The New France

The old debate about nationalism versus ideology acquires a fresh urgency with the election of François Mitterrand as President of the Fifth Republic. The first holder of that high office, the great General de Gaulle, had a blind spot about ideology.

He saw history primarily in terms of national needs, aspirations, and ambitions, and of the biographies of men of destiny (himself included) who translated such notions into action. He had collaborated with the French Communists (legitimately, in a wartime context) in resistance to the Nazi invaders. Later he bitterly denounced them during the years of his Rassemblement du Peuple Français, not because they were Communists but because he saw them, rightly, as “separatists,” whose allegiance was primarily to Russia, not to France.

The old debate about nationalism versus ideology acquires a fresh urgency with the election of François Mitterrand as President of the Fifth Republic. The first holder of that high office, the great General de Gaulle, had a blind spot about ideology.

He saw history primarily in terms of national needs, aspirations, and ambitions, and of the biographies of men of destiny (himself included) who translated such notions into action. He had collaborated with the French Communists (legitimately, in a wartime context) in resistance to the Nazi invaders. Later he bitterly denounced them during the years of his Rassemblement du Peuple Français, not because they were Communists but because he saw them, rightly, as “separatists,” whose allegiance was primarily to Russia, not to France.