Mitterrand

Summary

Dominique Pagani treats Mitterrand as the typical right-wing man who gives himself the appearance of the left. He recalls his time in the Camelots du roi and in Vichy, the photo in which he is introduced to Pétain, Foucault's remark "Mitterrand is Vichy", and the fact that he took over the PS in 1971 without holding a party card1. He places him in the centre-left of the "extreme centre", which he considers indistinguishable from Giscard's centre-right2. He criticises him for wanting to take three million votes from the PCF3, for aligning with Atlanticism, notably in the Euromissile crisis4, for carrying out the largest number of privatisations and for speeding up the liberal-libertarian turn described by Clouscard5. He often returns to the 1989 bicentenary: in his view, the Revolution was commemorated with shame, and Robespierre was turned into an executioner6. He also mentions the La Baule speech and the African policy that followed, as well as how the former leftists of 68 rallied to him and were given posts.

1. 1#10.7 “Postmodern” eco-petty-Nazism: Plato's Gorgias23 Dec 2021 · 2:06:31
2. 2The repression of the subject in bourgeois civil society9 Aug 2025 · 45:44
3. 3Michel Clouscard and the betrayal of May 687 Feb 2025 · 53:16
4. 4Neither left nor right? Islamo-leftism?17 Oct 2023 · 1:25:04
5. 5#9.17 The geopolitical metaphor: Planck, Descartes, Clouscard17 Mar 2021 · 1:26:35
6. 6M. Clouscard's reply to C. Morilhat (part 2)10 Sept 2019 · 2:17:14

Summary produced automatically from 75 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.