Irreverent Thoughts on Celebrated Deaths

...NASSER AND DE GAULLE Irreverent Thoughts on Celebrated Deaths BY RAY ALAN THE EARTH has lost its noblest ornament," wrote Pedro Martir after the death of Isabel I of Spam Watching all those statesmen, sightseers, princes, politicians, military folk and mourners converge on Cairo and Pans following the most celebrated deaths of 1970, one might have thought some comparable disaster had again struck this planet--in duplicate But were Gamal Abdel Nasser and Charles de Gaulle true colossi of our age...

...Nasser played an important part in ridding Egypt of a useless monarchy and an even less useful British garrison He was a charming host, clever propagandist and wily negotiator, and he succeeded for a time in inducing the United States and Soviet governments to compete for his favors (The U S recovered its wits first ) He also persuaded the Egyptians--until then a rather passive, happy-go-lucky, inward-looking people--that he was going to make them the predominant force in three spheres the Arab states, the Islamic world and Africa The prospect pleased many of his countrymen The Egyptians speak Arabic but are not Arabs, and their Arab neighbors tended to look down on them Nasser's policy promised to raise their prestige and provide employment in the Arab countries for thousands of youths of the former effendi class who could not be found jobs in Egypt's own administration and schools The pursuit of hegemony, however, plunged Egypt into costly intrigues in half a dozen Arab states, into open warfare in the Yemen where Nasser achieved the distinction of being the first Near Eastern ruler to use poison gas, into defeat and the loss of Sinai when Israel accepted his challenge to fight in 1967, and into even graver humiliation when Nasser proclaimed a "war of attrition" against Israel which boomeranged in the Suez Canal zone St monumentum requiris look at the rums of Suez and Ismailia Egypt has another new monument, the great dam at Aswan, but that is a monument to the Soviet taxpayer, not Nasser For in the end Nasser replaced British imperialism with the harsher Soviet variety, and left the average Egyptian, after 15 years of running in order to stand still, little better off than he was under King Farouk Nasser's main appeal was, of course, to the Egyptians and Arabs, who are, on the whole, passionately attracted to anything resembling a strong man, yet he also captivated quite a few Westerners--the sort who admired Mussolini because he made the trains run on time De Gaulle's appeal was more subtle, so subtle that he was able to climb to power in 1968 with the support of democrats and fascists, republicans and royalists, imperialists and anti-imperialists The roots of de Gaulle's power and prestige lay in his backing the right horse in June 1940, when most of his compatriots backed the wrong one The choice he had to make was a cruel one, and the fact that he made it is a measure of his courage and strength of character The France he loved--Catholic, traditionalist, militaristic antiparliamentary, tinged with royalism--was loyal to Marshal Petain, a man he revered, and ready to collaborate with Germany, m its eyes, he had sold out and gone over to the English and Jews, to that contemptible world of parliamentarism, heresy and freemasonry where only the fool of the family went into the army As victory approached, de Gaulle was bound to feel like a deep-sea diver who has been saved from drowning by a schoolboy, and to work up a spiteful head of steam against the schoolboy Nobody is more hated than a benefactor Even if Churchill and Roosevelt had been the easiest men on earth to get along with de Gaulle would still have had to pick squabbles with them--to salve his own self-respect and to convince doubters in France that he had not sold out after all And soon, swelling political ambition inflated mere self-justification into less innocent propaganda and finally myth Its final version can be read m the history textbooks used in some French primary schools They attribute the liberation of France almost exclusively to de Gaulle, while referring to his famous radio appeal from London, they forget that Britain, too, was in the War The Gaullist myth suited the Communists, for whom the real War started only when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union It also suited the average Frenchman, who had been bowled over by Petain's emotional rhetoric, convinced Hitler was about to wring England's neck, and chiefly worried about the shortage of potatoes If not for Gaullist mythmaking and English romanticism (the English believed that every other Frenchman was a Resistance hero), France's prestige would have been very low m postwar Europe As Claude Bourdet, an authentic resistant, has written, de Gaulle enabled the passive majority of Frenchmen to fight the War by procuration, afterward, he encouraged them to feel that communion with de Gaulle somehow effaced their passivity, their four-year absence from history's greatest struggle--and their obsession with potatoes So an interpenetration occurred between French complexes and de Gaulle's political ambition When de Gaulle launched his first party, the Rassemblement du peuple francais, the mass of his support came from people who had supported Petain or sat on the fence during the War, not from former maquisards, who were mostly Left-wingers In 1958, when de Gaulle's lieutenants were plotting in Pans and Algiers to bring him to power, ex-Vichyites rallied more overtly than ever to his support After 1958, Gaullism and guilt complexes were, once more, inextricably intertwined De Gaulle came to power to rescue France from parliamentary crises and a threat of subversion, and to keep Algeria French But many of the crises had been provoked by Gaullists like Michel Debre and Jacques Soustelle to discredit parliamentary government, and the only threat of subversion in the political backwoods was Gaullist As for French Algeria That pathetic wreck of a gifted man, Andre Malraux, then de Gaulle's chief propagandist, declared the movement for French Algeria "the second greatest event of the century, the first being the Chinese revolution " De Gaulle himself cried "Vive l'Algerie francaise'" Algeria's million Europeans cheered and carried on Before long, though, de Gaulle was convinced by his economic advisers that to hold on to Algeria would be ruinous The debacle was a hideous one for Algeria's Europeans, but de Gaulle had no affection for them During the Anglo-American occupation of Algeria m 1942-43 most had been anti-Gaullist, preferring his rival Giraud Decolonization was undoubtedly the most important positive product (strictly, it was a byproduct) of de Gaulle's rule He tried to stabilize French politics by stultifying its public life, geriymandering constituency boundaries and clapping a straitjacket on television and radio services The outcome was France's longest and most violent period of riots and strikes since the 1930s Funds were pumped into military and prestige projects, although France's growing population desperately needed more and better houses, schools and hospitals De Gaulle even took risks with the stability of the franc to snipe at the dollar and the pound And, while he was posturing on his precarious little stage, more sober rulers were making Germany Western Europe's greatest economic power On the personal plane, de Gaulle turned against some of those who hoisted him into the Presidency as spitefully as he had turned against the British Soustelle, who made the mistake of taking him seriously on Algeria, was exiled Pompidou, after winning the 1968 election for de Gaulle, was dismissed from the premiership and ruthlessly denigrated The Nasserist and Gaullist cults were based primarily on their heroes' own narcissistic evaluation of themselves, and on the output of the powerful propaganda machines they controlled A politician who appears modest and devotes his career to the causes of peace and social progress runs the risk of being dismissed as second-rate The statesman who wants a certificate of greatness must have a cutting tongue, a pretentious pose and raucous propaganda backing, and pick as many quarrels as he can RAY ALAN'S recent book, Spanish Quest, was published by Macmillan...