Malcontent Frenchies

One of the many clichés that our American friends can find in most of their media or tourist guides is that the French are a Latin people; hence the differences and difficulties to accept or even understand the way things are done in France.

Excuse me, the French, a Latin people? The people living in France whose name comes from the Franks? Granted, the Romans invaded and colonized ancient Gaul but that was after the place had been occupied by the Celts for centuries, and well before being invaded again by the Huns, the Vandals, and the Normans. There is nothing Latin about the people living in Brittany for example, or those living on the eastern border with Switzerland or Germany. Or those located above the Loire valley for that matter.

The truth is that the French are very much a mixture of northern and southern peoples and cultures, and that the country is an amalgam of two main civilization traits: the northern one, a patriarchal society and the Latin one, a matriarchal society. Here lies the ultimate difference with our English neighbours who, despite having being occupied by the Romans are definitively of Saxon descent. Furthermore, since the first American settlers were English, this Saxon origin can also be found at the core of the modern American society 400 years after the Mayflower.

The difference couldn’t be more striking and fraught with enormous consequences. Although the French may not be exclusively Latin, the basic values upon which their society is based is Latin. Let me explain: 

Where the defining values of the Saxons are the clan and the leader (“Commander in Chief” anyone?), law and order as defined by the principle of reality, the Latins recognize the group gathered around the maternal figure, which leads us to the pleasure principle. The Saxons favor obedience to the leader of the clan to which they belong. In contrast, the Latins don’t have any special respect to the notion of the leader per se. Nor do they respect order for the sake of it like our northern cousins. There’s no bowing to the ruling elite, particularly the politicians. Didn’t the French say “no” even to General de Gaulle? Now consider how the English, by and large, venerate their royal family and their aristocracy in general, not to mention the Church and its ministers. American visitors certainly can’t find such a thing in France.

The social and working realms particularly illustrate our mutual discrepancies. Nothing seems to annoy more American journalists reporting from France than this incomprehensible tendency the French have to demonstrate, strike and complain. They’re never satisfied! And what’s more, they’re always challenging the authorities (who eventually surrender to them.) How dare they? In the eyes of these reporters, it seems the country is always on the verge of a civil war… What they fail to understand –if they even know- is that order for the sake of order definitively isn’t part of the French cultural heritage. Quite the contrary.

And here is something worth noting. While the American MSM have propagated the idea that the French are bad at fighting wars, are appeasers, they surrender etc. they’ve altogether missed the main point: The French lead their fights on the social ground, between themselves, not against imaginary foreign enemies; More than 2000 years ago, Julius Caesar already had noted this specificity of the Gauls in his Commentarii de Bello Gallico. This is exactly the opposite of what Americans seem prone to do in general. 

When the French aren’t pleased, they let it be known and they mean business! Ever heard of the Jacquerie, 1789, 1830, 1848, the Paris Commune, the wine-growers’ revolt in 1907, 1936, May 1968? And more recently the demonstrations against the CNE? Notwithstanding the innumerable revolts by peasants and fishermen. Have you noticed how such popular uprisings are next to unknown in GB and the U.S.? Even when the country is engaged in an ever more unpopular far-away war, you can hardly hear anything against the government in the U.K.

 

Our American friends were misled if they believed that the last presidential elections in France would have put an end to the incessant turmoil with the French. To many of them, electing a President, whoever it may be, is just a part of the democratic process but not the ultimate and definitive act of democracy. You can be sure that when they’re discontent – and they always will be- the French will make the country rock again.

Not to say that how the French behave is how the world should but that’s how the cookie crumbles with them. Now, at least they don’t try to win Americans over to their way of doing things contrary to what can be read in so many American outlets where it seems the French should adopt the American model and then everything would be fine. No way… And contrary to what the media would like their readers to believe, it has nothing to do with any purported anti-Americanism… Just, the French are different. As simple as that.

Note: The painting is “Study after Velazquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X” (1953) by Francis Bacon, at Des Moines Art Center, Iowa.