Notice

The fanatical hostility that the SI has always provoked in certain circles has, since May 1968, reached new levels of ferocity. It often assumes forms far removed from the current style of political slander, and can usually be distinguished by its improbability and its absolute uselessness. In that regard, the neurotic phrasings of this hostility are obviously produced — and this is the only "production" in which they have ever participated — by admirers spurned, or more simply, never taken into consideration by the SI: a pathetic class of dumbfounding pretenders to a ruling intellectual role that they fortunately lack the means to attain. They generally begin by convincing their entourage that they understand and approve of the SI's theory; indeed, that they know the situationists well. Then, to confirm their own value in comparison, all they have to do is to attribute to these situationists a few surpising defects from which these good saints, at least, are exempt, if it is true that they have done nothing else.

So, on top of these exaggerations, falsifications and dishonest reproaches directed at some genuine aspect of our activities, we have occassionally been made aware of various perfectly insane remarks that have been repeated ad nauseum by certain individuals, although they have certainly not had the courage to publish them in writing. It has been said in this manner that the situationists are pimps; that they have all opportunely made their way into wealthy marriages; that they sexually assault girls; that they live in princely luxury; that they did nothing in May, out of fear as well as stupidity, the story and the documents in René Viénet's book being completely false; that in the same period the same situationists reigned heirarchically in the offices they had captured, violently refusing any discussion with the mass of real revolutionaries who wanted to be received by them; and that at the same time elsewhere someone or other could bravely come to insult them and, of course, punch them in the face without them, in their unhappy consciousness, even daring to respond!

Such purely ridiculous falsifications are clear indications of their origin: the daydreams of students overcompensating for their own impotency. According to several witnesses, a student named Jean-Yves Bériou, who seems to drool most frequently in the region of Lyons, is something of a paragon of the genre, having come up with the aforementioned examples single-handedly. But there are of course many other imaginations – quanititatively not quite as fertile but of a similar quality – at work from Nanterre to Toulouse and from Strasbourg to Bourdeaux.

The main practical conclusion to be drawn from this is that there is something highly unpleasant about the attitude of those who present themselves to us by denouncing these ineptitudes, put forward by some poor fool who they had after all frequented, and to whom they had listened attentively, as if they wanted to take some kind of merit for not having been taken in or for not having sunk so low themselves. It is well known that we don't request anyone's company; and there is obviously no individual in existence for whom this is a vital need. Consequently, we will no longer allow anyone to think that they can approach us if, having encountered some inordinate slander of the SI, they have not immediately confronted the liar and broken with them, by physically assaulting them if necessary. This decision takes effect from the publication of the present issue of this journal.

Translated by Reuben Keehan. From https://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/si/notice.html