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In the early days, Poujade welcomed even the Communists. But as he felt his own power grow, he rigorously excluded them, rejected overtures from Jacques Duclos himself for an alliance. The Communists find him just as useful as an opponent. He enables them to raise the old cry of the left against the "Fascist Right," and the Communists raise it at every opportunity. Last week Poujade dispatched ten Deputies to a rally in industrial Toulouse. The Communists quickly organized a counter demonstration and enlisted the support of the Socialist mayor.
When Poujadist Jean-Marie Le Pen and his nine comrades got to the hall, they were besieged by a mob of 5,000, beaten with knuckledusters, bottles, lead pipes and crowbars. Le Pen broke up a chair to make a club, battled his way clear. Only after the police decided the Poujadists had learned their lesson did they intervene. "In Toulouse, as in all France, Fascism will not pass," orated the mayor, and led the crowd in the Marseillaise and the Internationale.
Back in Paris, ex-Paratrooper Le Pen pointed the moral: "While Socialists in the government fumble, the Communists are taking over control of the crowds and leading them into the streets. This is the popular front forming at the base. Poujade knows what is coming. He'll be ready to take right action at the right time." In other words, only Poujade could save France from a Communist-dominated popular front.
Passing Fancy? Whoever won in any such contest between thugs of the right and left, the center voices of moderation would be likely to lose. In France, the moderate's voice is getting harder to hear. Every day, as the Mollet government fumbles, Frenchmen die in Algeria, French anger and disgust swells, Poujade's dynamic appeal grows more persuasive to many disillusioned Frenchmen. "It is getting painful to be French," observed Novelist Albert Camus recently.
Is Poujade an unrecognized Hitler, or a nuisance that will pass? The prevailing Parisian opinion is that Poujadism is a passing fancy. There have been tax revolts before, and demagogues to capitalize on them. There have been protests before against a parliamentary system which seems increasingly unable to reach a decision, or to let anyone else reach one. De Gaulle (rigid in his dislike of parliamentary palaver but no demagogue) polled nearly twice Poujade's vote only five years ago. Old hands in the French Assembly, unexcelled in cynical wisdom, have seen to the corruption of other hot incorruptibles.
But then the Fourth Republic faced no such testing time as it now faces. The anguished question of Algeria—the possibility that it may become another Indo-China, closer to home—is the one unknowable in all comfortable calculations about the future of parliamentary democracy in France. In such a crisis, Pierre Poujade, who now waves an uncertain banner before his followers, may lose them to a leader of hardier intent, or discover his own opportunity for power.
"Pierre," an old friend asked him recently, "what are you trying to do? The papers say you want to take power and overthrow the Republic?" Poujade grinned. "Why not?" he said. "But . . ." his friend began. Poujade cut him off brusquely. "Why not?" he snapped.