mincing Villepin. The riots almost ensure that the next President of France will be the tough-minded Sarkozy who is determined to save France from itself.

From your lips to God's ears gaspar!

I hope it's so. I would like to see nothing more than a forces resignation of Chirac at this point.

[dangus]

I thought I had read he's Polish. I'll grant you, Sarkozy spells more Hungarian than Polish... Sarkoski? Jewish, eh?... That should be fun..:^D

[Iris7]

What you say is true enough.

I would not say that "the French admired Hitler" though. Maybe "the French thought Hitler was cool" or a "heavy duty dude".

Certainly Hitler was pretty universally seen as "one bad assed MoFo" (in the, say, "ghetto" way). A guy who knew what he wanted and got it over the death of whoever. Stalin was admired in the same way in this country and nearly worshiped in France for the same reason.

I suppose I could be accused of a "revisionist" view of 20th Century history! ;-)