It will be 55 years this year since the memorable May '68 affairs. Young rebels of the time, who then managed to shake the whole of France, are just old geezerhood today. In more than half a century, they have marched through institutions and have become people of the establishment. But just because they settled down doesn't mean they'll leave the world unchanged.

May 1968 is a symbol of the cultural revolution, the aim of which was to implement the radically emancipatory aspirations of the baby boomers generation. The main motto of the French protesters was the slogan: "It is Forbidden to Forbid." They opposed the bourgeois society, which - according to them - lacked moral freedom, especially that concerning sexuality.

The leader of the rebellious Parisian students, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, under the presidency of Charles de Gaulle even called France a "fascist regime" country. Where does this accusatory rhetoric come from? Well, among other things, it was about the binding rules in all dormitories: visitation restrictions and gender separation. In the eyes of the angry youth, such regulations were just unacceptable because they hampered their intimate life.

When Cohn-Bendit fought for the right to "free love" in French dormitories, on the eastern side of the "Iron Curtain", something quite different was happening. Young Poles did not have such worries as their French peers from the Seine. Participants of the students’ protests in Poland, which went down in history as March '68, faced a real dictatorship, not an imaginary one. It was then, that Cohn-Bandit’s future friend - Adam Michnik, had a chance to find out about it. When France was in turmoil, under arrest he was awaiting a trial for his opposition activities. In French democracy, Cohn-Bendit was not threatened with that kind of repression.

But that's all in the past. Communism collapsed. Nevertheless, the heritage of May '68 has broken through the world’s morals; as evidence, for example, we have the granting of various rights to sexual minorities in European countries. Currently, Cohn-Bendit – who for many years, since 1994, has been an MEP of The Greens from France and Germany - and Michnik, are the people who belong to the European elites. They speak as authorities. Although they are different and don’t quite agree in many cases, they speak with one voice on the fundamental issues. Together, they warn against the political successes of right-wing "populists" in Europe.

Meanwhile, the legacy of May '68 has a dark side, which is very troublesome for many eulogists of the legend about the romantic Parisian rebellion (including Michnik). The French philosopher Michel Onfray (by no means a conservative) stated directly that it was all about the praise of paedophilia.

"Free love" with minors

In the 1970s and 1980s, Cohn-Bendit advocated decriminalising adult-child sex, and he probably didn't stop at words. Although he later disassociated himself from his position, the fact could not be denied that he previously admitted to this shocking behaviour.

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  In 2001, German journalist Bettina Röhl (daughter of the famous Red Army Faction terrorist Ulrike Meinhof) recalled Cohn-Bandit’s 1975 book "Le grand bazar" ("The Great Bazaar"). In this publication, the author boasted that when he worked in an alternative pedagogy kindergarten in Frankfurt, he had "flirts with children" of an "erotic nature" (including sexual contact with five-year-old girls). Somehow he made no secret of this confession. In 1982, he repeated the same in “Apostrophes”, which was a live, weekly, literary, prime-time French television talk show.

Cohn-Bandit’s case is not an isolated one. Two texts by Beata Modrzejewska in TVP Weekly describe the “creme de la crème” of French socialites and their attitude to sexual abuse of minors by adults.

As for "free love" in practice, there was no age limit for the circles in question. Modrzejewska reports on the discussion around the "Le Consentement" novel ("Consent") published in 2020. Its writer, Vanessa Springora, has woven painful facts from her life into the literary fiction. And it so happened that in 1985, at the age of thirteen, she was seduced by the writer Gabriel Matzneff. The man was 49 years old at the time and did not see anything inappropriate in his actions (and, according to the book, he did not even avoid violence towards the girl). And then - in 1990 - like Cohn-Bendit, he did not hesitate to admit in “Apostrophes” to his perverse erotic tastes.

However, is it really surprising.. since Parisian salons had a certain moral climate? Modrzejewska recalls a petition from 1977, in which luminaries of French public life appealed for permission with regard to paedophilia in France; There were writers such as Louis Aragon, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, literary critic Roland Barthes, film directors Patrice Chéreau and Alain Robbe - Grillet, philosophers - André Glucksmann, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, politicians - Bernard Kouchner and Jack Lang. Among the signatories of the document, there was even a paediatrician. It's about Françoise Dolto, who was considered an outstanding expert in the field of childcare.

The petition also included the argument that the right to the contraceptive pill in France already covered thirteen-year-olds. This means that the legislator predicted that at the age of 13, children would be ready for sexual intercourse.

However, there would be no postulates to legalise paedophilia in France without an ideological foundation. And May 1968 was a great manifestation of the new Left. This ideological trend gained importance in rich consumer societies after the Second World War. One of its precursors was Wilhelm Reich.

This Austrian psychiatrist, living in the first half of the 20th century, a student of the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, and to some point his associate, was active in the communist movement. But his eccentric theories earned him opponents even among the communists themselves. Reich believed that the sexual revolution was a precondition for liberation from the capitalist oppression of the working class. That is why he opted for sex education in working-class environments. While condemning the German Nazi regime, he compared it to a family where parents suppress their children's sexual drive.

Paedophile "pedagogical experiment"

Reich did not live long enough to see May '68. However, it was different with the French philosopher Rene Schérer (he died on February 1st this year at the age of 100). The rebellion of Parisian youth led him to revise and reinterpret the nineteenth-century left-wing thought.

From Scherer’s arguments, it can be concluded that the supporters of socialist theories are focused on the class struggle and thus, on the economic grounds for exploitation. Therefore, they miss other dimensions of social reality in which relations are based on domination and exclusion. This is what happens between adults and children, for example. This manifests itself in the repressive control of the former over the sexuality of the latter.

Schérer - an avowed homosexual who contested traditional European morality - was also an advocate of approval for paedophilia. In a bizarre way, he tried to justify his position in 2021 in an interview with the online magazine Lundimatin. The philosopher claimed that ... he acted not on behalf of adults (implicitly: morally rotten to the core) but children whose desires and fantasies, including sexual ones, should - according to him - be freed from the tutelage of the family or school.

Therefore it’s no surprise that someone with such beliefs was implicated in the Coral Affair. In the early 1980s, a scandal broke out in France over what was happening in an educational center near Nîmes. Coral was its name. The institution staff were fascinated by the ideas of May '68. Since the mid-1970s, they implemented an alternative pedagogy program. They were inspired by anti-psychiatry. This term covers theories assuming that mental illnesses objectively do not exist and that psychiatric treatment is a tool of repression undertaken by the authorities against people who do not meet social norms.

So Coral was a pedagogical experiment, and French state institutions responsible for public health and childcare, recruited the canter's wards. Among others, juveniles with mental illnesses and mental disabilities were admitted to the facility.

The thing is that it turned out that paedophilic behaviours accompanied the pedagogical experiment. But suspicions of criminal acts fell not only on the canter’s staff but also on prominent figures of French public life, including Schérer. Two witnesses appeared - brothers Jean-Claude and Michel Krief - who indicated that a powerful paedophile network was operating around Coral. In addition, Jack Lang, already mentioned in this text, was to be drawn into it. At that time, he was the Minister of Culture of France.

Eventually, a group of employees of the facility appeared in court. Prison sentences were handed down, although given the severity of the crimes, the penalties were light. However, no evidence has been found against Schérer, Lang or anyone else outside of Coral's staff. Jean-Claude Krief withdrew some of his charges, and Michel Krief committed suicide under unclear circumstances.

"Sex helps children grow"

However, efforts to remove the stigma of evil from paedophilia were undertaken not only in France and - according to Cohn-Bandit’s memoirs - also in Germany. Recently, a publicist Liliana Sonik wrote a Facebook post in which she drew attention to the case of the Netherlands.

As we read in this note, in that country the apology for paedophilia has taken on an almost systemic character. Research groups and reports were formed, which were presented as scientific ones. Lots of scientists got involved. Among others, the lawyer and senator of the Labour Party (Netherlands) Edward Brongersma, as well as psychologist and court expert Frits Bernard, gained the greatest publicity. The latter is the co-author of the work "Sex met kinderen" ("Sex with children"), published in 1972.

This position was presented as the result of 10 years of research and interviews conducted with hundreds of paedophiles and children with whom they had sexual contact. The message was as follows: such relationships do not harm anyone, and sex even helps children in psychosocial development. In the 1980s, the Netherlands was at the forefront of such beliefs. Liliana Sonik quotes the shocking words of Brongersma (after all, a socially renowned scientist and politician) from 1984: "In the Netherlands, the topic of paedophilia is objectively discussed in police schools and universities, where everything possible is done to end the prejudice."

Attempts to make the adult-minor sex no longer prohibited - in terms of legislation and morality - were a cultural trend among Europe's elites in the second half of the 20th century. The sense of impunity of the famous Italian film director Luchino Visconti should be considered in this context. While making the feature film "Death in Venice" (which premiered in 1971), he behaved seductively towards the actor, Björn Johan Andrésen, playing the role of “Tadzio”, who was fifteen at the time of shooting.

Therefore, the legacy of May '68 in fact is the “dead guy in the closet” of people who affirm moral freedom. And it is puzzling - to say the least - that these matters must have been commonly known. After all, nobody was hiding them. Thus, if someone perceives paedophilia as something disgusting and criminal, and accepts the sexual revolution as something gloriously progressive, then they should experience quite a cognitive dissonance.

– Filip Memches

TVP WEEKLY. Editorial team and jornalists

– translated by Katarzyna Chocian