The pieds noirs misread ‘Je vous ai compris’ as endorsing their cause

Evidence

It was the people to whom the enigmatic words had been principally addressed—the pieds noirs—however, who understood them least well. In all his speeches during that first tour de Gaulle, by constantly repeating the phrase “only Frenchmen à part entière”, made it fairly clear that he was thinking in terms of equality between the races and thus, by extension, eventually majority rule. What de Gaulle “understood” about the pieds noirs was certainly by no means as flattering as they wished to believe, and as the realisation of this sank in Je vous ai compris became the bitterest of insults. — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 927

Categorization

• XREF: Mirrors the Algerian and Black African divergences over the same phrase — the ‘two voices’ pattern. — connects to: Je vous ai compris carried implicit racial equality that eventually insulted the pieds noirs; Pieds noirs actually wanted economic privilege, not formal French Algeria — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 1652

Related

• Je vous ai compris carried implicit racial equality that eventually insulted the pieds noirs (similarity 0.98)
• Pieds noirs actually wanted economic privilege, not formal French Algeria (similarity 0.85)
• Pieds noirs never honestly wanted Algérie française but a protected white-ruled Algeria (similarity 0.84)
• Pieds noirs and metropolitan French spoke different political languages. (similarity 0.84)
• The pieds noirs, not Muslims, triggered the events sealing Algérie française’s fate (similarity 0.81)
• Pied noirs justified Frenchness by blood shed in two world wars (similarity 0.79)
• Pied noir loyalty to France rested on war service they felt earned full Frenchness (similarity 0.79)
• Pied noir soldiers balked at shooting Muslim demonstrators to save Algérie française (similarity 0.78)
• De Gaulle declared pied noir colonial nostalgia politically dead in 1959. (similarity 0.78)
• Pieds noirs most closely resembled whites of South Africa and Rhodesia (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Pieds noirs actually wanted economic privilege, not formal French Algeria #expands (0.60) — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 1652