1968 - Mark Kurlansky [133]
De Gaulle by late May became convinced that there was an international plot against France, and there were rumors of foreign financing. The CIA and the Israelis were among the suspects. De Gaulle said, “It is not possible that all of these movements could be unleashed at the same time, in so many different countries, without orchestration.”
But there was no orchestration, not internationally, not even within France. Cohn-Bendit said of the events of May, “It all happened so fast. I didn’t have time to work. The situation provoked decisions.” All Dany the Red or the thousands of others on the streets of Paris were doing was reacting spontaneously to events. Geismar, Cohn-Bendit, Krivine—all the leading figures as well as rank-and-file participants have remained consistent on this point. There were no plans.
The way things were happening recalled the early 1960s situationist movement that began in poetry and turned political. They called themselves situationists, after the belief that one had only to create a situation and step back and things would happen. This was the situationists’ dream come true.
Cohn-Bendit admitted, “I was surprised by the intensity of the student movement. It was absolutely exciting. Every day it changed. Our personas changed. There I was, the leader of a little university, and in three weeks I was famous all over the world as Dany the Red.”
Every day the movement got bigger and bigger by an exact formula. Each time the government took a punitive step—arresting students, closing schools—it added to the list of student demands and the number of angry students. Each time the students demonstrated more people came, which brought more police, which created more anger and ever larger demonstrations. No one had any idea where it was going. Some of the more orthodox radicals, such as Geismar, were convinced that this was the beginning of a revolution that would change French or European society by pulling up the old ways by the roots. But Cohn-Bendit, with his big smile and easy manner, had no idea of the future. “Everyone asked me, ‘How will this end?’ ” Cohn-Bendit recalled. “And I would say, ‘I don’t know.’ ”
On Monday, May 6, one thousand students turned out to see Cohn-Bendit report to the disciplinary board at the Sorbonne. In almost equal numbers, a contingent of the CRS was present, wearing dark combat helmets, dark goggles, and the occasional long black trench coat and carrying large shields. When they attacked, nightsticks raised in the air, they looked like a menacing invasion by extraterrestrials.
Cohn-Bendit and several friends walked by them and through the crowd of a thousand demonstrators, who seemed to be parted by Dany’s smile. He waved and chatted, always a jovial radical.
The government, repeating its same mistakes, banned demonstrations for the day, which of course caused many. The students swept through the Latin Quarter and across the Seine and back and arrived hours later at the Sorbonne to confront the CRS. Finding an impressively large contingent waiting for them, they passed behind the school and started up the medieval rue Saint-Jacques when suddenly a club-whirling mass of CRS charged them. The demonstrators backed off in silence.
Between them and the CRS was an open no-man’s-land on the wide street, where about two dozen bodies of injured demonstrators lay writhing on the cobblestones. For a moment it seemed no one knew exactly what to do. Suddenly, consumed with anger, the demonstrators attacked the CRS, lining up, some digging up cobblestones, others passing them bucket-brigade style to the front line, where others ran into clouds of