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00:23Who are they, where did they come from, and what are the thoughts of self-proclaimed
00:29anarchists past and present?
00:32And why, even though they're on file, are their faces a mystery to us?
00:37Why does their thinking seem so confused, and their history so troubling?
00:44A child of capitalism, the brother-enemy of state communism, anarchism is a wind of revolt
00:50that has continued to blow all around the world.
00:52And while certain libertarians turn criminal, wielding firearms or setting off dynamite,
00:58it's worth remembering that many of them offered alternatives and triggered revolutions across
01:03the five continents.
01:08The establishment has always come down hard on them, wherever they may be, dragging them
01:13in chains to the guillotine or strapping them to electric chairs.
01:16But punishments aside, any attempts to dismiss the actions of anarchists as mere hooliganism,
01:22or to wipe the memories of their victories from the social consciousness, have failed.
01:27While their practices have become part of the fabric of life, as their ideas eventually became
01:31popular, spreading and forming networks, seducing the younger generation from Paris to New York,
01:37from Tokyo to Buenos Aires, anarchists continue to fuel fantasy and so misunderstanding.
01:43Whence then the smell of sulfur that precedes each of these somber processions?
01:47And what wild hopes are raised with every black flag?
01:51How can anarchism, which dreamed of an alternative future for the old world and has been fighting
01:56masters and gods for a hundred and fifty years, still ask questions that are relevant
02:00to us today?
02:01And why is its history swinging like a pendulum, lurching from left to right, from insurrection
02:06to attempted murder, more than ever a reflection of our own?
02:16It all began in France in the 19th century.
02:20The country, like the rest of the world, was in the throes of the new economic system called
02:24capitalism, making its first tentative steps around the globe.
02:28The capitalist ethos was spreading as the landscape became pockmarked by heavy industry.
02:35But the mirages formed in the midst of the first industrial revolution soon dissipated to reveal
02:40a darker, more brutal reality.
02:44Attempts to answer the questions being asked by a new era steeped in contradictions soon materialized
02:50in the form of anarchism.
02:54What was the big problem with the 19th century?
02:58In simple terms, it was what was known as the social issue.
03:02Society was developing, rail travel, steam-powered locomotives, ships and looms were being invented.
03:09On one level, society was making considerable progress in terms of hygiene, medicine and all
03:22societies had never been so pronounced.
03:24All the great thinkers, Saint-Simon, Fourier, Proudhon, Marx, Cabet, Owen and the rest, were striving to solve this contradiction.
03:36To understand the emergence of anarchism during this period, it's important to grasp the troubled and miserable existence of the
03:43proletariat,
03:44who had nothing but their muscle.
03:47Their working day lasted 12 hours or more, and the wage they drew for their efforts was not enough to
03:52stave off hunger.
03:52They had no day of rest, no insurance, no pension.
03:57Their children were put to work as soon as they could stand, and half of them died before the age
04:02of six.
04:04Deficiencies, epidemics and alcohol wreaked havoc.
04:08Illiteracy was the norm, and accidents were rife.
04:12In 1840, the life expectancy of a worker was barely 30 years.
04:17And yet, just as the middle classes, enjoying the opulent lifestyle that came with progress, were able to forge their
04:23ideology in liberalism,
04:24the proletariat began to see a possible answer to the problems of the period and the socialism that was taking
04:30shape.
04:30But before it could provide a real solution to injustice, socialism had to first overcome another almost philosophical contradiction.
04:40From classical liberalism, the overriding problem in political philosophy was the reconciling of freedom with equality.
04:48How to ensure the widest possible range of freedoms with the greatest possible degree of equality,
04:53inasmuch as without equality, freedom remains incomplete.
04:59The ideals of freedom and equality needed to be reconciled.
05:02As an American anarchist said, freedom without equality is the jungle.
05:07Equality without freedom is prison, and we want neither the jungle nor prison.
05:11This conundrum, the attempt to reconcile maximum freedom with maximum equality,
05:16this dual aspiration for both equality and freedom is one of the fundamental values of anarchism.
05:26Until midway through the 19th century, the term anarchism, from the Greek anarchy, meaning absence of power,
05:33was a negative term used to designate disorder and chaos.
05:37But while major figures like Saad, Babeuf or Godwin had been dubbed anarchists,
05:42it was Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, one of the few thinkers with a working class background,
05:46who used it to define a revolutionary political stance, and in doing so, invested the term with a positive value.
06:05In 1840, Proudhon wrote the memoir for which he is famous, What is Property?
06:11While the answer he offered to the question, property is theft, immediately caused a scandal,
06:17it was in the Declaration of Faith a few lines later that the true birth of anarchists thought could be
06:22found.
06:24It is a paradox that says it all.
06:28Well, you're a Democrat? No.
06:31What? You would have a monarchy? God forbid.
06:35Then you're an aristocrat? Not at all.
06:38You want a mixed government? Still less.
06:41Then what are you? I am an anarchist.
06:44Although a firm friend of order, I am, in the full force of the term, an anarchist.
06:51At the same time, while claiming to be an anarchist, he declared that property is theft.
06:56Meaning that he deems property to be the basis of a certain social order,
06:59and to declare oneself an anarchist is to say, I am attacking the very foundations of the social order, identified
07:06as being property.
07:08Proudhon went even further, because according to him, there are close links between the political domination exercised by the state,
07:15the economic domination exercised by capital, and the religious domination exercised by the idea of God.
07:26So Proudhon truly is the father of anarchy, as he was the only one to connect these three forms of
07:32domination.
07:35He believed that they had to be destroyed simultaneously if the social structure was to be changed.
07:44While Proudhon advocated the destruction of power in order to change the social structure,
07:48he denounced revolutionary violence.
07:51His vision was for a mutual system underpinned by his people's bank.
07:57His thinking, though, came under attack from all sides.
08:00He was criticized, lampooned, and outlawed.
08:04But his writings traveled, and his anarchism appealed to socialists all over the world.
08:09Such as a young doctor in philosophy named Karl Marx,
08:13who proclaimed them to be the harbinger of the new European workers' movement.
08:17And even further afield, on the outskirts of Europe, in distant Russia,
08:22Count Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy borrowed the title of a Proudhon essay for his new book, War and Peace.
08:30But it was with Mikhail Bakunin, a former cadet who went through every prison in Europe
08:35and was several times sentenced to death, that anarchism would become revolutionary thinking in the strictest sense.
08:46While Proudhon was the first to use the term anarchist,
08:51Bakunin was arguably a more important figure in the final wording of the manifesto,
08:55adding as he did the principle of revolution to Proudhon's ideas.
09:02He differed from Proudhon in advocating insurrection.
09:08He thought that the only way to abolish capitalism in the state was through an armed revolution.
09:16Bakunin began to spread anarchist ideas within the new international association of workers,
09:21better known as the First International.
09:24This association, set up in 1864 in London, established that the emancipation of the workers must be the work of
09:31the workers themselves,
09:32and gathered at its launch more than 2,000 workers, sweepers, labourers, guilders, carpenters and joiners from all over the
09:40world.
09:43It was, in the eyes of the Russian revolutionaries, an ideal instrument for honing the anarchist project and presenting it
09:49to the world.
09:51At every conference, they discussed the means of production. Should it be collectivized? Is everyone entitled to their own means
09:59of production?
10:02Should it be shared? Were cooperatives and collectivities needed?
10:10What should be done about inheritance and money? What was the role of women? And so forth.
10:15A whole range of problems that, until then, had never been addressed.
10:21But after the death of Proudhon, between Bakunin, the heir apparent to the mantle, father of anarchism, and Marx,
10:27who had long since split with the author of The Philosophy of Poverty, the debate went downhill.
10:33Their quarrel, as much personal as it was political, soon divided the socialist movement.
10:40Three major movements emerged. A somewhat minority reformist movement that dismissed the virtues of revolution.
10:46A Marxist movement, qualified by the anarchists as authoritarian, which believed that an order would be established to the dictatorship
10:53of the proletariat.
10:54And finally, Bakunin's anti-authoritarian or anarchist movement, which advocated insurrection and final destruction of all state apparatus.
11:05For both anarchists and Marxists, communism was a stateless society.
11:10But while Marxists thought they could use the state apparatus of oppression to construct a new society,
11:16the anarchists believed that communism would come once the state was abolished in the social revolution.
11:22Marx thought you had to have a central political party with a command structure that could mobilize people in order
11:35to take power,
11:37and then using that power create socialism.
11:43Given the anarchist ideals he adhered to, given his mistrust of power and authority, Bakunin was convinced that such thinking
11:51was a colossal error.
11:53The thrust of his discourse was, taking a leading revolutionary, put him on the throne of all Russia, and within
12:00a few years you'll have a despot.
12:01He predicted that in Russia, if the revolution took the form advocated by Marx, a terrible red bureaucracy would emerge.
12:10Standing almost two meters tall and with his clear blue eyes, Bakunin, who spoke five languages, soon won over influential
12:16members of the international,
12:18such as the Swiss James Guillaume, the French Elie and Elisée Reclus, the Spaniard Anselmo Lorenzo, the Italian Malatesta, and
12:26a little later the Russian Prince Kropotkin.
12:28Thanks to them, anarchism became an international movement and the most popular revolutionary ideology among the various socialist currents.
12:36I think it's fair to say that if you counted globally the amount of Marxist members, you could probably scrape
12:43together about a thousand members,
12:45whereas the anarchist wing, as it later on became known, you had much larger formations of 60,000 in Spain,
12:57of 15,000 in Mexico, etc., much more significant formations.
13:03With followers of Bakunin and Proudhon now in the majority within the international, many of their disciples could be found
13:10in France too.
13:11When the Paris Commune broke out in 1871, the anarchists were in the forefront.
13:17And along with the other revolutionaries, they threw themselves wholeheartedly into the insurrection.
13:22It was the great hope, the dream, a whole city suddenly becoming autonomous, ridding itself of its masters, of the
13:31old world, and reinventing everything.
13:33For 73 days, Paris rose up, shot a few generals, burned land registers, toppled the old idols, and returned power
13:41to the people.
13:42On the ruins of the old order, the revolutionaries within the international set aside divisions and together tried to build
13:49a better world.
13:50Everyone was supplied according to their needs, the poor were fed, the illiterate taught to read and write, and the
13:56disabled cared for.
13:57Church and state were separated, the arts became accessible to all, women were given an education, the vote, and control
14:03over their bodies, and the city worked almost without any government.
14:07In the real sense, the Commune was not an anarchist event. It was a first attempt at destroying the state
14:14immediately and entirely.
14:16There was the idea of a sudden uprising, and the capture of a capital's economic and political life by the
14:24population itself.
14:27The Paris Commune may not have been anarchist, but those who proclaimed themselves to be anarchists, or those who soon
14:33would, such as Louis Michel, were in the front line.
14:36And when the movement spread to French cities such as Lyon, Bakunin himself took part in the insurrection.
14:41Within a few days, the state had been abolished. He believed the Grand Soir had finally arrived.
14:47But the government was already striking back. The Communards raised the barricades and prepared for battle.
14:54In the course of a long week, in Haussmann's Paris, a civil war broke out in which workers, men, women,
15:00and children were pitched against a trained army.
15:05The ensuing counter-revolutionary backlash reflected the fear that the Commune had struck into the hearts of the bourgeoisie.
15:12The troops fired indiscriminately. The pride of the proletariat was cut down as Paris became a mass grave.
15:21It was a massacre that's difficult to imagine today. The number of dead has long been disputed. 25,000, 30
15:28,000, probably closer to 20,000.
15:32Killing 20,000 people within a week, using the firearms of the day, would have been practically impossible.
15:40The killing ceased on May 28, 1871, because the earth, the gutters, and the sewers of Paris were overflowing with
15:49blood.
15:49The brutality of the suppression of the Paris Commune shocked many people on the left in Europe, and many Europeans
15:56in general, actually.
15:58It was interpreted by some anarchists as a sign that if the ruling class is going to behave like this,
16:03then we can behave how we like to.
16:07We can respond in the same kind of terms.
16:09They said, this proves that you cannot have peaceful change, because if you try any other way, you're just going
16:16to get massacred like the Commune arts were.
16:18And if you tried to do things peacefully, they would shoot you down.
16:26Many anarchists died in the bloodshed, while many others were banished to the Caledonian penal colonies.
16:31The few, to avoid death or the wrath of the state, were condemned to exile and misery.
16:37With their numbers diminished, the Marxists seized the movement to expel anarchists from the international.
16:44But anarchism survived.
16:47Bakunin managed to flee in disguise.
16:50He gathered his last forces in his Saint-Imier stronghold in Switzerland, in the Jura mountains, sealing an alliance that
16:56would herald the official birth of his movement.
16:58At that time, there were around 15 of them.
17:0312 young people, aged between 20 and 30, who had come from Spain, Italy and Switzerland.
17:10The others were a little older, Bakunin, along with the Spaniard, and Gustave Lefrancais, a communard.
17:18They set up a new organization.
17:21Historians do not include them in the ranks of the international.
17:25This was a new organization.
17:27At least the name he gave it couldn't have been more unambiguous.
17:31The anti-authoritarian international.
17:36The National Workingmen's Association adopted a range of measures,
17:41foremost of which was a duty to destroy all political power.
17:48So for the first time, an organization with stated anarchist objectives came into existence.
17:58In Saint-Imier, by signing an alliance of friendship, solidarity and mutual defense, the anarchists seized their independence.
18:05They drew up a charter, an organization and a program.
18:10Organizational horizontality, anti-authoritarianism, revolutionary radicalism, internationalism, atheism, free speech, free thought, equality for all, and rejection of party politics.
18:23Every aspect of libertarian thinking was collected here for the first time.
18:27The anarchists even invented a new weapon, the widespread use of which would have the capacity to destroy any political
18:33power and launch a revolution.
18:36The main instrument of the revolution was the general strike.
18:41This was a new term coined in Saint-Imier.
18:45Trade unionism did not yet exist, much less the concept of anarcho-syndicalism.
18:51But everything was ready and in place.
18:54The aim wasn't to exist or carry on, it was to start a revolution.
19:12It was in the nascent United States of America that large-scale use of this new weapon would be seen
19:17for the first time.
19:19Anarchism, introduced in the great waves of migrations, anarchism took root here too.
19:26Among the battalions of poor people who came to swell the industrial centers of the North, where wage earners resembled
19:32nothing so much as southern slaves, conditions were conducive to its development.
19:37In no small part because in the early 1880s, the Civil War dragged on in social struggles such as Pennsylvania's
19:44Great Railroad Strike,
19:45which the federal government countered by sending in the army.
19:48Bayonet charges claimed dozens of workers' lives.
19:51For newcomers, the American dream often turned into one long nightmare.
19:56The common story of immigrant anarchists, be they German or Jewish or Italian, they are either skilled workers who can
20:05only find unskilled employment or unskilled workers who can only find the most demeaning of work.
20:14So they become disillusioned with the economic opportunities available to them.
20:18They become disillusioned with the political system, which they know vaguely is supposed to be democratic and republican, but which
20:27they find in this time period is dominated by corruption, by corporate power.
20:32And some of these disillusioned immigrants then encounter radical ideas.
20:41This encounter with radical ideas occurred notably in Chicago, a city that immigrants flooded into.
20:47Steel, concrete and the meat industry needed manpower.
20:56Plagued with a rising mafia in the pay of the all-powerful industrialists, the city was overflowing with segregated workers,
21:03prostitutes and street children.
21:05It was fast becoming the home of protest.
21:11Chicago was the center of anarchist activity in the United States in the 1880s.
21:19It was a city in which labor relations were pretty harsh.
21:22There was basically no room for negotiation, no room for compromise.
21:25So there really was a situation, the stark situation in which you had the workers often living in unbelievably harsh
21:33conditions.
21:34And a local ruling class, a local business elite, that was not prepared to make any concessions whatsoever towards them.
21:41Inspired by the new anarchist strategy, in 1886 on May 1st, then just a day like any other, a general
21:48strike was called.
21:51340,000 workers gathered to demand an eight-hour day.
21:56The police broke up the demonstration forcefully.
21:59Walls became covered with calls for revenge.
22:02Two days later, the anarchists organize a protest in Haymarket Square.
22:06The event was to become a key moment in the history of the workers' movement.
22:12Few of the leading anarchists of cities spoke against what had happened.
22:16And during that demonstration, the police arrived in force.
22:19And at some point in that night, the police moved in to try and clear the demonstration.
22:26Somebody threw a homemade bomb at the police.
22:29It exploded, killing and injuring several officers who then opened fire on the crowd.
22:34A few people were killed.
22:36There was a shootout.
22:38Police pulled out their guns and started shooting at people.
22:41Some of the people in the crowd, including I'm sure some anarchists, had come harmed.
22:47And to this day, of course, Americans like to carry weapons around with them.
22:52The authorities decided that the anarchists were to blame, even though they didn't have any hard evidence.
22:57The Chicago police rounded up dozens of anarchists and arrested anarchists who they blamed for the event,
23:06blamed for the bombing, one of whom had never been there.
23:09Two of whom had never even been at the demonstration that night.
23:12So this was seen in some ways as the classic example of reactionary forces within a particular city,
23:19Chicago in this case, using an event like this to justify an exemplary act of repression.
23:26Eight anarchists were accused of throwing the bomb.
23:29In his plea, the prosecutor hinted at their innocence.
23:32We know that these eight men are no guiltier than the thousands who follow them,
23:36but they've been singled out because they are leaders.
23:39Gentlemen of the jury, make an example of them.
23:42Hang them, and you will be saving our institutions and our society.
23:46Of the eight, five were sentenced to death.
23:49Louis Ling committed suicide in prison.
23:51The other four, August Spies, George Engel, Adolph Fisher and Albert Parsons, were hanged.
23:57It was only in 1893 that the governor of Illinois actually pardoned all the anarchists who had been hanged,
24:05and he actually blamed the police for it.
24:07He particularly blamed the police chief of Chicago, saying that he had organized the whole thing,
24:12and that he may well have even been responsible for perpetrating this bombing.
24:16This generated enormous outrage, not only among anarchists, but even liberal-minded people,
24:23because the trial had been so unfair.
24:26As a result of the Haymarket martyrs being executed, they became folk heroes.
24:32Not only among the anarchists, but among socialists all over the world.
24:38And so, you would see their portraits in trade union offices in England and France and Latin America.
24:48As a result of the global impact of the Haymarket affair, May the 1st was adopted as International Workers' Day.
24:57In the years that followed, demonstrations led by anarchists were held everywhere.
25:04But it was notably in France that the Chicago massacre heralded a new era of anarchism,
25:10one characterized by bombs and propaganda by the deed.
25:24Propaganda by the deed, with no specific perpetrator, is a spontaneous expression of revolutionary action.
25:36It doesn't have to be an explosion or a bomb, just an action that goes beyond words.
25:43The anarchists believed that heroic action was the best way to get the libertarian message across.
25:54So this challenged the revolutionaries.
25:57It wasn't enough to be a revolutionary who talked but left the action to others.
26:03Revolutionaries had to act and demonstrate their credibility through their deeds.
26:11A man named François Königstein, otherwise known as Ravashol, was very taken with the idea that action could create the
26:18revolutionary spark that would inflame the West.
26:20He followed to the letter the words of Louis Michel and Kropotkin, who along with Malatesta were the new theoreticians
26:27of anarchism,
26:29calling for unrelenting revolt through speech, writings, dagger or dynamite.
26:33In Nobel's new invention, Ravashol also saw the ideal way to destroy the old world.
26:39He said about learning how to handle nitroglycerin, and gripped by rage following the brutal repression of the very first
26:45May Day demonstrations in France, he decided to act.
26:51The anarchists decided to make May 1, 1891, a day of conflict and action, not a day of orderly parades,
27:00as it has now become.
27:03As a result, brawls broke out in Clichy, where policemen punched the anarchists, and the anarchists punched them back.
27:13Then in Fourmis in the north, police opened fire at women and children leading the procession, causing several fatalities.
27:22This prompted Ravashol to plant some bombs.
27:26Symbolically, Ravashol placed his homemade bombs in suitcases on Boulevard Saint-Germain and Rue des Clichy, outside the apartments of
27:33the judge and the advocate general who had condemned three anarchist demonstrators to long prison sentences.
27:39The damage was impressive.
27:43They didn't kill any people, the Bollings, they were seen as a retribution for the overzealous prosecution of some anarchist
27:52demonstrators in Clichy.
27:53So, basically, the French police, and also to some extent the British police, and the media in France and in
28:02Britain, saw Ravashol, who was really not an especially significant figure, as being the face of anarchism, the dark face
28:10of this destructive creed.
28:12The myth of the anarchist bomb planter had been born. Ravashol frightened people. He was hunted down. The police acquired
28:21new weapons, while its officers reinvented themselves as scientists.
28:25One of the first anthropometric records in history was produced. His picture was distributed to newspapers, and his name was
28:33headline news all over the world.
28:36The four main newspapers had a circulation of between 700,000 and 1 million copies a day. And through their
28:44headlines, particularly in the Sunday Supplement, they did their utmost to stir up a climate of fear.
28:51But, generally speaking, the attacks did not, initially at least, outrage public opinion.
29:00In fact, Ravashol became something of a hero in the eyes of the public, in the style of highwaymen, like
29:06Mandarine or Cartouche.
29:08He was seen as an avenger, for whom a song was written to the tune of the Carmagnole.
29:24There was a price to be paid for being a dyed-in-the-wool anarchist.
29:30Unlike terrorists, who make their attacks then flee, anarchists had to confront society openly and justify their acts in court.
29:40They had to use their trial as a megaphone, ensuring that the anarchist message resonated everywhere, loud and clear.
29:51Faithful to the strategy of propaganda by the deed, when Ravashol was arrested only three days after his last bomb
29:57exploded, he assumed responsibility.
30:00At his trial addressing the court of Seine, where he knew his life was at stake, he justified his actions.
30:07Currently, too many citizens suffer while others swim in opulence. The situation cannot last.
30:13Today, the anarchists are numerous enough to overthrow the current state of things.
30:17All that is needed for that is a shove, and the revolution will take place.
30:22Ravashol was condemned to prison for life, with hard labor.
30:25But after a second trial for a common-law case, he was sentenced to death.
30:29And so it was that one cold morning in Montbrison, his cry of three cheers for revolution was cut short
30:35by the guillotine's blade.
30:36His execution, far from scaring off other libertarians, acted as a call to arms.
30:42The anarchist press demanded vengeance.
30:44A veritable explosion of activity ensued.
30:47Everybody wanted to be involved, urged on by publications that soon became known as the dynamite press.
30:54With their scientific exposés of anti-bourgeois armory, bombs began to go off everywhere.
30:59The restaurant where Ravashol was arrested was blown up.
31:03Augustus Valian, the French Guy Fox, attacked the National Assembly.
31:08Léon Léotier wielded a hacking knife.
31:11Amédée Pouwels blew himself up at the Église de la Madeleine.
31:14The bombs of Émile Henry claimed several lives, one of which went off in the restaurant at the Saint-Lazare
31:20railway station.
31:21Also dynamited were Rue de Faubourg-Saint-Jacques, Rue Saint-Martin, Rue de Vaugirard.
31:27It was a similar story in Angers, Loire Havre, Boulon-sur-Mer, Marseille, and especially Lyon,
31:33where the violence peaked following the assassination of French President Sadi Carnot by a 20-year-old anarchist, a young
31:38baker from Italy.
31:42When President Sadi Carnot visited Lyon, Sante Geronimo Casario seized the opportunity to murder him.
31:51Carnot had been warned by both police and anarchists that the blood of those who had been guillotined was on
31:59his hands,
32:01and Carnot was stabbed in Lyon.
32:07The death of Sadi Carnot was like a thunderbolt. He was given a state funeral and his ashes placed in
32:13the Pontillon.
32:14His murderer was quickly tried and sentenced to death. To ensure that his final resting place did not become a
32:19shrine,
32:20the remains of Sante Geronimo Casario, anarchist and martyr, were tossed into an anonymous grave.
32:26But it was not enough, and the repressive measures increased.
32:31During this period, France adopted what became known as the Lois Scellerat, the villainous laws,
32:38which banned all anarchist and anti-militaristic propaganda,
32:42regarding it as a criminal conspiracy.
32:45This made criminals of all activists, including any poor souls who happened to subscribe to a libertarian magazine.
33:07This was staggering. These dangerous anarchists turned out to be a watchmaker from Saint-Imier, for example,
33:18who had sometimes yelled out incendiary slogans, but who hasn't ever shouted,
33:24hang them all, or death to the police. Everyone's done it.
33:29The world was thrown into a panic. The craziest rumors abounded in ministries and consulates.
33:35The anarchists were plotting. They were a grave threat to the security of nations.
33:41Following the United States' lead, governments drew up laws against the black peril.
33:49The idea of a terrorist conspiracy, an international terrorist conspiracy, emerged.
33:55It was actually the first time the phrase, war on terror, was used.
33:59In around 1894, the New York Times talked about how European governments were planning to exterminate terrorism.
34:07This kind of language was used, you know, and sometimes it was quite melodramatic.
34:16To fight this imagined international terror, a very real international police force was set up.
34:23The governments of 21 countries organized an international conference for the social defense against anarchists,
34:30which laid the foundations of what would later become Interpol.
34:34In Rome in 1898, the world's governments gathered for the anti-anarchists conference,
34:41because every leader, king and prince was terrified of being assassinated by an anarchist.
34:47But it was all to no avail because on July 29, 1900, in Italy,
34:53King Umberto I was slaughtered by an anarchist, Gaetano Bresci.
34:58He wasn't the only one.
35:00Despite the repression and emergency measures,
35:02monarchs and state leaders were falling like flies under attacks from the anarchists.
35:06The Russian Tsar, the presidents of Uruguay, Ecuador and El Salvador,
35:11the Spanish chairman of the Conservative Party and the Portuguese king and crown prince were all killed.
35:17Meanwhile, in Geneva, Luigi Lucchini stabbed Empress Elizabeth of Austria, better known as Sisi.
35:23In Madrid, the Spanish head of government was assassinated.
35:26And so on, right up to the war, when Alexandros Skinas murdered the king of Greece,
35:31and Guerrillo Princip, the Archduke of Austria, and his wife.
35:37But faced with anarchist propaganda by the deed, the state fought back with propaganda.
35:43And for smart businessmen, anarchism could be used as a promotional tool,
35:47as was the case with Thomas Edison,
35:49who used the execution of Leon Cholgolt's murderer of US President William McKinley
35:54to promote his two new inventions,
35:58the 35mm cinema and the electric chair.
36:05It was not that great in terms of casualties and in terms of the level of victims.
36:09I mean, some historians have said that probably no more than 100,
36:14not much more than 100, maybe less than 200 people were actually killed
36:18in the various episodes of anarchist bombings.
36:21For anarchists, by the end of the 19th century, one thing was certain.
36:25The strategy of assassination had shown its tactical limitations.
36:29Nowhere had it triggered insurrection,
36:31and the wave of killing had lost the libertarian cause a great deal of credibility.
36:35For theoreticians, it was time to get back to basics.
36:38By the end of the 19th century, many anarchists,
36:41including anarchists who had once accepted the necessity for propaganda of the deed,
36:46were beginning to reject it.
36:47They were beginning to talk in anarchist journals
36:50that this strategy was not only not leading anywhere,
36:53it was actually counterproductive.
36:54Errico Malatesta, the famous Italian anarchist,
36:57said the problem is we have isolated ourselves from the popular struggles,
37:03and the place we should always be is with the people and their struggles.
37:06So in the 1890s, after a relatively brief period,
37:10you had a movement of the anarchists back into the popular struggles
37:15and organizations back into the workers' movement,
37:19and then you had the development of revolutionary syndicalism.
37:33For several years, in many places, workers had earned the right to organize labor unions.
37:39But with the creation of bourse de travail, or labor councils,
37:43along with the CGT union in France,
37:45anarchism and trade unionism combined a form of kind of revolutionary trade unionism
37:50in what would later become known as anarcho-syndicalism.
37:54From my research, what I really fundamentally believe is that
38:00syndicalism, in its heart, is an anarchist strategy.
38:04That it was born out of the anarchist movement.
38:06It wasn't something that arose necessarily independently,
38:11and that the anarchists adopted.
38:14Certainly the bourse de travail system throughout France
38:19structurally was a very useful system.
38:22The main champion of the bourse de travail movement
38:25was a young anarchist who made a name for himself
38:27opposing the strategy of assassinations.
38:30He's a man I have great admiration for.
38:33Beloutier was a Frenchman who died very young, aged 30,
38:36having literally worked himself to death.
38:38But he founded the idea of bourse du travail.
38:42What were these bourse du travail?
38:45As the name suggests, they were places you could go to find a job.
38:49At first it was simply a way for those without work to find it.
38:54But pretty soon the bourse du travail became schools,
38:57training colleges, libraries.
39:00It was where people discussed issues and developed their ideas.
39:08For a foreigner like myself, coming to France,
39:12I was very touched by those imposing buildings,
39:14and it's beautiful to think that the workers had paid for them themselves
39:18with their own savings.
39:20Those buildings were the embodiment of the social, political,
39:23and economic ideas they were fighting for,
39:26places that stood up for Travailleurs et Médiats.
39:30They really represented a vision of the society of the future,
39:34establishing its principles,
39:35and supplying the tools and weapons needed to attain their objectives.
39:40You could usually find labour museums there too,
39:43and they offered night classes.
39:46There were debates, conferences, shows too on Sundays,
39:50when workers came with their families.
39:52These were highbrow shows,
39:53so it really was the home of popular education.
39:57In giving a worker the
39:59science of his own misery, to use Pelluthier's expression,
40:02again we have the idea that an objective situation can be grasped.
40:08If the appropriate information is supplied to the people concerned,
40:11they will understand their situation and want to change it.
40:16The idea that the desire to change the world comes with knowledge of it,
40:20is one expounded by anarchists and by Pelluthier.
40:24Bourses de travail began to spring up everywhere.
40:28Under pressure from workers, every town and city had its own people's palace.
40:32There were almost 100 of them in the early part of the century,
40:34and they merged with the CGT, which boasted thousands of union members.
40:39While not all were libertarians, far from it, they made Emile Brugier,
40:43a dyed-in-the-wool anarchist, Secretary of the Confederation of Labour,
40:47a man who also believed that labour unions, not political parties,
40:50should play a central, strategic and revolutionary role.
40:55It was the golden age of the trade union movement.
40:59This was direct action, or what I'd call self-sufficient trade unionism.
41:05It didn't need any political intermediary.
41:08It wasn't a case of having politics, elections, parties and votes for reforms on the one hand,
41:13and labour unions limited to handling nominal reforms or minor measures
41:17that concerned only the workers of a particular factory on the other.
41:23No. Trade unionism had to hold all the cards needed to radically change society.
41:30This idea of an all-encompassing labour union led anarchists to reject the ballot box.
41:37Voting wasn't about exercising a democratic right.
41:40It was a means of legitimizing the established order.
41:44At every election, the anarchists advocated a radical abstention.
41:48They knew perfectly well that the vote was, in reality, no weapon at all.
41:54It changed nothing.
41:55Inasmuch as, even in the best democracies,
41:59the ten representatives of the people were not accountable to the people who had elected them.
42:06It was not a rejection of democracy, rather a protest against what was claimed to be democracy.
42:11So they dreamed up alternatives.
42:14The anarcho-syndicalist movement had delegates, but they could be dismissed at any time.
42:19It was another way of viewing politics.
42:21This was the new interpretation of politics.
42:24To effect change in the wake of the Saint-Émile Congress, anarcho-syndicalist activists opted to use forged weapons.
42:31Thus, in the early part of the 20th century, the strike was the watchword.
42:38The idea may be simplistic today, but it was revolutionary.
42:43If all the factories stopped running, how could capitalists get their hands on their money in dividends?
42:49There wouldn't be any.
42:51If everybody goes on strike, it assumes an economy of insurrection.
42:56Society itself would collapse, without any need of extreme violence.
43:01Since the bourgeoisie would be unable to cope, you would be left with a stateless society,
43:06since the state would have no reason to exist.
43:09The idea wasn't to bang up the bourgeoisie and capitalists in prison.
43:13It was to kill them in the essence of their capitalism.
43:16If no capital is produced, there is no capitalism.
43:22Capitalism, though, kills.
43:24As was the case in Courrières in 1906, when one of the greatest disasters in the history of labour occurred.
43:31A fire-damp and coal-dust explosion set the mines ablaze.
43:36To preserve coal deposits, the owners blocked the mine.
43:40More than 1,500 miners were trapped by fire, gases and darkness.
43:44Only 24 made it out alive.
43:48The miners immediately came out on strike.
43:51The women led the way, demanding justice.
43:54The anarchists were in the front lines.
43:57Clemenceau, who had just been appointed Interior Minister, sent in the troops.
44:0220,000 soldiers charged the demonstrators.
44:06In response, in their 1906 First of May celebrations, libertarian CGT activists demanded the eight-hour day and called for
44:15a general strike.
44:20This was a foretaste of what was to come in 1936 in May 1968.
44:26While the Bourse de Travail set up soup kitchens and conducted the orchestra, they knew that a backlash was inevitable.
44:35These were tough times for everyone.
44:38As the workers made preparations, the bourgeoisie trembled and held its breath.
44:46The mood was feverish in this period around May 1, 1906, when the general strike was meant to begin.
44:53The wait was almost millenarian.
44:56Banners were waved.
44:57In such and such a number of days we will be free, with the number updated as the fateful day
45:02drew near.
45:04The bourgeoisie was in a panic.
45:07And 45,000 troops were posted in Paris to disperse any demonstrations.
45:15So you had dragoons prowling the squares and clashes in the Place de la République.
45:26Soldiers charged with swords drawn, often striking with the sharp edge.
45:30The bloodshed was horrendous.
45:32And many people died.
45:36Despite all the arrests, the wounds inflicted and the deaths, the anarchists carried off a great victory.
45:43They showed that they could mobilize the workers and press their demands.
45:47Although they failed to obtain the eight-hour day, the government was forced to concede a day of rest.
45:54The popularity of revolutionary trade unionism was at its peak.
46:00The Charter of Amiens, adopted a few weeks later, was a symbol of its triumph
46:04and remains today the pharmacopoe of the trade union movement in France and around the world.
46:10In the early part of the 20th century, the spin-offs of anarcho-syndicalism were everywhere to be seen.
46:17Like C&T in Spain, which would soon boast a membership of two million workers.
46:21Or Fora, which would be the mainstay of political life in Argentina up until the 1950s.
46:27And the IWW in the United States, which adopted for its emblem a black cat and a sabot, or clog,
46:33of the type French workers would slip into machinery to break it.
46:36In many languages, it forms the etymology of the word sabotage.
46:40If you take a look at the map of the world and areas in which you've had either syndicalist dominance,
46:47you'd find the whole of Latin America, significant parts of Europe.
46:53If you were to talk at minority syndicalist influence but significant,
46:58you'd find parts of North Africa into the Far East, etc.
47:03It has arisen everywhere around the world where you've had modern capitalist industrialization.
47:11With organizations springing up all over the world, and publications appearing in every language,
47:16the revolutionary trade union movement managed to reach the fringes of the population
47:21that had until then been immune to political trends.
47:25Thus, the influence and impact of anarchism grew.
47:29When the movement matures, you find that there are trade unions,
47:33the anarcho-syndicalist trade unions established,
47:35and almost invariably they will have a section feminina, a woman's section.
47:41Now, this is not a woman's ghetto.
47:43The section feminina was at the forefront of the Industrial Revolution.
47:48I think it's important to bear that in mind.
47:51So, the pioneering work of women happened to establish this very strong syndicalist tradition
47:58of women being in the vanguard, if you will.
48:02Women were undoubtedly slaves among workers.
48:05They were at the forefront of these trade union conflicts,
48:08opening up new fronts for anarchism.
48:11Thus, the libertarian movement, at a time when women were not entitled to vote or hold a bank account,
48:17became the only revolutionary movement with female figures in the front lines.
48:22Women such as Louise Michel, the Communal, who became a popular heroine,
48:26and Emma Goldman, the Russian émigrée said to be the most dangerous woman in America.
48:31And there was Voltarine de Clerc, whose literary talents were matched only by her fertile mind.
48:36Ledna Raffanelli, an activist who converted to Islam and a leading anti-colonial figure in the Middle East.
48:43Or Virginia Bolton, who published the very first feminist newspaper in history, subtitled No Good, No Master, No Husband.
48:51Not to mention Lucy Parsons, whose husband, accused in the Haymarket Affair, was one of the five Chicago martyrs.
48:56Born a slave, she became one of the pioneering activists of the black cause.
49:02Widely known and recognized, these women, admired by anarchist sympathizers everywhere,
49:07were feared by an establishment that was quick to lock them up, deport them, or even execute them.
49:13That was the fate suffered by Keno Sugako, a feminist journalist and Japanese martyr who was hanged in the twilight
49:19after being unjustly accused of high treason.
49:24Yet despite the involvement of these figures, the limits of revolutionary syndicalism became all too clear.
49:30Meanwhile, Malatesta, him again, lamented the legalistic direction the movement was taking,
49:35and the fact that anarchists seemed to have forgotten what they were, and what they were fighting.
49:40What Malatesta is critiquing is precisely this kind of apolitical bread and butter syndicalism that does not really contest power,
49:50that tries to muddle along and keep its head down, and does not admit that at some point it's going
49:58to have to confront questions of power.
50:01This reminder of the ultimate objective of union action was all the more relevant, given that in 1905 alone,
50:07the world witnessed a revolution in Russia, insurrectionary demonstrations in Germany, in Italy, and in the United Kingdom,
50:14Red Friday in Hungary, a rebellion in Crete, a general strike in Poland, Red Week in Chile, a mass movement
50:21in India,
50:22the start of the era of popular violence in Japan, the stirrings of revolution in Mongolia, and a constitutional revolution
50:29in Persia.
50:30Anarchists everywhere were on the march.
50:35But despite the widespread unrest, as with the Ilindan uprising in Macedonia, an insurrection that was both nationalistic and libertarian,
50:43all these movements were marked by bloodshed.
50:47Against this background of widespread repression, it is too often overlooked that certain anarchists took up weapons,
50:53as they did in the era of propaganda by the deed, this time fully aware that their actions would be
50:59in vain,
50:59and that tragedy lay in store.
51:02For this moment we are taking the war.
51:04For our bloodshed is white.
51:08The red tape is white.
51:12Our yellow star is white.
51:15Our life in blue and white.
51:19Yes, our bloodshed is white.
51:22Our red tape is white.
51:26Our yellow star is white.
51:29Notre lion rouge et noir
51:33Notre sang bleu et noir
51:35Notre arqueur rouge et noir
51:39Notre étoile bleu et noir
51:43Notre lion rouge et noir
51:51Blanque
51:54Blanque
52:00Blanque
52:02Et on fait blanque
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