If there is one open secret that has been going around in the world of children for decades, it is undoubtedly that which the fox confided to the Little Prince: «It is only in the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye». Would it be mere coincidence that the heart that pronounced this phrase in the middle of the last century, while not wearing the military livery, slipped easily into the journalist’s rags, for example to denounce the «republican crimes» of Spain of 1936-37 in the major nationalist newspapers? Or that as a fervent admirer of a Marshal reconciling the Frrrrench people under his rule after the debacle was rewarded with a nomination to the provisional committee of the Rassemblement pour la Révolution nationale [National Popular Rally, collaborationist under the Vichy regime] (1941)? As some pointed out later on another occasion, the most important thing in matters of official trifles is not so much to be able to refuse them as to not deserve them. On 31st October [2020], therefore, his pathetic heirs of Master 2 Security and Defence of the University of Assas were not wrong in adopting the name of Saint-Exupéry for their sixteenth promotion, recognizing in him the alliance between «literary genius and military spirit: honour, respect, courage and love of country.». Apparently, it seems the essential can sometimes leap to the eyes all the same! But let’s move on.
At this unquestionably particular time, what could an organ that despises the spirit of the barracks as much as State terrorism discern on the other hand? At first glance, between a deadly pandemic justifying authoritarian measures of all kinds, strengthening of the technological prostheses from work to school right to all relationships, the environment becoming increasingly devastated and artificial under the incessant blows of industry, or the absence of utopian horizons – that «unrealized but not unrealizable dream» as was defined by someone famous « authoricidal projectile thrown upon the pavement of the civilized» — it is true that times seem more favourable to the clouds of domination than to the social tempest. And that there would almost be enough to lose the memory of the time before, as if covid-19 had swept it all away.
Forgotten the brief start of an insurrection in Greece a little more than ten years ago, which had at the same time marked a possible in the heart of old Europe and shown the limits of lack of revolutionary perspectives that go beyond a simple riotous extension? Forgotten the possibilities opened up three years later by the various of uprisings on the other side of the Mediterranean, drowned in the blood of civil wars, crushed under the military boot or suffocated by religious and democratic sirens? Forgotten the uprising in Chile of barely a year ago, so powerful in its acts combining expropriations and massive destructions in the face of the military, but retreating at the last moment so as not to cross the threshold of the irreparable unknown, in a territory still traumatized by a ferocious past? Forgotten these recent North-American riots against the police, for once capable of overcoming the old divisions by starting to question one of the pillars of domination, without however succeeding in undermining all the others, if not through the enraged action of few minorities? Forgotten even the famous movement of the yellow vests, undoubtedly deeply linked to the demand for a better State, while being able, in the very name of its reformist postulate to regain a spontaneous taste for riot in the face of the one in place, or that of sabotage against various power structures through self-organization in diffuse small groups? Nonetheless a promising example of identification of the enemy’s structures, which did not content itself with toll booths, tax centres or radars but had, for example, also pushed exploration to the relay antennas, to the homes of elected officials or the electrical systems of industrial and commercial areas.
So would hearts swollen with rage be hit by amnesia all of a sudden during the repeated confinements as a result of analysing the horror of the world behind screens, and above all failing to take to the streets in order to take it on? Conversely could it be that, although bruised by the price to pay for all these exciting unaccomplished processes, they are nevertheless not resigned in the face of what these moments of rupture also involve in terms of destructive collective joy as well as individual re-appropriations of one’s existence? When a demon of revolt once said that revolutions are made of three quarters fantasy and a quarter reality, it was certainly not to content himself with endlessly dissecting the latter in reverse in order to sharpen our actions, but because he also knew that this precious lived fantasy can upset an entire life by giving it reason other than that of delaying death for as long as possible. Then, if it is true that we can only see well with our heart, our ever ardent one cannot fail to see that the authoritarian management of the pandemic and its consequences in terms of economic restructuration and technological acceleration hasn’t come at just any time, but is colliding head-on against these last ten years of uprisings, insurrections and revolts in an attempt to turn the page.
Faced with the misery of the existent we can repeat galore that order never acts alone, that the only battles lost in advance are those that are never fought, that it is not revolutionaries who make revolutions or that when dissatisfaction and discontent accumulate sometimes it only takes a spark to ignite the powder keg of social relations (be it a war lost by the State, an increase in transport fares, the controversial management of an epidemic, the immolation of a street seller, a new drastic budget plan, the umpteenth murder at the hands of the police…) All this is right but beyond the manifestations of anger that power now intends to bury under the weight of the health emergency, another movement is also developing, becoming less and less invisible while remaining essential, in spite of what the fox in the tale might say.
It concerns the individuals and small groups that have realized that in the face of the climate catastrophe the disaster was the industrial system itself and that it was better to tackle it at the (energy) source. That in the face of alienation or technological control, the problem must be solved at the roots by cutting its veins. That in the face of the State moloch and its growing militarization against the rioters, it was time to take the initiative according to one’s own timing in an asymmetric manner, without further waiting for social movements that would overrun the established framework before burning out.
This is the case, for example, with the incendiary sabotages that relentlessly attack the electrical installations supplying the pumps of the open-cast lignite mine that is destroying the forest of Hambach (Germany), with the recent sabotages and blockages against the construction of the Coastal GasLink pipeline in British Columbia (Canada), with last October’s sabotage of a drilling machine planned to install a new wind farm in Tuscany (Italy) or with setting the offices of the State forest exploiter ONF in Aubenas (Ardèche) on fire at the beginning of October. Not to mention all the attacks that for years have been slowing down the advance of the nuclear waste landfill project in Bure, in particular with the help of sabotage against drilling along the old railway destined to serve the Cigéo works and the transportation of radioactive waste. So much beautiful energy expended to undermine those who fuel this deadly world.
Since the arrival of covid-19 at the beginning of the year and in spite of the consequent restrictions of movement that followed, the voices of the agile saboteurs have not gone silent, but their projectual autonomy has made them resonate with even more clamour during the various phases of self-confinement. If for example we consider the intentional cutting off of optic fibres and relay-antennas during the spring confinement, power can only lament the fact that the latter were put out of harm’s way just about everywhere every two days. Recently, a State lackey responsible for looking after these little problems similarly confided that over a hundred of them had suffered the same fate since the beginning of the year. If one had to give just one example of the multiple possibilities offered to bold hands in spite of the re-confinement in force since the autumn, it would perhaps be the sabotage north of Marseille of the second most important television site in the country in terms of television, radio and mobile phones, which occurred on the first of December: three and a half million people brutally disconnected, for over ten days for some!
Certainly enough to inspire the nyctalope individualities who, each in their own way, continue to light up the night to derail the trains of domination.
[Translated by Act for freedom now! from Avis de tempêtes, #36, Decembre 2020]