Sartre’s Algerian independence campaigning drew death threats and a real bomb attack

Evidence

Just as in 1947, Sartre received death threats. In October 1960, 10,000 French army veterans marched in an anti-independence demonstration shouting, among other slogans, ‘Shoot Sartre!’ When he signed an illegal petition urging French soldiers to disobey orders that they disagreed with, he faced prosecution and prison, until President Charles de Gaulle allegedly ruled this out with the remark, ‘One does not imprison Voltaire.’ Finally, on 7 January 1962, someone took the incitements to murder seriously. At 42 rue Bonaparte, where Sartre lived with his mother, a bomb was planted in the apartment above theirs. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 875

Categorization

• CANDY: The de Gaulle rejoinder ‘One does not imprison Voltaire’ is a quotable, tweetable witticism.
• XREF: connects to: Sartre declared Algerian independence already a fact during the Jeanson trial — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 1274; Sartre and de Beauvoir’s radical turns were shaped by the Algerian decolonization struggle — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 245

Broader Connections

• Sartre declared Algerian independence already a fact during the Jeanson trial #responds-to (0.85) — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 1274