English translation of the French transcript, made with AI and not yet proofread — click a paragraph to jump to it. Show the French original
Two reports on a French military convoy in the Sahel 0:00 Good evening everyone, good evening dear friends, good evening comrades, good evening to the faithful. Before starting tonight's talk, I just want to let you know that we're first going to run two very short news videos.
0:30 I need to point out beforehand, which is why I'm speaking now, that the first one comes from the France 24 channel, which is a state channel, under the authority of the French executive. The second video, which deals with roughly the same issues concerning what is happening to our troops in the Sahel right now, I'll be more precise about that shortly, comes from the TV5 Monde channel, which is not at all a French state channel, but is a cooperation between several French-speaking television networks — Swiss television, French-speaking Belgian television, French-speaking Canada, etc.
1:20 So that's just to clarify this, now over to these two videos with no comment beforehand — there will be some afterward. This is in the north-central part of Burkina Faso; French soldiers were heading toward Niger when men blocked their path. The group of protesters opposes the presence of Operation Barkhane in the Sahel. A source at the French embassy in Ouagadougou, and another within the French army, confirmed this blockade without giving further details. Report from Khalid also.
1:51 "French army, get out" or "Liberate the Sahel," could be read on signs held up by protesters gathered in Kaya, the capital of Burkina Faso's north-central region. Thousands have been gathered since Friday to block the passage of a French military convoy coming from Côte d'Ivoire and heading to Niger. It was first in the city of Bobo-Dioulasso that the convoy was blocked by protesters earlier in the week, then as it passed through here in Ouagadougou, the French army convoy was able to continue on its way toward Kaya. But it is in this city that the convoy, made up of several dozen vehicles, has been stopped since Thursday, facing pressure from the thousands of protesters on site and their insistence.
2:30 This Saturday, shortly after midday, the French army fired warning shots. These protests against the French army come a week after the jihadist attack of November 14 against the gendarmerie post in Inata, which killed at least 53 people, including 49 gendarmes and 4 civilians, according to a provisional official toll. Two days later, several hundred people took part in demonstrations in several cities across the country to demand the resignation of the President of the Republic, Roch Marc Christian Kaboré, for, I quote, "his inability to put an end to the terrorist attacks."
3:04 Finally, a national demonstration is planned for November 27, again to demand the resignation of the President of Burkina Faso, Roch Marc Christian Kaboré, bringing together the political opposition and a coalition of civil society groups. On the road to Téra, the marks still bear witness to the previous day's violence. The French army convoy was met by a large, sometimes vehement crowd — several hundred people at least, possibly thousands. This Sunday, the town had returned to its usual routine, but some residents and witnesses remain shaken.
3:35 "I went out in the morning with the whole crowd. I made my contribution because what concerns Niger affects me first and foremost. Unfortunately, some died for a good cause." The Nigerien Ministry of the Interior, in a statement, indeed reported two deaths and eleven serious injuries among the protesters. We were not able to enter the Téra hospital. No authority was willing to answer our questions. A few people here agreed to testify. "My little brother is one of the victims. He was 23 years old.
4:06 In the morning, he woke up. We prayed together. I was on the scene since morning, and none of our soldiers gave the order to fire. I can assure you it was the French soldiers who fired the tear gas and the shots." And all the testimonies gathered accuse the French army. "I thank the Nigerien army, which came to maintain order. It's mainly the French army that is behind this massacre." Some were present in contact with the convoy of Nigerien soldiers and gendarmes.
4:37 "They fired on us. The helicopter did it twice with its gas that it 'ate.' But if it's about firing, it's the French themselves who fired on us. Because the thing happened right in front of me. They said it wasn't them, that it was the gendarmes and soldiers who fired. That's false. That's not true." The French army's general staff spoke to us. It does acknowledge shots being fired, but tear gas shots, warning shots, and ground warning shots to push back a violent crowd, in order to prevent the looting of the convoy and to avoid endangering civilian drivers.
Between crisis and war: an ongoing discourse for seven years 5:15 The convoy's arrival is expected this Sunday evening in Gao, Mali. Here we are together again. It's not very cheerful this evening. In any case, it's not peaceful. So, you'll tell me, I'm once again guilty of swerving off to the left or the right.
5:49 I'm leaving the road we were following. Some of you were even saying, that's it, I'm starting to find my way a little in Wotan, femininity, community. I'm starting to get into it, and already I'm changing the subject. Ta-da. I'm not changing the subject, and I haven't changed it in nearly seven years. You just need to click on our channel, the one marked here, "Philosophé," at the bottom of every video with Dominique Pagani.
6:19 You just need to click to get all my videos from the past seven years. Especially if you click afterward, secondly, on "Videos" rather than "Home," because then you get them in chronological order, so to speak, and not thematic order. Both are useful, mind you. And you'll see that I was among the very first, seven years ago. Precisely, since it was 2014, the 2014–2015 school year.
6:49 All these videos, there was one per month at that time, were part of a cycle entitled "Between Crisis and War." Philosophé. Since then, thanks to you, to your attention and your loyalty, thanks to the technical teams whom I can never thank enough, because you can imagine they do all this voluntarily, and most of them, in fact all of them, really don't have only that to do, I have never stopped, never ceased, placing my philosophical discourse in a tension between two poles — one economic pole of that tension, which is called crisis.
7:48 One could speak of it in the plural, if we speak of crisis in general, of structural capital, but more recently, in historical terms, I don't know, the internet crisis in the '90s, the Asian crisis, and then we come to our own era, the great crisis triggered by the so-called subprime problem in 2008, which is not only unresolved, but with respect to which the solutions attempted keep revealing the gravity of this crisis.
8:30 I'm not talking about a stock market crisis — the markets are euphoric. You know that on the eve of the greatest crash of all time, the famous Black Thursday crash on Wall Street, the markets had risen like never before, hadn't they. So here I'm going to clearly distinguish the economy from finance, and within finance, the most speculative kind, that of the stock market. So I'm not changing course.
9:01 War is always in the background. And for those who wish to refer to our website, I always recall that there is an introduction, for which I once again thank Samuel Zarka, who with heroically limited means — technical means, I mean — was the first president of our association and conducted that interview, which I asked to serve somewhat as an introduction, because it's one of the rare times I say what actually led me to philosophy.
9:33 And I said the fact that I was born in 1945. In the manner of — I never say that anymore. I bring up these reminders to tell you that I don't sprinkle the content of my talk day by day at random. What makes the relationship to war more direct today and less allusive? Well, it's the fact that we don't talk about it.
10:04 At least not enough. It's starting a little now, as there's a summit meeting, of the two titans militarily speaking, the two heads of state, one of capitalism and the other, of Russia. I say capitalism because it's also NATO, the United States. Name me NATO countries that are not capitalist.
10:36 Which doesn't stop there from being, in Russia, a sometimes savage capitalism. And in China too, there's a whole sector that the Chinese executive, particularly the Communist Party, is cracking down on quite vigorously these days, which operates in a capitalistic manner, let's say. So I'm not throwing around insults, I'm putting things in their proper place — important reminders to understand the gravity of what is happening.
11:07 Yes, the sabre-rattling along the border between Ukraine and Russia has brought back a bit — not even war, that's barely mentioned — but the military, tactical, strategic, diplomatic problematic, as long as we're at that stage, that's already something, has resurfaced in the news. You can't forever hide the sun with your finger, as they used to tell me south of the Sahara, like Maxime.
11:44 There is this sabre-rattling. Now, I didn't start there — I started with a context in which France is involved, not that it isn't involved in Ukraine, we're part of it too — when I speak of sabre-rattling on the Ukraine-Russia border, you believe everything. We listen so much to the media that dominate us, don't we? The media that dominate the field, in Western media coverage, to put it quickly, you know, I find that phrase a bit odd.
12:21 When we say sabre-rattling, it's the Russians massing armored, air, and infantry forces at Ukraine's doorstep, ready — like dogs barely held back — to pounce on that poor Joe Biden, who is, in fact, one of the executives — I'm not talking about the population, the most Nazified in the world, and I don't just mean in Europe — post-Maidan Ukraine, and roughly the same extremist, antisemitic, anti-Russian positions — well, you always find the same things — anti-communist, are also found in the Baltic states, in Poland, but with particular virulence in Ukraine. I'm not passing judgment on the substance — maybe they have their reasons, they certainly do — that doesn't mean they're right; having reasons doesn't mean reality is rational — reason, ratio.
13:25 I say that as a very brief aside — brief in time, I mean — because you'll hear, time and again, when the anti-Russian and Nazifying leanings can no longer be hidden, even though it's never mentioned, never recalled, but when the epithets and behaviors and the accompanying declarations can no longer be hidden, people excuse it by saying, you understand, these countries suffered so much under the yoke of the Soviet bear. Well, in the Baltic states, some did suffer — they had the highest number of deported Jews per capita, Lithuania or Latvia, and that's saying a lot; there's also Hungary — of Europe, it beats the record.
14:11 Now, the authorities — you know, those who suffered so much — the authorities, I'm not talking about the populations, that's more complicated, because for example in Latvia, nearly half the population is Russian-speaking, by the way. But in Lithuania, they actually removed, took down the statue commemorating the Soviet soldier symbolizing the tens of thousands of Soviets who fell simply to liberate little Lithuania — small in area — and instead restored the statue of an SS criminal who had carried out deportations at the time, as a national hero.
Freud: the death drives progress in silence 15:07 There you go — don't think I'm exaggerating; I'll never stop saying that I'm actually understating the reality in these matters, which is terrifying. Today, my first theme is war and peace. The second is coming. The second, as I told you, is silence. And that's why I chose tonight's title, War and Peace, perhaps the most profound statement by Freud.
15:39 The death drives progress in silence. You'll notice that in what is somewhat grandiose, "the most profound" is also a bit vague, I mean, there are many profound statements by Freud, so everyone can make their own choice, but still, this one, for me, holds a privileged place, even though it's not about sexuality — that doesn't bother me, when Freud talks about it, on the contrary, it's practically the very heart of his advance, showing the importance of the impact, so to speak, of the libido within the unconscious in particular.
16:19 But I notice that in this statement, it's a matter of language, negatively, since we're talking about silence, and of the death drive, not even the libidinal drives, which we're not here to discuss, but let me still recall, to show clearly that it's antinomic, that if the death drive is fulfilled, it's at the cost precisely of liquidating all the other drives, and above all, first and foremost, the libidinal drives, and the anxieties that result from them.
17:00 That's what makes the death drive so vertiginous, this promise of — how did he put it, Wotan, in the Tetralogy, when his daughter asks him, but what do you want, in the end, with all these contradictions — das Ende, yes, "the end," as they say at the end of American films, the end, the end. Silence. I said that we talk about Ukraine, but that's nothing compared to everything happening, for example — and I come back to my two little videos — in Africa, and I'd even say in the Sahel, and even in the French-speaking Sahel, since three countries are involved in this video, whose first one, I remind you, comes from the French state, from the French state apparatus, you know that's a distinction dear to me, one that was very dear to me and Clouscard, and that I maintain, and that we should probably dig into more often, including and especially in circles that contest the capitalist state, right?
The state is not the state apparatus 18:06 There are a thousand reasons to contest capitalist power, right? We need to know whether, between the state and capital, this isn't a kind of oxymoron. I don't want to repeat a thousand times that I'm not denying, far from it, I say it again, and it's never repeated enough, that capitalism has developed the most monstrous state apparatus ever dreamed of — surveillance, satellites, cameras, I mean, the Third Reich was a regional tinker-toy by comparison, I'm speaking in terms of apparatus, not in terms of criminality, compared to the means available to the state apparatus of contemporary capitalism in France, elsewhere too, but in France among others.
18:54 Now, this state apparatus is, almost every day and increasingly so with each passing day, especially with the acceleration Macron is giving this process — it didn't start with him, but he's certainly sped it up — in the service of an absence of state. Here's an opportunity for dialectics: this absence of state, which we call the private sector, which is even the negation of the state. So, watch out, all of you who scream against the state, don't confuse the state with the state apparatus when it serves this negation of the state, which is the private sector — which is even what defines the function of the state under capitalism.
19:43 You'll say to me, but Marx himself is very... If we had to cite all of Marx's quotes against the state, absolutely! And Marx is quite right, it's healthier to have a bit of a libertarian streak, which Marx especially had early in his career. I prefer that deviation to Mr. Thiers, the executioner of the Commune, right? No, no. Let's not mix up categories. On the other hand, as his thinking evolved, you find a rehabilitation of an executive power in two notions, two references, I mean: the Critique of the Gotha Programme and of Erfurt.
20:22 Let me just give an example. When they address the vanguard of the workers' parties of the time and discuss their program, and they come across a point in that program stating that the entirety of the wealth produced by workers should be redistributed to them, Marx says, "Really? So if we give it all to the workers, who's going to pay for those who don't work — the children, the pensions? We have to deduct, from the total wealth produced by labor, what allows us on the one hand to cover those expenses I just mentioned, but also — and this is no minor detail — to maintain the production tool as it stands."
21:09 Wear and tear, investments, maintenance, and even, why not, expansion, of course. And of course, my second reference, more political than economic, is the famous notion of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which Marx very clearly says must be transitional — I stress, transitional, not something to make permanent, not to take advantage of its being transitional to turn it into an almost permanent cruising speed.
21:40 I know, I'm making myself unpopular with some of my friends, my young good friends, I believe I'm a loyal and consistent comrade in any case. So, you see, the state must never be confused with the state apparatus. So, three, three states are involved in this military convoy referred to, this French military convoy transporting...
The convoy across three states and two treatments of the event 22:14 For now, we don't know what. Well, in any case, if you watch the videos, we don't know what. Everyone now knows, all the journalists say it in all the media, that they were transporting weapons. Fine. Destined for whom? In principle, for the French forces, that's the official version. Agreed? We're in a serious and grave context. So I don't want to go beyond, do I, what is manifest, offenbar, explicit.
22:46 I don't want to engage in either speculation about intentions or conspiracy theorizing, even if I'll be accused of conspiracy-mongering, since you know that as soon as you deviate from the official version, on whatever subject, even by a millimeter, you're already labeled a conspiracy theorist. But, so as not to pass for a delirious conspiracy theorist either, let me recall that for now, this weapons shipment, this arms convoy, escorted by French soldiers, is supposed, according to official French authorities, to supply our soldiers, to whom I pay tribute — I always pay tribute to those who risk their lives on the ground.
23:36 That's a principle, I'm not — I'm not a coward here trying to have it both ways. Fine, if they're there, it's because politicians sent them there, so those who have scores to settle over that presence — and I'm one of them — point the finger at those who brought them there, and not at the soldiers who end up getting their skin punctured. But that's not what's at stake here. No, no, no, it's actually the opposite. Namely, what we see crosses three states.
24:08 The first of the two videos talks about an incident that occurred in Burkina, near the northern border of Burkina, meaning right when they're about to enter Niger, if you look a bit at the map. Sorry, into Mali, right? That is, to the northwest, right? But before that, they had to cross Niger. So you can clearly see, from Côte d'Ivoire, from the coast, you see?
24:39 So there were two major incidents, in Kaya, in Burkina, and near Téra, places I know well. There are people who have lived 40 years in those areas and still haven't understood anything about what's going on there. I'm talking about expatriates. But those who actually live there, they know things. You know, a docker in Abidjan knows things. A taxi driver in Bamako is far better informed, not only about what's happening in Mali, but about the global situation.
25:13 Yes, a taxi driver in Bamako is better informed about global affairs than the average television viewer in our part of the world. I'm not going to try to demonstrate this apparent paradox, which is glaringly obvious to anyone who makes the slightest assessment, but I'll leave that to you, and don't just take my word for it on such a contentious point. Who is it? Let me get back to my point.
25:43 The first one, I'll start with the second. The second one makes extremely serious accusations. It's not from the channel TV5MONDE, which I remind you is managed by all the francophone countries' television networks, which don't all quite have the same geopolitical interests as France. And here, I'm French, I mean, I'm not saying nice things.
26:14 I'm saying that if there are distortions of the truth, it's not always in the direction that official French information might dictate. Now, the sequence you saw taking place here in Burkina, in Niger — sorry — reports victims, including deaths, that would have been caused by gunfire from French soldiers.
26:57 It's not for me to pronounce on the substance of matters this serious. What I note is that there is absolutely no mention of it in the first video, where they speak of warning shots. The second also mentions warning shots, but it puts them in the mouths of the soldiers and French embassy officials, who say we only fired warning shots. I wasn't there, so, I mean, why not?
27:28 But you'll notice that the first video, France 24's, a state television channel, at no point gives the floor to the protesters, among whom there were reportedly many wounded and dead. For now, everyone agrees on the number of two deaths officially. You'll also notice, and this is even more surprising, that in the second video, the protesters, or the parents of protesters — because one of them says his little brother was one of the victims — should in principle be very angry at those who, according to the French side, are said to have shot at them, that is, according to French officials, the Burkinabe gendarmerie and police here,
28:39 Nigerien over there, here it's Nigerien in this case, whereas — and there should be hatred, resentment, this isn't good of course, in France people sometimes hated the collaborator even more than the occupier — and what surprised me myself was seeing how much the protesters defend the gendarmes and cops, sorry for speaking French, who kept them at bay. At bay, at least kept them at bay, maybe shot at them, I mean, I wasn't there, it's not impossible.
29:12 But in any case, if there had been victims, I don't think we'd be hearing this discourse against victims coming from the national — let's move quickly now — or regional gendarmeries, if we group Burkina and Niger together, I don't think there would be this consensus, because it's not one, it's several, with apparently quite different and varied customs, saying they're proud of their armed forces, and that it was French soldiers who shot at them.
29:49 Someone might say, maybe all this is false. I don't know, maybe we're just dealing with fabricators, but it's extraordinary, I mean, that the first video at no point gives the floor to even a single protester. You know, over here, we interview people — it doesn't commit anyone to much — we interview a protester who says, oh it was terrible, another who says, we're not doing enough, I mean, I've never quite understood the method. But anyway, the second sequence interviewed several protesters.
30:25 I don't want to dwell now on the substance, since again, I'm not pronouncing on the substance. I still have doubts about the most politically important point of these incidents, that is, did French soldiers fire on populations they're supposed to protect against terrorism? I'm not pronouncing on the substance, I have suspicions, but the situation is serious and so, I don't know, I'm not here to share my feelings.
31:07 On the other hand, what I find astonishing, staggering, is the incredible media indifference surrounding these events. The world was in an uproar because a Chinese tennis player disappeared for two or three days — apparently that's more Closer magazine material once you look at the details of the affair and what we've learned since, right?
31:43 Apparently everyone was on alert, we know very well, I'd rather we be attentive to those who suffer wherever they are, but here there are deaths, there are populations protesting, saying France get out. We hardly talk about it. Deaths, not at all. The death drives progress in silence. So why do I start with the Russo-Ukrainian border, where there's perhaps, no doubt, the greatest concentration of lethal weapons along with the South China Sea in the contemporary world?
High-intensity conflict and the encirclement of Russia 32:23 And that's saying something. Why do I approach the current dossier of war and peace through this small Sahelian angle? First, as I told you, because of the silence we'll find throughout my talk. I'm opening a small parenthesis again, first, to show that I haven't changed subject.
32:54 Over these past weeks, even months, I've done a series of shorter formats — let's not exaggerate, it's an hour, but for me, I mean, it's a small step forward. I promise to do even better. I'm thinking of my analytic reveries, I'm thinking of the video I'll allow myself to refer you to, which has the cute title, about Goethe's character, where we talk a lot about the sound of the ear and music and silence, and which even begins with a reflection on silence.
33:36 So, when I say the death drives progress in silence, I'm returning to my tropism — that comes from tropos, which means curve, you know, heliotropes, sunflowers if you prefer, in plain English, heliotropes, meaning that which bends, that turns toward the sun. Tropism simply means a curve, so figuratively, an attraction, an inclination toward. But mine is toward everything related to what reaches us through the ear.
34:13 Language, music, there's a lot to say, I say quite a bit in other videos, so I'll stop there. I'm just opening this parenthesis to recall that on this point I'm continuing in the same vein as my talk. But that's not all. Why do I come to it through this Franco-African angle? Because, and this is much more serious, our chief of staff, the chief of staff of the French armed forces, a few weeks ago, publicly — it's not, a conspiracy is when you go dig up an article nobody knows about but that I got hold of through a leak.
34:57 No, no, there were remarks that echoed in all the media, across all political leanings, saying that we, the French, need to prepare, I quote, for a high-intensity conflict. And there, we're no longer in Africa, no longer in Mali, no longer in the Sahel. And that was before, mind you, tensions rose in intensity — sorry for the pleonasm — as has been the case these past days or short weeks at the far eastern edge of Europe, of the European Union anyway.
35:49 Of the European Union. Because Tchaikovsky is not a musician who is American, nor African, nor South American, nor Asian. Tchaikovsky went well, well beyond the Ukrainian-Russian border, deep inside Russia. Believe me, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Stravinsky, all these people whose masterpieces became known in Paris at a time when what made the hearts of Parisian music lovers beat, and therefore French ones, was Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, the greatest creations that inaugurated contemporary music, so-called contemporary music, the kind that hurts the ears of those unaccustomed to it.
36:33 Which begins at the end of the 19th and the start of the 20th century. You'll get a sample of it. I'll come back to it at the end of this video, an admirable sample from this barely bearable micro-tragedy in its intensity, but of great beauty, by Arnold Schoenberg, founder of dodecaphony — we won't get into musicology, that's not what I'm here for — not atonal music, there was some before him, but especially dodecaphony and above all serial music.
37:12 Arnold Schoenberg, who wrote here, right after the war, "A Survivor from Warsaw." So, I'm speaking seriously, I don't know, when I say that — I remind you that when I speak of the eastern border of the European Union, these are NATO countries. I'm surprised Russia hasn't massed troops at its border, even before, and even more heavily than it has done since, since facing it, right at its doorstep, there is the largest armada ever concentrated in human military history, in peacetime.
38:07 Yes or no? Check it. Imagine Russian armored divisions, plane flyovers, whatever you like, in Canada, right there, a stone's throw from Chicago, the second largest US city by population, by area it's easily larger than the rest combined, in Mexico, so from the north, from the south, but not only there, but also in Baja California, part of the Californian peninsula that belongs to Mexico, but also in the Antilles, in the Caribbean, with missiles, in Haiti, in Cuba — we know the crisis that caused — but above all in islands perfectly integrated into the Western system, some of which host the most dizzying tax havens there are, I remind you in passing that more than 80% of stock market operations
39:18 of Wall Street, each day, 80% are done not with those islands in general, but precisely with the Cayman Islands. You know, sometimes there are tens of thousands of transactions per second, I'll leave it there, I'm closing the parenthesis. Imagine that on those islands, changing the scenery, Russian nuclear-tipped missiles, not even a day's boat ride from Miami, from...
39:48 that's what we're doing around Russia. So, to be very clear, I'm not defending Russia against what's called the West. I've already said, and I repeat, that if I were in Russia, it's not at all certain I would vote. It's not certain. I'd need to be convinced. But spontaneously, I'll say it, I would vote for the Russian Communist Party, which is the main opposition force to Putin.
40:21 And between the two, there have been serious clashes at the time of Putin's cuts to pensions. You see, I'm not defending the current Russian executive. But I do find it rather bitter that we wrap in a thick silence — we come back to it — this unprecedented military presence accumulated around Russia. So imagine the scenario I told you about, Russian missiles in Mexico, in Canada, that's exactly what's being done.
40:56 We never talk about it. We act as if the aggressor, the only one with soldiers, with tanks, is the bear. Everyone knows a bear is the bear, whatever, it only relies on its strength, it's clumsy, it's Baloo. No, I was thinking of the jungle. He's having a hard time laughing tonight. There, essentially, is the relatively short message I wanted to deliver.
Reading a letter by Rimbaud against "patrouillotisme" 41:31 So, I searched, I could have used, as usual, lots of texts, and commented on them with you, but I found the situation so serious that there were few literary texts, in particular ones of literary interest matching the gravity of the situation. So I took a light one, frankly, but striking, a letter Rimbaud sends to one of his teachers, when he's really still in school, as they say, so he writes from Charleville, from his Ardennes province.
42:12 He tells him, "Sir, you are lucky, you, no longer to live in Charleville. My hometown is supremely idiotic among the small towns of the provinces." Well, that's the kid who's bored, the teenager, nothing to imitate, nothing original so far. Here it's rather the mastery of language, the tone and the expressive ease that's staggering for a kid that age. "On that, you see, I have no more illusions," because it's near Mézières, a town you can't find. Look at the ellipsis. That is, a town so unimportant that even on a map you can't see it.
42:45 To the inhabitants of Mézières, if any are listening, know that I am a lover of those regions. All my friends know it. I'm a perverse Corsican in love with the countries of the North and East, it's well known. And the biggest ceps I've ever gathered in my life as an amateur mycologist were precisely in the forests bordering Charleville. But I didn't live there, mind you, at the end of the 19th century, in the rather stifling atmosphere of family and school — though Rimbaud was lucky to have teachers who were very attentive to what he said, especially to what he wrote, and for good reason.
43:27 Let's continue. "On that, you see, I have no more illusions, because it's near Mézières, a town you can't find, because it sees two or three hundred infantrymen wandering through Charleville's streets. This sanctimonious population gesticulates, prudhommesquely swordsman-like." But can you imagine, this kid? Not only does he master the language, but it's not enough for him, he invents neologisms, an adverb, "prudhommesquely" — you have to freestyle it, it's contagious.
43:58 That's the first time I've used that infinitive, it'll be contagious in a word. "Prudhommesquely swordsman-like." Spada, in Italian, means sword. Sword in English, spada. Speer in German, the lance, no, not the point. Spada, the spadassin, is the one who wields the sword, it's the musketeer, all that, it's the soldier, it's the man of war. "This sanctimonious population gesticulates, prudhommesquely swordsman-like, quite differently from the besieged" — meaning the poor souls — "of Metz and Strasbourg."
44:34 You know it was terrible for civilians, the short but very bloody Franco-Prussian war of that era, when the armies of the French emperor were crushed by the recently formed Prussian state under Bismarck. "Quite differently from the besieged of Metz and Strasbourg. It's frightening, the retired grocers who don the uniform," they talk about civilians saying we'll skin the Prussians, "with chassepot in their hearts" — the chassepot was the rifle given to French foot soldiers at the time, as we'd say today, I don't know, a Kalashnikov — "it's frightening, the retired grocers who don the uniform, chassepot in their hearts, doing patriotism-patrolling," patrouillotisme.
45:20 Sometimes there's ellipsis, sometimes there's fusion, the syncretism of several words into one, "doing patriotism-patrolling at the gates of Mézières. My homeland rises up." I say this because I heard Jadot say again that we need to skin the Russians — it's not something new he's saying, I'm not going digging on the far right, well, what's labeled the far right, even though most of the time what's labeled the far right is the Poujadiste far right, the one crushed by history, that will never be in power — but which is, however, formidable, since at the sharpest moment of the crisis it will rally to Macron or to whatever represents the so-called liberal state at that moment, against those who want a progressive, universalist, humanist alternative, or pre-alternative.
46:15 I'll come back to this cursed triangle, the universal, man, progress — we know well these are the three notions most decried by the disciples of the most Nazi of philosophers, that is, roughly, the dominant French philosophy of the past three generations or so. Check it, and you'll see that here too I'm going fast and so I'm well below the reality and above all, alas, the truth. So I'll let the kid speak, I have nothing against grocers, "it's frightening, the retired grocers who don the uniform, chassepot in their hearts, doing patriotism-patrolling at the gates of Mézières, my homeland rises up, I prefer to see her seated." Yes, I say this is a light text, don't rattle the boots, that's my principle.
Neither warmonger nor pacifist 47:01 So, you'll tell me, but wait, there are still moments, it's all well and good to play the pacifist, it's all well and good to be on the side of good feelings, but I never said I was a pacifist, I never said, and even less, that I was a warmonger, I never made an apology for warlike violence, for the heroism of a resistance fighter, yes, who wages war on his occupier, yes, I never made an apology for warlike violence, wait, where am I going with this?
47:33 Ah, I'll reveal a great secret to you, these oppositions don't hold up, they don't hold up, we act as if there were two camps, here, those who are partisans of war, the warmongers, and there, those would be the pacifists. Well, how would you place the former Social-Democratic leader of the Popular Front, Blum, Léon Blum, who is not my worst enemy, I'm not called Maurras, whom all the right-thinking crowd of the new right — but who bleeds heavily onto a whole left that still believes itself to be on the left.
48:19 Well, Maurras, you can still hear a certain skill, what a writer, etc. I'm not saying he was a bad writer, even if for me it's a style that smells, that smells — since I'm talking about smell, yes, I'm not sensitive only through the ear — that smells like the toilets of those restaurants and cafés which, up until the 1950s, used newspaper instead of toilet paper, which wasn't yet mass-produced and affordable for everyone.
48:55 No, no, I'm not exaggerating for the sake of infamy. It's really about that when you know a little of the symbolism of the unnameable, so as not to call it by its name. You'll see how rigorous what I'm reading is, and that between logorrhea and diarrhea, retention and constipation, there's a whole dialectic. For instance, during the conflict over interest rates and debt not long ago, the Bundesbank and Mrs. Merkel were engaging in retention, in constipation, against the Greeks who were deemed too diarrheic.
49:36 I'm not talking about all those citizens of pizza Europe — that's what it's called in Brussels offices, among themselves, not in front of journalists. Pizza Europe, or the PIGS. Portugal, Ireland — interesting — Greece, and of course Spain.
50:08 You see, I'm not exaggerating, that's not my style, you know that, coarse insults, some people always have poop and pee in their mouths. That's the far right, well known, it very quickly veers there. I don't need to name names, it's so widespread. But it also happens often on the left, even on the far left. I recall this here, and I specify that my theme here is not what's monstrous in everything I've just recalled, it's the fact that we don't recall it.
Silence produces amnesia: Halbwachs and Thomas Mann 50:57 It's the silence, and therefore the amnesia, because the longer the silence lasts, the longer it goes on, the more likely it is to be forgotten forever. And once again, I ask you to remember that fine title by a sociologist of the kind no longer made, back in the 1950s, Maurice Halbwachs — the one who half-watches, he wasn't entirely asleep, that one, sorry for the pun on the name, that's not proper — Halbwachs, literally means half-awake, half-watchful, had published this excellent study of memory — oh yes, memories, I know, enzymes, stimulus, reflexes, brain imaging, blah blah, The Social Frameworks of Memory, that was the title, it's very important to look at the third temporal lobe, I'm not — I'm saying that memory is a bit more complicated than reducing it to a binary scheme, effects, it's overdetermined,
52:10 as they say elsewhere, there are biological determinations, there are physiological determinations, there are also, you know, I'm at an age when one is supposed to lose one's memory, I am losing it, and yet I notice there are whole chunks — forgive me for talking about myself, but it's nonetheless impersonal, it happens, alas, to many people my age — I catch myself saying, but what am I doing in the middle of the bathroom, what was I looking for anyway, I've forgotten what, 20 seconds, the goal I'd set myself 20 seconds earlier, so you'll tell me, but not at all, you recite texts, well yes, memory is selective, which proves moreover that it's not memory, only a camera, a tape recorder anyway — they don't select, they take everything, and what fades is with duration, with time, the tape that deteriorates, that's not at all how our memory works, I'm sure that each of you, if I asked what exactly you did five days ago between 9:20 and 9:25, would stammer, whereas I'm sure you have a precise memory of events that happened to you at age 4, in detail, memory,
53:20 so it comes back, the silence, the death drives progress in silence, the death drives move in the direction of amnesia, and so I would like what people try to pass over in silence to reach your ears, and here I'm obliged — well, obliged, it doesn't bother me, he deserves it — to pay tribute to a great writer, no doubt the greatest writer of pre-war Germany, and one of the greatest of the post-war period, you guess I'm speaking of Thomas Mann, at least as a novelist, I'm paying tribute here to someone who is not of my camp, who comes from a reactionary background, from great families, the Junkers as they're called — Junker, young master, young lord, those who owned Latifundia, as they say in southern Italy, northern Germany, southern Italy, yes, those are border regions, marches as they're called, transition zones to other worlds — he belongs to those great families who even had serfs, practically slaves
54:30 On their land, he belongs to those rich families of Hamburg, of Lübeck, of Dresden, and of the Hanseatic towns, the Hanse, which was flourishing as a trading league, and when you see on certain German cars, HH, it means Hansestadt Hamburg, those are cars registered in Hamburg, but Hamburg, Hanseatic city, Hansestadt Hamburg, HH, it is all the more remarkable that this writer, who had all the tics, all the reactionary themes, and who knows them better than anyone, better than the vast majority of his compatriots, nonetheless saved honor.
55:14 I'm not losing my thread, I'm in the middle of saying, I want this to reach your ears, what is being kept silent. Now, he did a series of broadcasts from London during the war, addressing his compatriots, his compatriots. And the collective title given to those broadcasts, the generic title, sorry, was "Deutsche Hörer, German, listen, listen to what is being kept silent from you." Stop saying that all the problems come from the Jews, from the Communists, well, it's the same thing, the Judeo-Bolshevik.
55:51 What a tragic figure, Thomas Mann! Yes! This Thomas Mann of whom I will recall two fundamental quotations. One which I'll summarize because it's a bit long, where he says, in the 1950s, that putting Nazism and Communism on the same level proves that, deep down, one has a mindset more favorable to Nazism than to Communism. You'll tell me, he must be a communist, preaching for his own parish. No, no, he is neither one nor the other. He proved throughout his career that he was not a Nazi, him.
56:24 Even though he had everything going for him culturally, as they say, to be one. And the second, which is a bit more reserved for those who know well the authors in question, the authors cited there, is the one that says, I believe I've already quoted it to you, that the German problem will not be solved until Germans have reconciled within themselves.
The myth of the good war and Lévi-Strauss's myths 56:54 Marx and Hölderlin as reference, after all, is written in the German language. In the work, it is written in the German language. There you go. Two names at the origin of works written in the German language. Sorry. There you go. You see that on the subject of silence, if I've spoken much more directly about war and peace than I usually do whenever you hear me, there is, underlying it, and not as directly as tonight, the concern over the monster's return.
57:30 And since I spoke of amnesia earlier, and of the complete transformation of information, as I sketched out with the two sequences, I also asked, and it's available to you on the screen, that we include it, unfortunately the article is very long, I didn't include it in full, this article draws all its substance.
58:05 So, this article, written by one of the greatest contemporary historians, to whom I pay tribute — we have the same publisher, Delga — I'm thinking here of the Belgian Jacques Pauwels, P-A-U, who has written several historical works, but in particular "The Myth of the Good War," that's his main publication, I recommend it to you, "The Myth of the Good War."
58:38 I know there are a few intellectuals who listen to me, not only them — I'm glad to have, you know, unemployed people, restaurant owners big or small, teachers, workers, and even farmers, I'm looking here toward the center and southwest of France — but not only, yes, I could also look at home in Corsica — but, I'm addressing here the intellectuals among my listeners who, when I speak of "The Myth," the title, let me remind you, of his book, is "The Myth of the Good War."
59:35 There, I'm questioning the expression "myth," well, I'm digging into it in front of you, right at the threshold of your ears, so to speak. Present-day scholars know very well that the specialist in myth is not a Marxist historian like Pauwels; the great specialist in myth is someone — I'm thinking of Lévi-Strauss, of course — on whom people leaned more than on many others to do away with, well, the Marxist reference isn't exactly popular in the intelligentsia, as they used to say.
1:00:09 All right. I've already quoted texts by Lévi-Strauss, as a reference for certain problems. And we owe him advances, particularly in the field of kinship, kinship studies if you prefer, especially among societies without writing. But I'm not criticizing him here. I'm saying: but good grief, you Lévi-Straussians, stop only looking at the myths of societies — what does Lévi-Strauss call them?
1:00:48 It's a nice play on words he makes, he's an excellent writer. "Societies without history," societies that carefully avoided — I'm paraphrasing Lévi-Strauss here, putting myself in his place — societies that carefully avoided entering into that dreadful thing we are in, namely history. Now you see, already all the ecologists — that wasn't Lévi-Strauss's case, he's someone more subtle, it's not just the Greens or... I'm talking about political ecology here.
1:01:20 No, no, I'm not lumping things together. But I note that he opens the floodgates. It's no accident that Clouscard goes after him more than after others, because he is more responsible given his intelligence and his vast culture. That means he had every means not to authorize the misreadings, the torrent of untruths that followed in anthropology. You see this isn't a detour, I'm right at the heart of the anthropological debate — take cultural relativism, for instance.
The cursed triangle: man, the universal, progress 1:01:52 So that's valid for us, but among the Bantu, it's a whole different matter. I told you we'd come back to that. I can never stress enough that dominant ideology, dominant discourse, attacks a triangle relentlessly. That's why I say it's an accursed triangle, cursed by our adversaries. A triangle with three vertices: man, the universal, progress. But yes, even Marxism — this has affected authors who were once references. Even the Marxist reference — I'm thinking of Althusser — "Marxism is not a humanism."
1:02:26 He was right. What he means is that Marxism has nothing to do with the humanism displayed by certain arch-colonials who ordered massacres. No, no, of course. That's not what I mean. But you don't throw out the baby with the bathwater with impunity. By dint of demonizing man and deifying nature, you end up fascizing yourself — us — fascizing us, imperceptibly, in silence, in silence.
1:02:59 Because nobody makes the connection there. I don't want to put myself forward, but I'd like there to be others besides me saying: watch out, when you start demonizing man — and no animal is as monstrous as man can be at times, and not just any man. I'm no saint either, no. But when you demonize man and deify nature, that has a name. It's a dominant ideology throughout a whole new right that wants to be neo-pagan, under Nietzsche's banner.
1:03:35 I'm not talking about the little epigones — at the time I'm speaking, I'm discovering the existence of these people because there are YouTubers who ask me, "Do you know him?" I looked, and God, this guy is stupid, it's unbelievable, above all uneducated. Like many uneducated people, he only knows Nietzsche, and even then, barely. He really ought to know a few texts of Nietzsche that I'd gladly hand him. He'd be disappointed in his idol. Not me — I find them among the best of Nietzsche.
1:04:07 So, for example, I'll repeat myself, because some of you have already heard this. When Nietzsche says, "I am weary of all poets, they trouble their waters so that they may seem deep," that's closer to Marx there, you see, than to the New Right. But that's not my point. My point is this silence. You see? We've closed in on it now.
1:04:40 By dint of attacking the universal, as if a Pygmy child — sorry, a Pygmy dad, a Pygmy mom — were completely indifferent when their child was sick and dying, screaming in pain from an illness, as if they had no interest in their children being healthy, getting good grades at school, and bringing money home. That's the universal. There's nothing shameful in it.
1:05:13 We bring back exchangeable values home. I say this because some will say, "Oh no, he's speaking well of money." I haven't said anything either good or bad about money for now. But I'm saying that the vast majority of humanity, whatever their cultural identity, whatever their "racialized" color — a horrible vocabulary — whatever cultural or even anthropological origin they may have, converge on fundamental points.
1:05:52 So, having a smile, whether it's a Japanese, Korean, or African film, in certain situations, how a face lights up or how it darkens, for the same reasons. That is the universal. Man — I told you, I quoted Althusser to you, "it is not a humanism" — but I could also have quoted Foucault, one of his most repeated quotes; I'm not speaking behind his back, it's not the Foucauldians who will contradict me, they won't say I'm taking it out of context or distorting it.
1:06:34 "Man is a recent invention" — that's Foucault speaking, or rather writing, since if he had only spoken, well, spoken words fly away, written words remain. Man is a recent invention and one which, fortunately, is destined to disappear soon. He said that in the '60s. Everything has been done since to prove him right, to make man disappear. There, I often quote — yes, I was corrected — it's not Burke, it's de Maistre who said: in my life I have met Corsicans — he doesn't say Corsicans, but it's the same thing — Tibetans, Germans, French, Zulus, but I have never met man in general.
1:07:16 And Burke says exactly the same thing, not in the same words, so I take this opportunity to say, since I'm being corrected — and I thank those who catch me out, as they say in the Canard Enchaîné, on points of accuracy, especially since I'm speaking off the cuff, and in spontaneous speech that's where you make the most inaccuracies through haste, so you won't lack further occasions to correct me, and I welcome it. But regarding — when I said that famous quotation which I attributed to Hegel, that every philosopher has two philosophies, his own and Spinoza's, sorry if I disappear from the screen for a moment, but you'll understand why — it's because I attribute it, well yes, it's Bergson, of course, but it's because I was steeped in — I was in the middle of, with someone who had Spinoza on the syllabus for an exam, commenting on this passage where Hegel says the following — now you'll see, it's exactly what Bergson says, but even more pronounced, look closely — Spinoza is a crucial point
1:08:26 in modern philosophy — sorry for this parenthesis — the alternative is Spinoza or no philosophy at all, you see, it really amounts to the same thing: the alternative is Spinoza or no philosophy; either you are a Spinozist, or you are not a philosopher. Thought must absolutely rise — your thought, mine, that of philosophers — to the level of Spinozism, before rising even higher. Do you want to be a philosopher? — Hegel speaking — begin by being a Spinozist, you can do nothing without that. I take this opportunity to answer others who asked me why I don't speak of Spinoza, because they don't all follow my workshops, and I understand, there are many of them, and I myself get lost in it — and you see, here he's mistaken — you can do nothing without that; above all you must bathe in that sublime ether of the unique, universal and impersonal substance, that substance which Spinoza identifies with God and which he says is indeed unique — he even derives the uniqueness of substance from its definition, it's very logical — where the soul purifies itself of all particularity and rejects everything it had believed true until then, everything, absolutely everything; one must have reached this negation which is the emancipation of the spirit.
False divisions hide war 1:09:37 Hegel slipped in, on top of that, one of his favorite mechanisms, which is negation, of course. So, excuse me, there, I'm coming back to you, that was just for this little clarification. But as for our subject, and I return to the fact that the death drives advance in silence and that no one talks about the danger of war, and instead, people talk — I've devoted loads of videos to this recently, so I won't go back over it — about the woke, people talk about men against women, gays against straights, whatever you like, while there are millions of gay people and straight people facing each other with nuclear hardware in hand.
1:10:39 So to speak. It's more serious than that. Well armed. And there, it's not gays on one side and straights on the other, that's nonsense. I mean, it's nonsense to reduce the divisions that are the engine of reality — I'm trying to be dialectical here, you see — to bad cuts, inoperative divisions, the moment it comes to serious things, weighty things, things that matter. It's inoperative.
1:11:10 Good knowledge, in general, and good philosophies in particular — I speak of it in the plural, I'm not just talking about mine — are those that make the right divisions. There you go. I hope I've given you food for thought. Talk about it around you. The more people are alerted to the fact that war is being prepared for us on the sly, the better. And in particular, war is being prepared — I told you, if I were in that country, I might well be in the opposition, even probably.
1:11:43 but I would be outraged that we should make war on the country that suffered the most, out of the whole of human history, in the last war, both in its military population and in its civilian population — and moreover, in that carnage, was the mediation to which we owe, essentially, for the most part, not exclusively but largely for the most part, the crushing of the Nazism that had been dominating us.
1:12:18 that once again, you see, the jaws of the Dobermans — Dobermans are a breed of dog selected by German breeders, you know, to make a killer animal — well, the jaws of the Dobermans closing in like that, from East Germany into Poland, from Poland into Ukraine, from Ukraine into the Baltic states, and then Georgia to the south.
1:12:49 I told you earlier, imagine if Russian armies — I won't start over — in Mexico, in Canada, in the Caribbean, that wouldn't even amount to a tenth of the missile bases, and there I include, France is part of it. France. We heard earlier, our chief of staff said, we must prepare for a high-intensity conflict — the greatest of silences is the one that covered that statement.
1:13:19 I thought it would spark a whole lot of reactions. Well, I do know that the left-wing public is on its last legs, but even so, to this extent — and to think that some people didn't even comment on that sentence, or even, if they heard it, moved on to something else, for whom it signaled no particular danger, and who tell me I'm a bit right-wing when I criticize the woke. But come now, come now, you see, the trains that hide the other trains, the bad divisions, men against women, young against old, gays, straights, Hutus, Tutsis, Corsicans, French.
1:14:00 And then, you see, a certain weariness, just from repeating this. Nausea, ad nauseam, as the Latin says, repetition to the point of nausea. There, forgive me for ending my remarks on this rather unappetizing note, and I hope you'll lift my spirits, my morale is never really down. As I once said, it was with a Christian I was talking to, who asked me, so are you in despair? I said no — discouraged often, in despair never.
The Spanish War, Blum's pacifism, and the Munich Agreement 1:14:32 There you go. I'm going to click on your comments, I don't know if there are any, but yes, yes, and I find friends again. I'll start with Daniel Arias, because he's the first one I see, and above all because I like him a great deal — forgive this subjective remark, but I mean, I really like what he says, and his way of communicating. Soviet soldiers were the only ones to help the Spanish Republic during the horrible civil war, right where the war began, likewise amid great silence.
1:15:10 I wasn't far off earlier when I said, ah well, that makes me think — I interrupted myself, well, also, you should correct me, you know, when I bring something up and leave it hanging because I find another example. When I said, the bellicist-pacifist opposition gets nowhere, and I'm defending neither war nor peace at any price — let me explain. The same individual, or the same political party, can be at the same time — remember Aristotle, the principle of non-contradiction: for there to be contradiction, two opposite attributes, cold, hot, heavy, light, must be attributed to the same subject, at the same time, under the same respect — three times the word "same."
1:15:57 You need a lot of identity for there to be contradictions. So, yes, the same political party, the same individual, can be — and here I get to it — during the Spanish Civil War, pacifist, as Léon Blum was, and of course, let's not even mention the right — I mean, because he did have some merit in having been the political head of the Popular Front, even if the Communists and the CGT did have to mobilize the workers so that this Popular Front wouldn't content itself with mere words, so that for once the left would fulfil its promises, which you currently enjoy, since paid holidays and so on, and later, union rights within companies, there you go.
1:16:47 So, this Léon Blum, then, didn't want to intervene — oh no, no, no, no interference — no, no, out of love of peace. But at the same time, the clan of French pacifists, of those who didn't want intervention against the Francoist hordes, the same ones who did not want — it's not that they didn't want, they refused — to see Munich well before the German-Soviet pact, who refused to step in when Hitler was militarily afraid of Mussolini, when he hesitated to carry out the Anschluss on Austria — ask any historian, they all know it, it's documented, all of this, we're not dealing in conspiracy here, it's public knowledge — but look into it anyway — it's not, Hitler, Mussolini, the Anschluss and the invasion of Czechoslovakia — moreover Mussolini sent several divisions to the Brenner Pass as soon as he saw Hitler stirring in that direction — so Hitler was afraid of Austria at that moment.
1:17:57 Austria isn't France, England, isn't the great powers, isn't the United States, isn't Italy, isn't Germany — he was afraid of Austria, and no one stood up to him — not only did no one stand up to him, but the head of the Western delegation — I'm not talking about poor Daladier, the Frenchman who already went along with things, just like now, our political leaders, I don't even want to talk about it, I'm not even talking about Macron, but I just heard the Minister of Defence speak, on France 24, and it's — I mean, they interviewed him precisely about the events in the Sahel that I mentioned earlier, it's terrifying, I recommend you watch that interview, no, I can't remember, it's the title of the program, something like "the grand interview," we'll put the link — yes, the same people who were non-interventionist — don't attack Hitler, don't attack Franco, and not only that, I haven't named him yet, Mr. Chamberlain, the Englishman who led the Western delegation
1:19:07 at Munich, and who granted Hitler pretty much everything he wanted, and as soon as he got home, said "Mr. Hitler is a gentleman" — whereas Russia is a totalitarian, authoritarian country, Putin is a butcher, a boor, and so on. But Hitler is that gentleman. The same people, the same diplomatic camps — the lines haven't shifted at all on that front.
1:19:38 What I'm saying is serious, it's serious, my God, how I wish I were wrong. It's very serious. That's what Daniel's welcome remark makes me think of, who also recommends, of course, the lectures of Annie Lacroix-Riz, undoubtedly the best practitioner of the archives, particularly the French ones, not only French — a bit like Mr. Chapoutot, who is not a communist at all, but is undoubtedly the best expert on German archives, particularly during the Third Reich period — but I pay tribute here to our comrade Annie Lacroix-Riz, and I am outraged by the ostracism she is subjected to.
Russian army, China, and ecological progress 1:20:31 I see Guillaume Dugué there too, who is new but no less faithful, a devotee of our broadcasts. I recommend the graphic novel "Matteo," in five volumes, of which volumes 3 to 5 deal with the Spanish War of 1936 — you see, indeed — volume 1 deals with that of 1914-18, and volume 2 with the Revolution of 1917, from the point of view of an anarchist immigrant, you see.
1:21:01 In general, that's not quite the point of view of the communists, but anyway, I thank Guillaume for this reference. So, I greet Abderrahim, who is present and who warmly endorses what Daniel is telling us, saying "I prefer the term Spanish War," there's someone who pays attention to phrasing, to how things are worded, "I prefer Spanish War"
1:21:32 Excuse me, right, "in a civil war, the German army aided by the Italians and the Franco-British blockade brought down the Republic." And yes, while France refused to intervene, not even a rifle, not even a soldier, meanwhile the Germans were testing out, you see, the most advanced weaponry of humanity at that time, the Stukas and the Messerschmitts, well, you know what came next, that's Guernica — and if it were only Guernica — the aerial warfare, before it martyred poor Poland, was unleashed on German cities well before the war, a dress rehearsal, well before the official declaration of the world war.
1:22:25 So, Daniel says "The hope for peace lies in the strength of the Russian army, capable of destroying the NATO fleet in 14 minutes." Well, I'll leave the responsibility for that to Daniel, who is perhaps better informed than I am, I'm not a specialist in these matters, even though I have excellent friends I consult on this, and who are not necessarily on my side. I'd like to pay tribute here to one of the finest intellectual honesties I know, that of Arnaud Le Gall, who was a young colleague of mine and of whom I keep an excellent memory, with whom I continue to have relations, and who works in the geopolitical field, particularly on defense issues, and who has information well above average — at least above my own data.
1:23:26 But still, it's clear that NATO forces would have been drinking champagne in Moscow a long time ago if the Russian armed forces didn't give them pause. I'd set the marker at about that level for now. Anatole tells us that ever since Russia got kicked out of the G8, its autonomy has served it well, developing exponentially, no wonder the US is scared.
1:24:01 Well, I wouldn't want, as often happens among my political friends, for us to mistake our wishes for reality either. Russia has major difficulties, it's suffering from the sanctions, but it's true it has remarkably reversed a good part of the situation, turning the sanctions into motivation to redirect its foreign trade. I'm thinking mainly, of course, of the extraordinary agreements being signed between Russia and China at that level.
1:24:37 I'm speaking in particular of energy supply to China. That's one of its rare weak points, as you know. If it's one of the most polluting industries on the planet, it's because a large part, still far too large, of its energy production comes through coal, and it's very aware of this. The executive branch is not only aware of the problem, but has considerably reduced — compared to a few years ago, let's not even talk about it, when I was your age, the average age of those listening to me, sorry — the carbon portion of its energy emissions, and above all, even Western satellites show, you know, that the planet is turning green again largely thanks to the immense investments made by China in the field of revegetation — sorry for that barbarism — they have planted forests over areas larger than France, particularly in northern China,
1:25:47 the driest regions bordering Mongolia or Xinjiang. Right. But anyway, Soviet gas — sorry, my slip — Russian gas is welcome, as you can imagine, it's already much less polluting than coal. I'll remind you here, this is my little anti-ecologist quarter of an hour, I'll keep it short because I'm now on your questions and not continuing my lecture, that I'm not saying this as a provocation, it's roughly true, broadly speaking, tendentially, that's the word I was looking for.
1:26:22 Progress has always been ecological. If we take it from the beginning, progress, at the first stage, I'm speaking purely about energy, it was charcoal in our regions, in temperate regions let's say broadly, which was by far, in industrialized areas, the oldest source of energy. Both heat and light came from the torch, from charcoal. Thankfully we moved on to coal, to mineral coal, because otherwise there wouldn't be a single tree left on the planet given today's energy consumption.
1:27:01 So it was progress to move from charcoal to coal. Yes, coal, which I just said, and I maintain it, is undoubtedly the dirtiest of the massive energy sources of today's industry. When we moved from coal to oil, it's a ratio of 1 to 7 — the amount of coal needed to equal what the same quantity of energy from oil produces. This time you need more matter torn from the mine, with coal.
1:27:35 That's progress. And when we move from oil to gas — even Jancovici, who is certainly the environmentalist I respect the most, I'm sure there are things in what I say that he'd totally disagree with, and vice versa, but I respect him because he's always clear, well-documented, and above all doesn't fall into anti-nuclear hysteria. He's precisely one of the rare consistent environmentalists, and he says if we really want to decarbonize and fight climate change, there's not much else to do.
1:28:10 And that's not to replace nuclear with wind turbines, and even less, as Germany did, with coal. So, I wanted to clarify all that. Progress has always been ecological, and of course — I'll close this apparently provocative but actually factual parenthesis here — when we move from gas, which is already much less polluting than charcoal, than coal, and than oil, to nuclear, well then, I mean, that has virtually no impact on the warming of the planet.
1:28:48 I'm talking about nuclear energy emissions, I'm not talking about the concrete needed to build the plants, that's a one-time thing, after that it's done. Right, let me see if any other questions have been flagged. You're not missing much by not seeing them, I assure you. I think it's there, probably needed for the YouTubers' expenses or whatever.
Sub-Nietzscheanism and Nietzsche the poet 1:29:19 Brochet Mehdi is taking up my proposal in every sense, that is, it's a statement, a proposition, but it's something I'm offering you, I'm not imposing it, that good thoughts make good distinctions. Thanks for that support. Let me see, it's...
1:29:51 Ah yes, this is in response to Raoul Lebeuf who asked me who's that guy on the Nietzsche YouTube channel? He's not alone, he's not the only one. But there, I discovered — I mean, I wonder how one can spend even a minute listening to that. Well, when Deleuze talks about Nietzsche, that's on a whole other level. It's funny that we're back to sub-Nietzscheanism, that brings me back to my question — that's Sébastien Brunois, whom I greet — that brings me back to my question: when you know nothing about philosophy, you go toward what you believe to be, what speaks to you, toward pseudo-philosophy.
1:30:23 Yes, I'm glad he specified sub-Nietzscheanism. Even the real Nietzsche, mind you, is not sub-philosophy, is not pseudo-philosophy. He's not a philosopher at all, and he would be the first to agree. He's a thinker, a poet in his moments, I don't know, he's probably the one who made German resonate best in the realm of thought, a thinker of his time. But in a magnificent poem at the heart of Zarathustra, well, this poem has a refrain, a rondeau, like in music — they knew that well, Nietzsche — a refrain that says, you, speaking to himself of course, you, the friend of truth, literally, philosophia, seeker of wisdom, of knowledge, you, friend of truth — come now, nothing but a fool, nothing but a poet — so he doesn't classify himself as a philosopher, there you go.
1:31:29 Abdérahim says the right, with the recession, has slightly shifted left — kindly put, Abdérahim, it's not just a smidgen, if I may say so, it's a lot that it has shifted left, forgive my — one of my great regrets is not knowing that language well, for the ear, I who used to organize Quran recitation competitions in Niger with students from the music center I ran, I regret not having been able to delve deeper into the study of that language.
Pauwels: Pearl Harbor and rivalry in the Pacific 1:32:06 So, I see there are some who already know Jacques Pauwels — Abdérahim knows him, it's not just Abdérahim now — Jacques Pauwels, very good, he's very much a stickler for truth, he cleans things up undeniably in history, well, I remind you, the main title is "The Myth of the Good War," it couldn't be more topical, right? And I gave you a large excerpt from the article, now I'll just do the analysis, I could put it off until the questions — this article, the historical event it focuses on is Pearl Harbor, the event that decided the United States would enter the war against Japan, in short, that brought the United States into the world war, because until Pearl Harbor, the Americans are at war neither against Germany nor against Japan.
1:32:59 I'd even say, and I ask you to read the article, and beyond that to refer to the book it's taken from, "The Myth of the Good War," that the Americans never declared war on the Third Reich. They fought them, especially at the end, and because they were attacked.
1:33:29 But they never declared war on Germany at a time when they could have done so. On the other hand, they did declare war on Japan. He explains very well in his article the enormous objective rivalries — objective, as the Marxists say, there I'm talking like right-wing men, especially in my generation, we used to say "objective, as the Marxists would say" — but what a tribute to Marxism!
1:34:02 Well, I ask you, what does that even mean? When Euro... some pseudo-Marxist stuff, everyone's in their own bubble, I mean, and the truth is only valid within a one-and-a-half-meter radius, and I'm being generous. So, rivalry in the Pacific region — I was born, as you know, as some of you know, in Vietnam, during the Japanese occupation, well, at the end at least, fortunately for me, and unfortunately for my parents who lived through the whole occupation, and especially unfortunately for the Indonesian, Vietnamese, Korean, Filipino peoples, well anyway, I'll remind you here that Japan, a powerful industry, but still lacking today basic resources, is a champion of transformation, but the raw materials to be transformed, the preferred raw materials,
1:35:12 are far away; now, among such strategic materials as rubber — rubber is used for tires, vehicles, airplanes, cars, buses, armored cars, whatever you like, I mean rubber, and many other raw materials — for example French Indochina, that's why I mention it, had among the finest rubber plantations in Southeast Asia, along with Indonesia — so there was an objective rivalry, the Americans already being present in Hawaii, which they conquered, an independent country, or the Philippines, against whom they waged a war we practically never talk about — the death drives advance in silence — if one day one of you wants to do a study, a paper, on the massacres that took place during the American war against the Philippines, there you go, I'm not treating the subject, I'm not saying there was a good guy and a bad guy, but I mean, there are things like the tennis women, because they disappeared for two days, right, just that, and no one's going to shed tears for the whole world,
1:36:22 it's a shrinking world, but on the other hand, there are all sorts of massacres, you know, over which an enormous silence hangs. There, I don't want to drag on, I see that — I'm delighted to see that we agree, and we've gone well past 10pm, so I don't want to bore you too much either. I'm glad to find Stavisky again, who tells me that five days ago he was already listening to my approximations, and I thank him, and I greet our friend residing in Belgium, Inêz Oludé, who is very loyal and present tonight, I'm very glad to see her again, and as I've already told you, I'll say it again, I think I'll end on this: that soon, all of you, this community that we form, plus the members,
Announcement and listening to A Survivor from Warsaw by Schoenberg 1:37:34 plus a few friends who don't have the leisure to be with us this often but keep themselves informed — we're going to contact them soon to organize a big gathering, a virtual one of course, as they say now, not in person, together, hoping we'll do an in-person one a bit later, once things have become clearer on that front. So, thank you for your presence, for your support, believe me, there are moments when I wonder if — well, let me speak plainly, forgive the crudeness — it's not that I'm pissing into a violin, but sometimes I feel like it's into a double bass, you see, given the whole task at hand — so when I see that somewhere it hits home, and that some of you, it helps, that it clarifies things for them, and they say they understand certain things better, you have no idea how much that encourages me. That doesn't mean keep saying nice things about what I say — those who correct my mistakes, for instance, are at least as precious to me, my inaccuracies if you prefer, and,
1:38:46 I hope to see you again very soon — there won't be a live session, then, next Wednesday, since we do them somewhat staggered, every other week, and we'll pick back up the continuation of our series on femininity, community, the relation to political aesthetics, in two weeks. But in the meantime, I'm sure Pierre-Alain and I will manage to give you more than just crumbs. Have a very good evening, and thanks again for your contribution.
1:40:10 I cannot remember everything. I must have been unconscious most of the time. I remember only the grandiose moment when they all started to sing as if prearranged. The old prayer we had neglected for so many years.
1:40:41 The forgotten creed. But I have no recollection how I got underground to live in the sewers of Warsaw for so long a time. The day began as usual.
1:41:11 Reveille, when it still was dark. Get out! Whether you slept or whether worries kept you awake the whole night. You had been separated from your parents, from your children. You don't know what happened to them. How could you sleep?
