The Stench of Vichy in the Regime of Donald Trump
The Stench of Vichy in the Regime of Donald Trump
by
David Gottfried
America is re-enacting the pathological psychodrama that afflicted France in the 1930’s and 1940’s.
In 1936, the “Popular Front,” a broad center-left coalition, won the French elections. With the victory of the popular front, Mr. Leon Blum, a Jew, became Prime Minister of France. Leon Blum’s victory provoked a febrile and furious backlash. Similarly, America is in the throes of a barbarous backlash because of the election of a black man, Barack Obama, twelve years ago.
The French Right was incensed that a Jew had risen so far. French Rightists coined the slogan: “Better Hitler than Blum.” French Rightists were sympathetic to Hitler, saw him as a bulwark against Bolshevism, and arguably undermined the defense of France. Although German troops did not invade France until May of 1940, France fell to Germany by the middle of June 1940. France, demoralized and bewitched by the hemlock offered by Far Right psychological saboteurs, was no longer the France that had the courage of Verdun and the love of liberty of the Revolution.
After Germany defeated France, a large chunk of French territory, comprising the South and the East of France, was governed not by Germany but by Frenchmen who aligned themselves with Hitler. The capital of this bastardized version of France was situated in the city of Vichy, and the name Vichy has become almost synonymous with traitorous cowards and fascists who aid the foe and warp their nation. Fascist, collaborationist France is known as Vichy France.
In the United States, something very similar happened when Barrack Obama was elected President. The far right of America was apoplectic with hate. The idea that a black man could become president was so detestable to their ante bellum, plantation sensibilities that they threw off all the restraints of reason and civility and howled and bellowed like the German warrior gods of Valhalla. Trump immediately catered to their racist and fascist tastes, concocting the notion that Obama had been born in Kenya. Like the Nazis, Trump knew that a lie, if repeated often enough, becomes as familiar as, and replaces, the truth.
Many Americans have adopted a variant of the “Better Hitler than Blum” adage. They have decided better Trump and Putin than democratically elected minorities or progressives. Putin’s ideas are, perhaps, completely consonant with the grumblings at many a Protestant Church picnic in Dixie: Putin is anti-gay, an ethnic chauvinist and thievish billionaires run half of Russia.
The Vichy government, headed by Marshal Petain (He had been hailed a great war hero of World War One -- beware those Republican supporters of Trump who once were known for their staunchly pro-American militarism), set about to undo the glory of France and its legacy of revolution which blazed so brilliantly in the cataclysms of 1789, 1848 and 1870, when Frenchmen brandished the battle flag of liberty and equality. Vichy detested these values, just as Trump detests due process of law and freedom of speech, and Vichy tried to resurrect the France of old, of the days when the King of France, for a good reason or a bad reason or no reason at all, could have any opponent tortured and killed pursuant to the “lettre de cachet.” Trump similarly dreams of a retreat to feudalism and rule by imperial whim and cruelty.
There are more parallels between Hitler’s Europe and white racism in contemporary America. In part, the lethal anti-Semitism of the thirties and forties constituted an explosion of pent-up hostility toward the Jews that had been building up since their emancipation. After the French Revolution, and the Napoleonic Wars, the status of Jews in Western and Central Europe improved dramatically. They were able to participate in civic life, compete in business and enter the professions. Jewish wealth and status surged. This was anathema to many Europeans who hated the Jews for the alleged crime of deicide, i.e., killing Jesus. And so from the beginning of the Nineteenth century until the paroxysms of fascism in the thirties and forties, hostility to the Jews increased in tandem with the increase in the status of the Jews. Similarly, since the beginning of the modern civil rights movement, a large proportion of Americans have disparaged black demands as excessive and unrealistic and are enraged at blacks for not expressing more gratitude for white, liberal reforms.
I do not know where this will lead. However, there are still more parallels with the thirties, and they do not bode well. The rise of Hitler coincided with the rise of radio. The famous media theorist Marshall McLuhancalled radio a “hot medium,” or something more conducive to the amplification of emotions. The rise of Trump coincides with the rise of social media and the ubiquitous, iniquitous internet which seems ideally suited to make people more intolerant, more emotional and more like our evolutionary antecedents. As the contemporary and relatively uneducated American populace (President Harry Truman did not go to college, but in high school he studied Latin and Greek.) suck on the stupidity of social media like babes at the breast, I fear for the future of my country and the world.