THE WEEK

Now you see it, now you don’t. A special committee of that same United Nations which has voted to condemn aggression all over the globe in past months last week voted to adjourn for three years—after still another failure in its fifteen-year attempt to define “aggression.”

De Gaulle’s attempt to crush the Secret Army is being presented to us in the conventional rhetoric of Democracy vs. Fascism. Our commentators do not bother to explain to us that: 1) de Gaulle is governing France by decree; 2) over the past year, thousands of French officers and civilians in metropolitan France have been arrested without specific charge and are being held without trial; 3) every week, issues of magazines are being suppressed by police action, without trial; 4) de Gaulle openly disregards the Assembly (parliament) and all other of the “intermediary institutions” which make up the structure of all constitutional governments, and bases his rule solely on his personal relation to “the people” as displayed in direct plebiscite—the Caesarist institution first introduced into modern Europe by Bonaparte, in 1803, in order to “legitimize” his assumption of imperial power, and subsequently become the prime political device of Napoleon III, Mussolini and Hitler; 5) de Gaulle so worded the question submitted in the April 8 plebiscite that he may interpret the Yes vote not merely as an option for “peace in Algeria” but as a blanket approval of all his government’s acts past and future; 6) the “alienanation” of French territory voted on in the plebiscite is explicitly forbidden by the present French constitution; 7) under the constitution Algeria is juridically part of France, and its inhabitants are French citizens electing regular members of the assembly, etc.; and yet Algeria was not permitted to vote in this plebiscite which decided the fate of Algeria.

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Now you see it, now you don’t. A special committee of that same United Nations which has voted to condemn aggression all over the globe in past months last week voted to adjourn for three years—after still another failure in its fifteen-year attempt to define “aggression.”

De Gaulle’s attempt to crush the Secret Army is being presented to us in the conventional rhetoric of Democracy vs. Fascism. Our commentators do not bother to explain to us that: 1) de Gaulle is governing France by decree; 2) over the past year, thousands of French officers and civilians in metropolitan France have been arrested without specific charge and are being held without trial; 3) every week, issues of magazines are being suppressed by police action, without trial; 4) de Gaulle openly disregards the Assembly (parliament) and all other of the “intermediary institutions” which make up the structure of all constitutional governments, and bases his rule solely on his personal relation to “the people” as displayed in direct plebiscite—the Caesarist institution first introduced into modern Europe by Bonaparte, in 1803, in order to “legitimize” his assumption of imperial power, and subsequently become the prime political device of Napoleon III, Mussolini and Hitler; 5) de Gaulle so worded the question submitted in the April 8 plebiscite that he may interpret the Yes vote not merely as an option for “peace in Algeria” but as a blanket approval of all his government’s acts past and future; 6) the “alienanation” of French territory voted on in the plebiscite is explicitly forbidden by the present French constitution; 7) under the constitution Algeria is juridically part of France, and its inhabitants are French citizens electing regular members of the assembly, etc.; and yet Algeria was not permitted to vote in this plebiscite which decided the fate of Algeria.