The Embrace of Unreason - Frederick Brown

My father sent this along because he thought it might provide an alternate viewpoint on the French Third Republic from Shirer’s book on the same subject, which was written by someone there at the time, while this one has the possible benefit of more distance. I’m not certain it worked out that way. I do feel as though I have a better grasp on how relevant France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War became. The sense that France would have won with a single, strong ruler, like Germany had with the Kaiser. The desire to find scapegoats, which naturally leads to blaming immigrants and Jews for not being true French, and thus lacking the national spirit to give all for the country.

This later extends to indict Enlightenment ideals, and anything that promotes the individual, as the more totalitarian elements argue that worrying about the individual detracts from serving the state. It finds expression once during the Dreyfus Affair, where those elements argue that even if Dreyfus were innocent – a possibility they don’t actually entertain, as the Jew is clearly a traitor to them, though if he isn’t a true Frenchman, how can he be a traitor – it is worth upholding the honor of the Army to sentence him to prison (and French prisons were pretty horrible). In the early ‘30s, when the left-leaning Popular Front wins the general election with the support of the working class, and institutes a 40-hour work week, this is yet another warning sign to those elements. Worrying about offering the workers opportunities for leisure, chances to spend time with their family, only once again serves to weaken France, because those workers should be in the factories, helping produce things to keep France safe from the Germans (or the Communists, depending on which boogeyman they were using that week).

What’s curious is Brown describes these years through the lens of few people, mostly of totalitarian bent, but also mostly writers. Maurice Barres was in the Chamber of Deputies for a time, but mostly was a incendiary writer. The same with Maurras, who never met a problem he didn’t think could be solved by expelling foreigners or beating up people with opposing viewpoints. The most unusual choice was Pierre La Rochelle Drieu, who spends much of the book doing very little, other than following his friends to various causes, then spending much of the ‘30s trying to decide whether to be Communist or Fascist, ultimately choosing the latter. I guess he works as a microcosm for France in general, drifting, directionless, essentially waiting for someone else to make the decision for them. Still, I might have preferred the book spend more time on someone who actually, you know, did something, rather than sit around twiddling his thumbs.

Brown spends a chapter each on the lives of Barres and Maurras, another chapter on the way every political faction tried to use Joan of Arc to promote their views in the late 19^th Century (much the same way Americans on both sides try to support their arguments by invoking the Founding Fathers). There’s a chapter that looks at the emergence of Dadaism and Surrealism in post-WWI. Some of the information is interesting, but a lot of it felt non-essential. I guess I was looking for more of an explanation of why France wound up where it did, and this is more of a description of the path it took to wind up where it did.

There is a lot in there that reminds me of the current U.S. climate. Blaming immigrants, claiming the country is being undermined by people who aren’t “real” Americans/French. Lots of hypocrisy. You know the type, wants the government to butt in and dictate (other) people’s lives with laws they agree with, but doesn’t want the government doing the same to them. Is perfectly OK with inciting violence towards people opposed to them, but are utterly appalled when the tables are turned (see quote below. L’Action Francaise and its brethren were perfectly OK with calling for violence against Jean Jaures, even when it led to Raoul Villain killing Jaures, the strongest anti-war voice in the lead up to World War 1, but it’s deplorable when it goes against them). It’s all very exhausting after awhile. Everyone who pushes for dictators always assumes the dictator will be someone who agrees with them on everything.

‘The jury deliberated for only thirty-five minutes before reaching its verdict. Like Henriette Caillaux and Raoul Villain before her, she was acquitted of murder. L’Action Francaise declared the next morning, in its Christmas Day issue, that Plateau had been assassinated a second time, by eight bourgeois warped by anarchists who scorned all the values the bourgeoisie held dear. Political murder had been legitimized. L’Action Francaise predicted that in due course the state would go further and bestow official honors upon sluts who killed heroes. Defenders of public order were therefore justified in administering justice as they saw fit. “While revolutionaries say the same thing,” wrote the editors, “they neither do nor mean the same thing, for their violence is in the service of disorder rather than order, in the service of theft rather than property, in the service of anarchy rather than authority, of the foe rather than the fatherland.”