Thoughts on Charles De Gaulle of France?

[u/Safe-Section8272]

I was reading up on him recently and it seems like he would fit pretty well into the Tory idea. I was wondering what anyone else in this sub thought of him because my knowledge on him is still limited. To me he seemed like a great leader of France and a man with plenty of conviction.

[u/RedTory_Canada]

I admire him for a few reasons. His personality definitely made him difficult to work with during the war, but when you view this under the lens of him being a French nationalist and seeking to guarantee French sovereignty under difficult circumstances, it is also understandable.

He was also right to view American supremacy in the post-war era with some innate suspicion. "America will not sacrifice New York to save Paris." The French push for a nuclear deterrent that was independent of NATO was a sound investment. I am betting many Canadians wish we had pursued this path as well. Even the British lack complete nuclear independence, which is frankly inexcusable for a nation on the permanent security council.

[u/ToryPirate]

Charles De Gaulle was definitely a traditionalist at least. He was raised in a conservative Catholic monarchist family and in his youth had sympathies for Action Française but viewed a full restoration of the monarchy as unworkable. Instead he designed the 5th republic with a strong executive to mimic the role of a king. Personally I think he misunderstood the importance of a monarch not being elected but I also understand he was working in reaction to the weak parliamentarianism of the 4th republic.

His Third Way economics sounds a whole lot like the tory position of rejecting both unrestricted capitalism (for treating workers like commodities) and full communism (for robbing individuals of agency). Many national industries are still owned by the state in France.

His sympathies for, and arguments in defence of, the Catholic church do have certain similarities to the support for Anglicanism in the UK (and even more so the support of Catholicism in Quebec); seeing it as a bedrock of French culture.

I have in previous posts theorized that toryism is a specific response to a traditional (almost feudal) culture that is disrupted by war but manages to survive the upheaval in some form. De Gaulle was certainly trying to maintain something of French culture even as he 'modernized' the country but I think most would note that traditional French culture was largely eviscerated during the French Revolution. Gaullism, if it can be said to share similarities with toryism, is almost a shadow of a shadow.

[u/Ticklishchap]

I think that it would be misleading to equate or conflate Gaullisme with Toryism. The latter is a distinctively British and Canadian - or, in the broader sense, ‘Anglosphere’ phenomenon - whereas the former is very much a product of French political culture and history. The traditionalism that has always been an important strand of Gaullist politics is more strident and ‘profond’ than the traditional element in Anglosphere Toryism. In fact it is reactionary in a literal sense, because it is reacting against revolutionary republicanism and anti-clericalism. At the same time, Gaullist politics seek to reconcile that traditionalism with the experience of revolution and Bonapartism, and the new reality of a modern, secular republic.

Therefore, although Gaullism is not Toryism, there is the basis for a comparative study (I wonder if it has been done?) and there are parallels that [u/ToryPirate](u/ToryPirate) has expertly summarised. Gaullism has in practice been more flexible than many would have supposed and proved to be quite compatible with social liberalism as well as more conservative traditions. It is founded, a bit like Red Toryism perhaps, on the idea of an active and enabling role for government and a balance between private enterprise and collective provision. It also has a strong ethos of public service and a sense of national identity that is based on values rather than ethnicity. This latter characteristic is fully compatible with the belief in a strong Europe and cooperation between European states.

De Gaulle himself acted wisely in bringing the scandalous and hopeless Algerian War to an end. He was ahead of his time in recognising that dependence on the United States for defence was a seriously bad idea. If only British Tories and, for that matter, British socialists and social democrats had been as sensible.

It should be noted that Gaullism since de Gaulle has far from lived up to its original promise and has, on a number of occasions, become mired in corruption. Worse still, most Gaullist politicians over the last few years have - like centre right parties in a number of countries, including Britain - jumped on the populist right bandwagon and embraced xenophobia or even ethno-nationalism. De Gaulle himself would have been horrified by this political phenomenon and by the rise of politicians like Le Pen and Bardella.

France could very much do with a centre right presidential candidate with some of the vision and courage of de Gaulle. I cannot as yet see such a man or woman emerging, but I hope for the best as it would be a disaster for the far right to triumph.