A few words to show the historical errors and shortcomings of the youtubeur Usul’s video Georges Marchais against wokism. Let us first salute the great courage that Usul had in attacking the memory of someone who is no longer there to answer him. Well, spitting on Marchais is already thinking “Like forty years ago”…
The racist PCF? The cases of Vitry-sur-Seine and Montigny-lès-Cormeilles, in 1980 and 1981, did indeed take place, but Usul completely omits to explain the cause and the context. From the end of the 1950s, the government decided to destroy the shanty towns of the periphery and to rehouse their inhabitants. A good initiative, but the government does not intend that these populations are distributed in the beautiful districts. On the contrary, he ordered the rapid construction of standardized housing in the workers’ towns. A situation that favors speculation from builders and sellers of sleep. Later, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing tried to stop migratory flows and encouraged the repatriation of immigrants. Pauperization of the suburbs, on the one hand, anti-immigration policy, on the other, this dangerous cocktail is concocted entirely by the right.
Not a word, however, on the work carried out by the PCF alongside immigrant workers. Between 1982 and 1984, immigrant workers at the Talbot Poissy factory went on strike against a social plan. While some of their colleagues are screaming “In the oven the Arabs!” “, others fight alongside them like Nora and Joseph Tréhel, communist militants (Tréhel was mayor of the city). In reaction to these strikes, the socialist government does not hesitate to mobilize racist arguments and fear of the Iranian revolution. Gaston Defferre even affirms that “They are fundamentalists, Shiites”.
The “homophobic” PCF? But how can one, in good faith, analyze the past with such an anachronistic and condescending gaze? So yes, “gay-friendly” speeches were not very present at that time. Including among the Trotskyists, as Daniel Guérin wrote in 1975: “Some of the Trotskyist sects (…) continue, even today, to observe the most narrow-minded, the most reactionary, the most anti-scientific attitude towards homosexuality. “ It is indeed Jack Ralite, Communist Minister of Health, who withdraws homosexuality from the list of mental illnesses produced by the WHO in 1981.
The PCF would be “Missed the issue of women” ? The PCF was the first party to create a women’s organization, the UJFF, in 1936. In 1975, the PCF organized a huge meeting with 10,000 women. The world then comment: “This assembly allowed the PCF to show that it was the only one able to bring together so many women. “ Campaigns are carried out in the direction of women with the posters of 1978 “To live better, equal and free, we are 200,000 communist women. Why not you ? ”Or“ PCF, immigrant women, for equal rights ”. The PCF hated students?
The PCF “Did not understand what was happening in the youth” ? In the legislative elections of 1978, it was the leading party in the youth vote, with 30% of 18-24 year olds. And then, above all, to speak of the decline of the PCF without ever evoking deindustrialisation, the counter-revolution of Thatcher and Reagan, the austerity policies of Mitterrand… In short, to make the PCF feel guilty in order to relieve the PS more responsibly? Usul thought he despised Marchais, he only despises history.
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