French deference to power, he writes, -with the accompanying conspiracy theories-has encountered the hard-knuckled application of US law applied equally to anyone accused of a serious crime.
Deference to power?
France is the land of the 1789 Revolution that overthrew the Ancien Régime, guillotined its king and queen, and founded the Ist Republic; a land where its newly restored king was sent packing upon Napoleon’s triumphant return from Elba during les Cent Jours in 1815; a nation that drove out its restored monarch during the July 1830 Revolution (les Trois Glorieuses) and yet again in 1848, that revolution giving way to the IInd Republic.
Incidentally, it was during the June Uprising of 1832, initiated by students rebelling against the new monarchical regime that had followed les Trois Glorieuses, that Gavroche, the archetype of the streetwise Parisian gamin, cheeky, brave and free, created by Victor Hugo in Les Misérables, died while stealing bullets off the dead bodies of Gardes Nationales…
After the humiliating defeat at the hands of Germany in 1870, Napoleon III’s empire fell, and France’s IIIrd Republic was born, while in Paris, la Commune de Paris (the result of a popular uprising prompted by the military debacle) was brutally crushed by the government.
The feckless IVth Republic erected after the end of WWII was brought down by De Gaulle during the Algerian War so ineptly handled by preceding governments.
He created the Vth Republic, based on a strong presidency.
This system has prevailed to this day, though it was severely rattled in 1968, when France’s students once again took to the barricades in the capital’s streets demanding more freedom…
Deference to power?
French farmers routinely dump manure and various agricultural products in front of the gates of Prefectures (which represent the state in each of France’s Départements) whenever they are unhappy with their lot, which is often.
Not long ago, striking Continental Tire workers thrashed a Prefecture in Compiègne because their plant was about to close, and the state was not doing enough to help them.
A few years ago, a commando of farmers ransacked the office of the Minister for Environmental Affairs in Paris, to protest a new tax that would target environmentally unfriendly farms...
Such outbursts of indignation occur on a daily basis.
No week goes by without one group or another protesting vocally in the streets of France’s main cities.
Just last week, a Sarkozy government plan to outlaw GPS devices that allowed speeding motorists to detect the location of all radars along France’s road and designed to enforce speeding limits provoked such an indignant outcry that the Interior Minister had to back down.
A majority of the French considered the measure a crass provocation, designed to increase the number of fines imposed by the state in order to replenish its empty coffers in a period of huge public budget deficits, and not a measure intended to encourage drivers to slow down and limit the number of accidents and thus fatalities…
Few even bothered to suggest that only those who failed to respect the law (and thus the legal speed limits) would be penalized.
Deference to power?
In France, no such thing exists, which explains why it is a country so difficult to reform.
No government is ever considered sufficiently legitimate to enact a robust reform program.
Every reform that significantly alters the status quo engenders immediate and active resistance.
Millions then fill the streets, for weeks on end if need be.
This was the case last fall when Sarkozy sought to extend the legal retirement age to 62, (it was then set at 60). Sarkozy did not back down, but the conflict lasted months, and may cost him dearly in next year’s Presidential election.
Incidentally, when was the last time Americans demonstrated in the streets of the nation’s cities to defend their rights, or demand change?
Hence, the powers that be inspire nothing but contempt and suspicion.
The state is only legitimate when it provides protection and financial assistance…
As a result, it is not deference to power and the resulting tendency to believe in conspiracy theories that initially led many in France to believe that DSK had been set up.
This points to another cultural difference: the Cartesian strain in the French psychological makeup.
DSK headed a major, prestigious international organization that became even more influential after the global financial meltdown of 2008.
He regularly worked with the leaders of the globe’s major powers and was on first name basis with many of them.
He was also the most likely candidate to defeat Nicolas Sarkozy in next year’s French Presidential election.
Hence, the Cartesian mind could not help but wonder why anyone with such influence and prospects would run the risk of losing it all (and spending the rest of his life in a US jail) and sexually assault a maid in a hotel room…
Indeed, there are more traditional and discreet ways to cater to such needs…Why would he attack the maid?
It made no sense, and explains why many in France thought that DSK’s enemies, in Washington or Paris, had engineered his downfall.
This in no way however, justifies the arguments utilized by his friends (all part of the same enlightened, leftwing elite) to defend him.
The fact that no one died, that DSK merely loves women, perhaps too exuberantly or that it was merely a case of détroussage d’une domestique (taking sexual advantage of one’s social inferiors), such statements clearly revealed the fact that some of DSK’s advocates had retained an Ancien Régime mindset, where a seigneur could do what he pleased because, well, he was a seigneur.
It is amusing to note that such contempt for women was voiced, albeit unwittingly, by those who consider themselves progressives and thus, defenders of women’s rights…
The conspiracy theory reaction was short-lived, however.
With perhaps one exception, no leader of the Socialist party (to which DSK belongs) ever suggested that he had been set up, even by the one most likely to benefit from his political demise, Nicolas Sarkozy.
In France, since his election in 2007, Sarkozy has been held responsible for anything and everything that goes wrong in the country (although, never for any positive developments), yet no prominent opposition figure has accused Sarkozy of having conspired against a dangerous political rival…
No doubt, this is due to the fact that they all knew their friend DSK was a serial, insistent womanizer.
One Socialist member of the National Assembly told the press last month she always made sure never to be alone in a room with DSK…
The French should have remembered their classics.
Are not Greek tragedies replete with heroes who provoke their own downfall due to some tragic flaw (Aristotle’s hamartia), that lead to disaster, but also serve to reveal their humanity?
Perhaps it was DSK’s tragic flaw that led him to assault a maid in a Sofitel hotel room, thereby recklessly destroying his reputation and dooming his political prospects…
Finally, one mere word about US law.
Many here in France were aghast to discover that it was the defendant’s responsibility to gather evidence that may benefit him or her during the trial.
In France, the Magistrate investigating a case gathers all the evidence that he or she can and finds relevant, no matter whose case it supports, the people’s or the accused.
DSK, with his millionaire wife, has had no difficulty hiring the best lawyers in Washington and New York, as well as private investigators instructed to unearth any element, in New York or Africa, that can be utilized against the maid, in order to discredit her and undermine the credibility of her accusations.
DSK will thus be well defended…
Would that have been the case had he been less well off?
Hardly…
Mr. Cohen writes of the hard-knuckled application of US law as applied to anyone accused of a serious crime.
I can hear, from my old house in the North of France, the guffaws of MM. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and company, the architects of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and of the National Surveillance State erected after 9/11(Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram, enemy combatants, enhanced interrogation techniques (torture), secret prisons, ghost detainees, warrantless wiretapping and so on are its sterling manifestations!)
at the suggestion that US laws also apply to them…
Alas, that is another, albeit sad, story...
(in Delacroix's painting of La Liberté guidant le Peuple, the child depicted on the right inspired Victor Hugo's creation of Gavroche)
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