The Communiqué - France: The Fist Crushes the Rose

The fist and the rose ...

A fist, rather like a boxer's, holds the stern of a rose, ready to crush it. The rose opens on the tip of the stem, as light and gracious as if it were in a porcelain vase.

It is not easy to make the meaning of these heterogeneous "heraldic" symbols explicit, especially when they are juxtaposed in this way. Do they symbolize the Marxist working class leading a country flourishing in liberty? Perhaps. In any case, had they been conceived to mean just that, they could hardly be more appropriate: They well express the hopes of freedom that  "socialism with a human face" does its best to awaken.

But there is also something obscure and contradictory in these symbols. The aggressive and brutal fist seems as incompatible with the rose as a punch. One would say that such a fist could not fail to start crushing the rose. And if the rose could understand a fist like this, it would be shock­ed, stop smiling, and begin to wither.

The relations between socialism and an authentic and harmonious freedom are no different; no matter how emphatically it promises freedom, socialism, wherever established, begins to strangle it.

This, one can fear, may now be happening in glorious and beloved France, well before the end of the first year of self­-managing government. This is the opportune moment to make this clear, for the Mitter­rand Government, with the support of the socialist Communist coalition, is actively making propaganda for  self-management all over the West.

A concrete example seems to adequately illustrate the apprehension that the fist may be crushing the rose. It concerns precisely one of those freedoms that the naive most expect the Mitterrand Government to preserve: the freedom of the press.

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It is well known that since December 9 of last year the thirteen Societies for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFPs) have been publishing, in large newspapers of fifteen countries, a Message  warning of the incompatibility between the perennial  principles of Christian Civilization on one hand, and, on the other, the self-managing reform to which the Socialist Party promised to commit France in the 1981 elections. A gradual reform, yes, but also total, demolishing the right to own land, businesses and private schools, invading the family to organize children against their parents, and, in its end term, sparing not even leisure, the interior arrangement of homes, and the very person of every Frenchman. The Message was published in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, England, Germany, Italy, Portugal, the United States, Spain, Uruguay and Venezuela.

The TFPs found no obstacles to the publication of their Message as a paid advertisement in any of these countries. The newspapers opened up to them all the way. At no time did they feel that, by publishing the Message, they were committing themselves to views partially or totally not theirs. In so doing, these newspapers were strictly consistent with the democratic principles they proclaim as their own.

It would have been natural for the TFPs' Message to be published just as easily in the large French dailies, which pride themselves on professing the same democratic principles. But this time the TFPs had bitter experience to the contrary. They feel obliged to inform not only the English-speaking public about this, but also that of each country where the Message has been published.

***

Leaving aside avowedly socialist or communist newspapers, the serene and elevated Message of the TFPs was successively submitted for publication to 6 French dailies with circulation over 100,000. However, all these papers refused to publish it. This attitude is inexplicable for several reasons, since:

a) Newspapers which pride themselves on their democratic line, and which moreover are at variance with each other on important points, in this particular case are disconcertingly unanimous in their refusal to publish the document. Thus the thirteen TFPs are deprived of having their viewpoint, which opposes self-managing socialism, published on French soil.

b) Furthermore, two of these newspapers had for­mally agreed to publish the TFPs' Message on December 15 of last year. (At the last minute the French TFP decided to postpone the publication because the attention of the public was then strongly attracted by the events in Poland.) This contract was so firm that, by mutual agreement, the agency nego­tiating the advertisement received payment in full on December 11. All this notwithstanding, on January 6 this agency advised the TFPs that the two dailies had just refused to abide by their agreement. The reason: none.

c) Naturally, an arbitrary breach of contract exposes the company which owns both newspapers to a suit for loss and damages. But not even the perspective of such a predicament was enough to prevent their refusal.

d) Advertisements are one of the most common sources of income both for this publishing company and the other companies which refused to publish the document. The size of this Message would make its publication particularly inviting. So, the refusal is con­trary to the very nature of these journalistic enter­prises as such.

***

At this point one has to ask: What is the reason for this united front of refusals curtailing the freedom of the TFPs in France? Far away on the horizon, only one explanatory hypothesis takes shape. As private organ­izations, the publishing companies which own these various papers can be placed at any moment on the list of self-managing enterprises by a legislative decision of the socialist-communist parliamentary majority. If that were to happen, their present owners would nor­mally become mere managers or even lose any role in the company whatsoever.

Is it so surprising that these publishers deny the TFPs freedom of expression when their own freedom, at least potentially, has been so profoundly shaken? What is the real freedom of expression in a regime where a Damocles' sword hangs over the head of every publishing company, owner, a sword hanging from a string held by the government?

Whatever heat the opposition newspapers may de facto be permitted to show, their situation is, de jure, that of Damocles under the sword.

Incidentally, it is altogether possible that a heated opposition may not be as annoying to a government as another which courteously and serenely focuses on certain delicate topics which not all currents of opinion have noticed.

Now, the Message of the thirteen TFPs puts a finger on certain painful wounds unknown to the Catholic electoral bloc, which weighed decisively on the socialist side in the 1981 elections. Such is the case, for instance, when it focuses on how a compulsory self-­managing regime is absolutely incompatible with the true Doctrine of the Church about the character of the right of property, which inheres by nature in every individual. The same applies when it points out how the doctrine and program of the Socialist Party place marriage, free unions and even homosexual unions on the same level.

It is not the intention of the TFPs to start a debate with newspapers so conditioned by the socialist self-­managing Moloch. With this publication, the TFPs aims solely at making the public in the largest countries of the Free World see how confined freedom already ap­pears to be at the beginning of the self-managing socialist regime. This should lead every citizen of the Free World to fear for his own personal freedom if self-­managing socialism is implanted in his country.

Thus, one is led to believe that a curtain is being drawn around to­day's France. Not an iron curtain, nor one of bamboo. It is, as it were, an impalpable curtain of silence of the press, which will inevitably march toward becom­ing total.

This fact is what the TFPs are bringing to the knowledge of the whole West. The same French newspapers will be asked to publish this Communiqué. But even if there is a new collective refusal, the TFPs hope that the spreading of this Communiqué outside France may succeed in making it known to a large part of the French people. They also hope that it will open the eyes of the West to all that is contra­dictory and impracticable in the self-managing pro­mise of socialism-with-freedom.

This finding has a far-reaching scope: Except for the promise of freedom, all that is left to the self-managing regime is its similarity to Communism.

The Message of the thirteen TFPs about self-­managing socialism is making its way far and wide in the world. Along its course, it has met everything: furious hatred, baseless criticisms, inexplicable omis­sions, longstanding and luminous support from friends who have never let themselves be dishonored by fear, and innumerable new adhesions, some of them unex­pected and magnificent.

This Communiqué is one more great step along this road. Consistent with the Message, it has to do not on­ly with self-managing socialism, but also with Com­munism. All of this - and that which is yet to happen - will one day be written into history; the epic History of one of the supreme efforts undertaken In signo Crucis (in the sign of the Cross) to steer our agonizing Western civilization away from the final shipwreck toward which it is letting itself drift.

After the great campaigns of the TFPs against Com­munism - campaigns which have always been doc­trinal and orderly - the communists keep silent. A lit­tle later, furious media attacks based merely on distor­tions or calumnies with no doctrinal content have been unleashed against the TFPs. Will this now happen once again? As the French popular saying has it, "he who lives will see."

Sâo Paulo, February 11, 1982

Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes

For the Brazilian TFP and, by express delegation, the TFPs and similar organizations of the United States, Argentina, Bolivia, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, France, Portugal, Spain, Uruguay and Venezuela,

Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira

President of the National Council of the Brazilian Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property