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Military forces have always shared strangely similar traits and psychological tactics worldwide. During boot camps, the goal of the upper echelon is to break the individual will of the recruits, and then- within a few weeks- reprogram them changing civilians into what the military culture views as a “superior” human: a soldier. While civilians can say no and apply free will, soldiers must obey a strict top down chain of command with zero tolerance for debate, no matter how absurd or even criminal orders might be. Once you are in, the military machine owns your person and control the essential of a soldier’s life. Armies, independently of geographical locations, never tolerate any form of dissent at any given time.
La Marseillaise, chicken hawks and Petainistes
In the aftermaths of Paris attacks, La Marseillaise has become a very popular song worldwide, and in France a rallying call for war. However, there is a lyric in the French revolutionary song that says: “Aux armes citoyens!”. It was a call to war not to be fought by mercenary professional soldiers, but instead it was addressed to ordinary French citizens to defend their revolution and newly formed Republic against the professional armies of European kings. Against all odds, and to the kingdoms’ dismay, France’s revolutionary troops defeated its enemies at the glorious battle of Valmy on September 20th, 1792. The French revolution, and its formidable army of peasants, had changed the course of history and put the European royals and their mercenaries on notice. As a young man, the victory of Valmy made me proud, and it still does. At the time French people had no fear, and fought bravely for their just principles of liberty, equality and brotherhood. This, not the state of emergency imposed by decree in France, is what La Marseillaise represents!
As a genuine nationalist and “patriot” in the old sense, Charles de Gaulle could not be bribed or intimated. And he knew enough about the nascent Anglo-American axis to distrust them vehemently.
Many dark days would come to challenge France’s national pride. One of them, perhaps the worst of all, was the humiliating defeat in 1940 inflicted to France by Germany. A large majority of French people accepted the defeat, and supported the collaborator pro-German Vichy government headed by Petain. A very few brave men and women didn’t, and on June 18, 1940, Charles de Gaulle saved the country’s honor by assuming their leadership from London, and called all French citizens, including the ones in France’s colonies in North Africa and West Africa to join him to fight the German occupation and its Vichy collaborators. De Gaulle was declared by Vichy a traitor, and condemned to death. If Petain and his Vichy government had a wide support among the French population in 1940, by May 1945 all of France had become Gaulliste. If General de Gaulle was alive today, one can easily extrapolate that he would be very upset and might forcefully denounce the state of emergency, and its wide acceptance as Petainiste. The acceptance of defeat during World War II came from fear just like the current willingness of a majority of French people to lose most of their basic civil liberties by the imposition of a three months state of emergency which could be extended.
Patriot Act on steroid
France’s state of emergency law should be taken very seriously. It was first passed into law in 1955 during the war in Algeria. The last time it was used was 1961 when French police killed more than 200 French citizens of North African origins during a peaceful demonstration in Paris. The provisions of the state of emergency are even more repressive and Orwellian than the US Patriot Act. They give French authorities arbitrary power to search any homes or businesses without a warrant ( more than 500 searches have already been conducted since the 13th of November); conduct searches on all persons in public places randomly and without probable cause; arrest anyone deemed suspect or dangerous; ban all protests and public gathering; and last but not least, there is a provision- which has not been used yet- which allows the French government to censor, control and even shut down press organizations including radio stations. The French government has already mobilized (all combined) more than 100,000 police, Gendarmes, and military to enforce its police state policies. This will represent a considerable expense for France’s tax payers, and it will likely bring cuts in many welfare and social programs.
French police officers storm a church after a raid in Paris suburb Saint-Denis, Wednesday, Nov.18, 2015. A woman wearing an explosive suicide vest blew herself up Wednesday as heavily armed police tried to storm a suburban Paris apartment where the suspected mastermind of last week’s attacks was believed to be holed up, police said. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
Paradoxically, in a matter of a week, the place of birth of the notion of human rights has become the justification for a global police state agenda. Many in France are accepting this shameful path as if they were animals singing joyfully on their way to the slaughterhouse. If not stopped, the mercenary police state apparatus will take over in a constant war from within against its own citizens; a war against the most sacred principles of the French republic for the illusion of security. The professional armies of the West, just like their Jihadist counterpart of ISIS, are in essence mercenary forces fighting the wars for profit of the industrial-military complex. What happened to my people and to my culture? Was Valmy fought and won by France’s forefathers for nothing? Let’s put back the draft! Only determined citizen armies can protect our nations from the mercenary forces of the Orwellian Empire.
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1 comment
I agree with this (at least in principle) on several points, including the main point: all-volunteer armies are mercenary armies. Mercenary armies are imperialist armies. I part ways with attributing to De Gaulle , the ‘saving’ of France, whatever his role as leader of the govt .in exile, or in the post war years, rabbid anti-communist though he was. . In Britain, and in the U.S. there is a nasty legend about the supposed cowardice (or laziness) of the French people. Its a vicious and completely ahistorical stereotype, grown from chauvinism and historical ‘bad blood’ on the British,and lazy ignorance, and anti-intellectualism on the part of the Americans. One of the tropes of this genre is that the French underground resistance to the Nazis is grossly exaggerated or even, itself mythological. This is absurd. The French resistance was real, and its heroic legend was earned .However, it wasn’t the Gaullist,nationalist French Bourgeois that earned the lions share of the glory – it was French communists and fugitive Jews. Some of these communists were Arabs and Gypsies and Hatians. Some of their leaders were Soviet army and NKVD officers, who courageously infiltrated IN to France, at a time when many others inside France were headed the other way.