the lies of the Republic

The news put into perspective every Saturday, thanks to the historian Fabrice d’Almeida.

On the occasion of the controversies surrounding the declarations of the Minister of National Education, the opportunity is good to return to the place of lies in our Republic. And it goes back a long way, to the very origins of this form of government.

Remember: Louis XVI is accused of maintaining relations with the enemies of the Revolution. He denied it, but contrary proof was soon given by his attempted escape which failed in Varenne, in 1791. And the following year accusing documents were found in the Tuileries which led to his indictment. In fact, Louis XVI lied, he betrayed the revolution: his fate was sealed. If he could not embody the new world, he had to disappear. Now this new world was that of the politics of reason and truth, the heir of the Enlightenment. Thus our republican ideal was imposed. The republic is generated by the lies of royalty.

But obviously, nothing changes. The lies started again with a vengeance from the 1st to the 3rd Republic. Under the Third Republic in particular, the Dreyfus affair shows that lying and making forgeries does not pay, since the authors are publicly defeated. And despite this, on October 28, 1904, General André denied having established files on the military based on their relationship with the Catholic Church and with Freemasonry. He lies like a tooth puller, because he has been using his file for two years to choose who will be promoted. The next day, he had the files destroyed, but it was too late. The scandal is launched and his lie is exposed.

This is already the blatant lie of a minister in the face of national representation. The same scenario was found in the Cahuzac affair.

In France, lying is not a crime

And all the presidents of the Fifth Republic were caught in the act of lying at one time or another. Even de Gaulle, facing the Algerian conflict. The rapper Orelsan said with humor in his song Basic in 2017: “Politicians have to lie, otherwise you wouldn’t vote for them”…

That said, lying in France is not a crime. Our Republic needs truth to exist. But she never bothered to make lying itself a crime. While the Americans, thanks to perjury, can make it an object of prosecution. Most of our lies are therefore not prosecuted as such, but rather for the harm they create, or even the fraud they cover. This is something to ponder in these times when good information and the very idea of ​​truth are called into question in our democracies.