France’s minister for machismo, Christophe Castaner, has covered himself in ridicule by falsely claiming that a group of demonstrators attacked a hospital during this week’s May Day demonstration in Paris.
Castaner, a former Socialist who lobbied hard to become interior minister in the Macron government after another Socialist defector, Gérard Collomb, ducked out, has seized on any pretext to try to discredit protests against the government, whether they be the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests), the trade unions or the left.
On May Day they all marched together and Castaner’s twitter finger was clearly itching. Before the day was out he had announced that a group of demonstrators had “attacked” the famous Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital, assaulted a member of the hospital staff and forced entry into the resuscitation unit.
Unfortunately for Monsieur le Ministre, hospital staff denied his version of events and video shot at the scene showed demonstrators fleeing teargas and stun grenades fired by the police. They had blocked a section of the demonstration from advancing towards the Place d’Italie, as their colleagues came to grips with demonstrators further up the road (see my account of those events here).
Thirty-four demonstrators were arrested and detained for nearly 30 hours but then released without charge.
On Sunday they presented a joint statement to the media, complaining of Castaner’s attempts to exploit their case for political purposes and thanking the hospital staff who came forward to give an accurate account of what had gone on.
Castaner is one of a long line of Socialist defectors who seem to believe they must prove some sort of political manhood by declaring their undying love for the police and all their works.
The now utterly unloved Manuel Valls, who was interior minister before becoming prime minister and is currently a soon-to-be unsuccessful mayoral candidate in Barcelona, suffered from the same syndrome.
By coincidence, today I read an account of German Social Democrat Gustav Noske’s suppression of the 1919 “Spartakist uprising” in Berlin.
“Someone must play the bloodhound I will not shirk my duty,” he declared as he led the Freikorps into the city to massacre over 1,000 rebels and assassinate Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg.
Formally dissolved in 1921, the Freikorps were the soil from which the Nazi militias and the Waffen-SS grew.
The Nazis later booted Noske out of his minister’s position and he retired from politics after Hitler became German chancellor. He was arrested by the Nazis in 1937 but released after a few months, only to be detained again in 1944 after the attempt on Hitler’s life.
He was interned in Fürstenberg/Havel concentration camp, then in Ravensbrück, before being transferred to Berlin’s Lehrter Strasse priso, from which he was liberated by Soviet troops in May 1945.
Be careful what demons you unleash!
