Some French national day commemorations was yet in this amalgam (the national day should be about the popular Revolution)... We easily forget than a man with others but more known than others has done everything to prevent it, until his own life.
He's killed by a patriot believing that war defends nation and nation defends people.
Gramsci wrote "By murdering Jaurès, the national idea was logical to the absurd. Requesting for itself to his opponents, on the basis of their principles, the most complete freedom, but, on the basis of its own principles, it denies them freedom.
It considers men as things, not as thinking beings, not as divine craftsmen of the Universe. And it kills the best among them to strangle the voice of the masses, to eclipse the collective consciousness. Because, by denying freedom, it does not know this value or strength. Because it believes, as the reaction always believed, that burning a book means to destroy an idea, and that killing a man enslaves all men" [GRAMSCI Antonio, 1916 in Avanti!].
I'm not sure that my anti-patriotism is borned into the fight of Jaurès, I've not read enough of his writings but I feel a part of my mind comes from his thoughts. The story is that he should have answered a journalist who pointed out he was eating chicken (which was expensive at the time): "Socialism is not about banning those who can afford to eat chicken, it's about allowing everyone to eat chicken" (certainly not the same caliber as our actual "socialists"...), and I like that vision.
"His commemoration, however, is not a trivial reminder to those who have no memory, just as it is an academic ritual that we would glorify a man and create an idol. This is a affirmation of life, the glorification of an idea." [GRAMSCI, id.]. And I like to think that this idea is that of peace, and therefore justice.
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