The first round of the presidential election takes place this Sunday, April 10. The opportunity to take an interest in the history of the right and the left in comics with two books To Starboard, everything! and To Port side, all ! by Jean-Yves le Naour and Marko. Where we learn – surprise! – that in the beginning God was on the right and Jesus on the left. It’s humor, of course, and the two very serious comics have plenty of it.
God likes to be obeyed, otherwise – bam – the deluge. Jesus is “Chase the merchants from the temple!”. In reality, this story of right and left really begins with the Revolution. To be able to count those who are for or against the fact of giving the king a right of veto, the members of the constituent assembly meeting on September 11, 1789 are asked to divide up clearly. On the right, the supporters of the veto, and therefore of a strong executive, on the left, those who want to weaken the power of the monarch for the benefit of Parliament.
“The nation, proclaimed of brothers equal in rights, is the French Revolution. At the end of the 19th century, the left gradually deserted the national terrain by embracing the universal republican and the international, with socialism which point. While the right will rally to nationalism after the defeat of 1871, the loss of Alsace-Lorraine and the Dreyfus affair. “
Jean-Yves le Naour, doctor of history and screenwriterStarboard, everything! To port, everything! Jean-Yves le Naour and Marko, published by Dunod.
In To starboard, all!, you will come across the faces of Louis XVIII, Charles X, Louis-Philippe, Thiers and Guizot, Mac Mahon, Charles Maurras and of course Charles de Gaulle. You will understand what a Bonapartist, Orleanist, legitimist right means. And who were the King’s Ratapoils and Camelots.
In To port, all!, you will recognize the figures of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Gracchus Babeuf, Karl Marx, Gambetta, Jules Ferry, or even Maurice Thorez and Pierre Mendes-France. You will learn that the septennat was a right-wing invention to allow time for a pretender king to die. That the qualifier “intellectual” is a word invented by the extreme right to make fun. And that nationalism has shifted from left to right.