2023-11-07 15:03:13
TRIBUNE/OPINION – Is the CNR, the National Council of the Resistance, a source of inspiration or a political mystification? Both my captain! As is often the case, it is the “and” that sticks to reality, more than the “or”.
The CNR, a French committee founded in May 1943, brought together the different movements of the French resistance, all political tendencies combined. It enabled the development of a program in March 1944, composed of two parts, an immediate action plan and a series of social and economic reforms to be implemented upon the Liberation of France.
The first mission was that entrusted to Jean Moulin, to unify the different resistance movements, then to set up a committee of experts in order to think about post-war political projects. What followed for many of these people was arrests, torture, deportations, or executions. However, the desire to establish the program continued. Death “happy days” hoped for to resist morally, during one of the darkest periods of our history, when it was France’s own government – the Vichy regime – which had become France’s internal adversary, and the formidable enemy of the French who wanted to put the country back on the path to reestablishing democracy.
Social security, pensions, unemployment benefits
This is obviously the source of inspiration when our country goes adrift, from a government driven by forces of destruction (2) against the population. But also when, year after year, all the social gains put in place after the war are withdrawn. The CNR is measures that lead to Social Security, pensions, unemployment benefits, a synthesis of the idea of ensuring all citizens have the means of existence. But also measures for schools so that all French children can “benefit from the most developed education”. Also other measures, at the economic level, which decided the place of large companies, the energy sectors, insurance and banks, by nationalizing them.
There remain less expressed (sic!), cultural measures, with subsidies for artists, but also the independence of the press and information; the ORTF (French Radio-Television Office) created in 1964, sometimes nicknamed “the voice of its master”, that of the President of the Republic Charles de Gaulle, not being the model of independence that the CNR wanted; as for artist subsidies, everything remains to be done today…
Nonetheless, the reforms implemented were lasting and went in the direction of restoring democracy.
This refusal of defeat which animated the members of the CNR, to fight against a government considered non-legitimate, with regard to the values defended by this Council, to oppose the looting, the destruction of French production, material restrictions and psychological, this long-term vision, in search of a fairer social order, this commitment of all to the struggle, can only inspire us.
If the first part of the program concerning the immediate action plan, in short the armed insurrection, could not be put in place because the Liberation of Paris in August 44 made its execution obsolete, the second, that of “preparing a political platform for France after the Liberation “had a lasting impact on our minds and our way of life.
One might wonder about the reason for waiting until March 1944 before a program aimed at resistance was established, when the war had begun in September 39, and the government’s zealous agreements with the Nazi invader had started with the armistice in June 40. But what did we know about what would happen next? Was it not reasonable to think that it was necessary to adapt to what was inexorably the new state of France, that negotiation spared the country?
Political mystification
It is so easy in hindsight to see what should have been done, and not accept. When today, once again, we make compromises, do we not find ourselves like these French people who take time to meet, to organize themselves to exchange, to learn to consider their common interests? When in addition, and here we approach the political mystification, the different protagonists of the CNR were far from uniting; understand that everyone is pursuing their own interests, when they are not also those of the parties and trade union organizations that they claim to support. The consultation is complicated, the points of agreement fluctuate… This is the first mystification, when we are far from an ideal of sharing, of these people united in the resistance, this strong symbol nevertheless, which has reached our days , because history has erased the rough edges. Isn’t it better to remember heroic moments, remember our history with its dates when the enemy was defeated, predicting that tomorrow we will be able to defeat…
But much worse is this second mystification, made by those who claim to claim it, and do the exact opposite, by shamelessly destroying everything that has been put in place since 1945, by trampling on the underlying soul of our French exception. Messrs Sarkozy, Hollande and Macron did not hesitate to champion it, while spitting on it with reforms and coercive and liberticidal measures.
The CNR has now become especially a symbol of resistance. However, from 1946, the committees made up of resistance fighters created by the CNR disappeared. From 1947 to 1994, its program vanished, only brought back to the forefront of the political scene during a commemoration by Jacques Chirac, associating it with a symbol of strong public service…
ATTAC and Hessel
Followed, in 2004, the 60th anniversary of the CNR, celebrated in particular by the ATTAC movement in order to denounce the money powers, but also by signatories who launched an appeal, such as Stéphane Hessel, the author of this book of a few pages which had a worldwide success entitled Be outraged! Many around the world have found themselves in this exhortation. It was in 2010… Hessel was also one of the co-authors of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. Which I invite you to reread; recalling these rights to dignity for everyone.
Stéphane Hessel maintained that the program was indeed solemnly handed over to General de Gaulle by the CNR on August 25, 1944, at the Paris City Hall. Is this even important? When the essential, the fundamental is elsewhere. These French values Liberty-Equality-Fraternity which resurface when it comes to liberating one’s country. This fight against indifference, “the worst attitude”. When French sovereignty is sold off again…
If it is also a question of a story embellished by the years, it is also this reason for pride, offering the need to heal our country, to heal its ailing democracy. Source of inspiration which allows us to keep the flame alive in the face of the tornadoes of corruption and the desire for domination and enslavement of some who want to be elite. With this heritage, we understand our compelling desire for the renewal of “happy days”. It’s time to put it back in place.
Hot (05/20/2022).
(1) The program was initially titled “Happy Days”.
(2) Let us recall these examples of sentences from Emmanuel Macron’s speeches which illustrate a destructive desire: “deconstruct the history of France”, “the refractory Gauls”, “piss off the French”…
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