Best wishes
Donald
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[This is a fairly free translation of an analysis by Thierry Morales of events that occurred during the recent Nice summit. I have shortened the text and clarified a few details for non-French readers. The original version was distributed on the \"Alternative Libertaire\" discussion list (
http://users.skynet.be/AL/). Please pass it on if you see fit...] NICE: THE ROGUE STATE LIGHTS THE FUSE
What happened in Nice? The party line published by our rulers and their servants in the mainstream media is that the city fell victim to armed mobs, come to smash, burn and pillage.
Unsurprisingly, Chirac (France\'s right-wing president) and Jospin (the \"socialist\" prime minister) united to condemn anti-democratic, subhuman acts that only serve to undermine the arguments of those who resort to violence. At a press conference, Jospin pointed out that Nice had seen two very different kinds of demonstration. On the one hand, the trades unionists and their associates, with their peaceful, respectful appeal for changes in European social policy; on the other, small violent groups whose sole aim -- thankfully beyond their grasp -- was to disrupt the entire summit.
It\'s the usual caricatured, reductive version of reality. On one side the good: those who recognise the legitimacy of the system and whose demands ultimately support its logic. On the other the wicked: those who formulate a radical critique of the system and wish to construct a different society. The good are democratic and peaceful, threatening neither the established order nor the smooth functioning of business. The wicked are anti-democratic and violent, carrying out -- Chirac\'s actual words -- acts unworthy of human beings (i.e. refusing to recognise established authority and to be good, docile citizens).
According to this spurious, dualistic vision of the world, existing institutions are the guarantors of democracy and freedom of expression. Opponents of the system must therefore, by definition, be noxious pests to be fought by all means necessary. In order to legitimise repression, the media must be used to distort their declared aspirations and criminalise their actions.
Fine lessons in democracy, human dignity and respect for freedom of expression! Institutions that set the dogs on anyone who questions their monopoly of power -- posing as the apostles of non-violence! Who started the violence? What is the source of this contempt for individual human beings and their right to free expression?
A brief attempt to put events into perspective will certainly inspire a different response to these questions than that given in the media, the obedient parrots of the inner circles of power.
***The violence begins***
>From the very beginning of the mobilisation, the basic needs of the participants at the counter-summit were treated with contempt. Until the last moment, the police and the municipal authorities refused to make provision for collective accommodation, expression and discussion. Activists claiming free rail travel to Nice were met with disproportionate repression. In Paris, the demonstrators found themselves contained in the station by the CRS (riot police) for almost 24 hours. In Bordeaux, Dijon and Le Havre, demonstrators were batoned long before they got to Nice; some of them ended the night in hospital or the police station.
This criminalisation of attempts to secure free trains is just another way of depriving a section of the dissident movement of free expression: preventing people from travelling prevents them from making their voices heard. Meanwhile, of course, a fortune in taxpayers\' money was being spent on transporting, accommodating, wining and dining the official delegates to the European summit. No-one seemed to question the fact that Europe\'s elite (politicians, technocrats and financial lobbyists) were wafted in to Nice by private plane, chauffeur-driven car and helicopter to decide the fate of millions of Europeans who couldn\'t afford the fare to come and represent themselves!
Ordinary people who claim the right to travel in order to exercise their supposed right to free speech are defined as shameful, gate-crashing delinquants. To add insult to injury, those who made it to Nice found themselves assaulted beneath the complaisant gaze -- even, in Dijon and Marseilles, the stated approval -- of trade union delegations relieved to see the state\'s guard dogs putting the rabble in its place. Clearly proletarian solidarity is no longer on the agenda of unions that prefer to take their cut of the considerable profits afforded by their perfect integration into the system...
But the tolerance and democratic openness of the French state didn\'t stop there. Not content with having violently repulsed the ticketless, the authorities decided to close the nearby frontier to a convoy of 1,000 Italians who wanted to exercise their legal right to demonstrate in Nice. As La Fontaine remarked: when you need an excuse to muzzle your dog, you accuse it of being rabid.
This entirely legal convoy of activists from Ya Basta, Tuti Bianchi and Rifondazione Communista was presented to the press as a horde of dangerous thugs, halted for reasons of legitimate security. When the Italian contingent demonstrated outside the French consulate in Vintimille in support of their right to travel freely, they were immediately dispersed by the police, with two people wounded. Meanwhile, several hundred demonstrators who had occupied Nice railway station to demand the opening of the frontier were evicted by the riot police. In the end, the Italians were driven back towards Genoa and Rome.
It is important to note that the closing of the frontier by the French authorities marked the beginning of the confrontations between police and demonstrators. Before the summit even began, this arbitrary, provocative violence had created a situation of tension, resentment and humiliation. All done, of course -- in Chirac\'s demagogic words -- out of the greatest respect for human dignity and freedom of expression.
***What democracy?***
The Nice summit began with the adoption of a Charter of Fundamental Rights (with no legal force), hastily signed by the European heads of state. At the same time, confrontations were taking place all around the Acropolis -- the Palais des Congres, transformed for the occasion into a fortified bunker and protected by 15,000 guardians of the temple (police and army). Why these confrontations? Because, when democracy is no more than a concealed system of domination, exploitation and manipulation, any aspiration to an alternative society can only express itself through the methods open to it: civil disobedience and active opposition to institutions that represent only themselves and those who derive profit and privilege from them.
Violent or non-violent -- what\'s the difference? Those in power regard any opposition as an act of violence that justifies violence in return. It\'s one thing to declare your opposition. But as soon as you act upon it and attempt to impede the functioning of some institution -- however peacefully -- you become a threat. As far as the state is concerned, pushing over metal barriers, blocking traffic or trying to pass a police cordon are already illegal acts that must be repressed. What is at quesiton is the credibility and survival of power.
The great majority of the demonstrators on Wednesday December 6th -- certainly those in the trades union section -- had come to demand that the Charter of Fundamental Rights should be improved and accorded legal force. Those who stayed on for Thursday were mostly concerned to contest more fundamentally the legitimacy of the text itself and of the institutions proclaiming it.
Among these, the libertarians wanted to denounce the imposture of a Charter designed to regulate the lives of millions of people -- yet drawn up without and despite them. Let\'s not kid ourselves: the Charter is just a bone thrown to the various non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and citizen associations, to give them the illusion of democratic participation.
The libertarians had come to shout their rejection of this illusion: there is nothing democratic about Europe\'s institutions.
The European Parliament, the only directly-elected EU institution, has a purely consultative function, with no significant influence over decisions. Real power resides with the European Commission, a body of civil servants -- working with various panels of experts, economists and industrialists and having links with economic and financial lobbies -- that actually determines the policies of the EU. Ultimately, decisions are taken by the Council of Ministers, which generally follows the political decisions taken by the Commission. The people of Europe have no role in this decision-making process; they are never consulted on policy and have no right of oversight.
If the Commission operates with complete opacity, the debates of the Council are hardly remarkable for their transparency. In Nice, as elsewhere, there were no independent witnesses to negotiations. The media and the NGOs had no right to attend the discussions of the heads of state and representatives of the European countries, which took place in secret.
As during the Gulf War, accredited journalists were confined to a press room, outside the Acropolis, where spokesmen would feed them pre-digested information. The media had no way of knowing what was really going on in the conference room.
The NGOs were similarly excluded. In Nice, Observatoire de la mondialisation (see
http://www.ecoropa.org/Observ.htm) and other associations that had asked to participate in the negotiations met with a categorical refusal. What sort of democracy takes place without the people being present or even knowing the terms in which their fate has been decided? Which is the real threat to democracy and human dignity? The demonstrators? Or the powers that use violence and lies to monopolise debate and choice? Libertarians refuse to participate in this masquerade. They reject the idea that state institutions and financial lobbies should appropriate for their own profit a basic right of all individuals: to decide for ourselves how we should live, in what sort of society and according to what values and beliefs.
As far as libertarians are concerned, this pseudo-democracy has no authority. Democracy must be direct and unmediated; un-political, unelected and representative; it must be a process of reflection and choice by the people themselves. In claiming the right to construct a different society, to choose our own destiny, we will not submit to the domination of institutions that have no values. Such a claim is, obviously, anathema to the powers that be.
In Nice, as elsewhere, there were tear gas and truncheons to call us back to reality. Once again, the rogue state, the destroyer of hope, life and liberty, showed itself in all its impunity.
Early on the morning of Thursday 7th December, 4,000 demonstrators tried to surround the Palais des congres. They were mostly anarchists from the French Fédération Anarchiste and anarcho-syndicalists from the French CNT and the Spanish CGT; activists from No Parasan, Alternative libertaire, the LCR (Revolutionary Communist League) and other extreme-left groups from France, Italy and England; Catalan, Sardinian and Basque autonomists; also activists from anti-globalisation associations like ATTAC (a reformist group supporting the proposed Tobin Tax on financial transactions, see
http://www.attac.org/indexen.htm), SUD (a French trades union), AC! (Agir ensemble contre le chomage, a claimants\' group, see http://www.toonet.org/ac/) and Euromarches ( http://www.euromarches.org/english/index.htm). They were met by some 3,000 riot police. A little under 1,000 of the demonstrators converged from the west, approaching from the central station. The majority (some 3,000) assembled in a square to the east of the summit.
Following the strategy used against the WTO in Seattle and against the World Bank and IMF in Prague, the two groups of demonstrators took up position in front of police barriers, hoping to disturb the beginning of the debates. They were immediately pushed back by tear gas and police charges. Elsewhere in Nice, several attempts to mass and block main streets were met by the same response: charges and tear gas.
***Lessons from Nice***
The inflexible determination of the authorities to prevent any repeat of Seattle transformed blockades into street battles. The pronouncements of the local chief of police were unambiguous: there was no question of allowing any sort of active resistance to the summit. The demonstrators would be harried and immobilised.
By mid-morning, the demonstration had been dispersed. Confrontations between the police and small autonomist groups ensued. The few hundred demonstrators who had not been immobilised were scattered through the streets around the Acropolis as well as the east and south quarters of the port of Nice. Here they broke several windows (an estate agent\'s; an insurance company; three car concessions) and set fire to a branch of the Banque National de Paris (BNP) in the rue Barla. It should be pointed out that no small shopkeepers had their windows broken and that there was no looting (there was a report of an attack on a bakery, but no link with the demonstrators has been established).
Around this time, several hundred demonstrators went to the police barracks to demand the release of an Italian comrade who had been detained. Again, the police reaction was instantaneous: not just tear gas, but a water cannon as well. After this incident and the arrests that followed, many of the demonstrators decided to leave Nice and go home that evening.
Beyond the debate on the forms of action appropriate to any direct attack on such symbols of capitalism as the BNP (a debate that is far from being closed), and beyond the sterile excesses that are the inevitable results of this sort of demonstration, it is clear that the contemptuous attitude of those in power made a significant contribution to the creation of an explosive situation.
The way in which radical demonstrations were presented, with media support, as acts of mindless destruction could only pave the way for violent confrontations. On the one hand, those in power must understand that mere police brutality cannot rid them of the radical opposition movement. On the other, libertarians (the main target of the campaign of disinformation and criminalisation) must go beyond selective, limited actions like Nice to achieve closer contact with the people. They must explain their programme and their social project, to make themselves better known and eventually, perhaps, recognised as a genuine force for constructive change.
It\'s not enough just to shout slogans and spray-paint banks. Libertarian activists are explorers in search of another world. More than ever, creative activists must break out of the ghetto within which those in power seek to confine us, isolated from the people.
All too often, we are just talking to ourselves, trapped in our own self-enclosed logic, hermetically sealed off from non-activists. Limiting ourselves to actions that make sense only to ourselves, we don\'t stop to think whether these actions mean anything to the person in the street. We make no serious attempt to be understood by the people, to win their sympathy, let alone their support.
Was there any attempt to explain to the inhabitants of Nice what lay behind our protest? What was done to prepare people for what was likely to happen and, maybe, to involve them in the demonstrations, even at a low level?
On the Thursday, many of Nice\'s citizens shut themselves up in their homes -- victims of their own fears and prejudices and of official propaganda designed to generate a threatening atmosphere (for example, the closure of some schools). What attempt did we make -- what attempt will we make in future? -- to overcome these prejudices and the effects of such propaganda? How will we create a context in which our actions are welcomed?
It\'s not a question of reproaching anyone -- especially not those who put so much effort into organising the counter-summit. But we must recognise that it takes more than graffiti and stickers to give meaning and context to actions that are too often seen (rightly or wrongly) as indisciplined, self-indulgent and mindlessly destructive.
That the radical movement is a minority is hardly surprising. That it is so isolated is dangerous. We have to get our heads round the fact that this process of isolation is central to the strategy of those in power. And routine denunciations of the sickening tactics of the state won\'t actually get us out of this rut.
The libertarian movement must examine its own assumptions if it is to make any progress in its methods and analysis -- if it wants to prove itself.
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