A Particularly Vile and Clumsy Manoeuvre by Some Anti-Situationists

NOTICE

This translation is a first draft, and has not been independently proofread. However, to the best of my knowledge this text has never been translated into English. Therefore I am making it available in this form with the caveat that there are likely to be mistakes in it. PLEASE APPROACH IT WITH CAUTION!

Draft 0.0 (16 May 2016)

A Particularly Vile and Clumsy Manoeuvre by Some Anti-Situationists

In this journal we have often had to point out those who, while hiding their true identity, have passed themselves off here or there as members of the SI; mostly these remain harmless enough cases of mythomania. However, now we must bring a most serious matter to the attention of every revolutionary element that knows us; a matter that is very revealing about the techniques and intentions of those responsible.

Throughout the summer of 1968, in Italy, an impostor introduced himself to a large number of people as the Situationist Mustapha Khyati. In this way he gathered information from many, who believed they were speaking to Khyati, concerning their activities in France during the occupations movement. Futhermore he attempted to compromise the SI in various ways, initially through his own despicable statements and associations, claiming that we had approved them; later, in company with others, via a number of attacks against the Situationists. This was all done under cover of the identity of Khayati, who had supposedly broken with the SI, having been their “leader” beforehand (having, for example, written The Revolution of Everyday Life under the name of Vaneigem, etc).

This imposter was at the Anarchist Congress of Carrare, and was accompanied by a Cohn-Benditist group from Nanterre. He travelled to Venice next, at the time of the Biennale. At the end of December he appeared as part of the Nanterre delegation at the UNEF congress held in Marseille, where he proved to be very cautious. There he was questioned by the Bordeaux delegation, to whom he explained that Khayati was just the second part of his name, which began differently. A little later, when he met with a delegate from Nantes, this person no longer dared to claim that he was Khayati, merely presenting himself as an “Enragé” from Nanterre. When asked if he had been in the same group as Riesel, he replied: no, but that he had found himself “objectively” of the same opinions. At the beginning of January, this strange envoy was in Rome, where he continued to pass himself off as Mustapha Khayati.

Everywhere that revolutionaries will assess that it can’t be believed that that this underling really represented the IS within the ex-“Movement of March 22” gang (in which he openly took part) he takes up another lie, whose function is equally revealing. He claims to have resigned from the SI in May “because the SI at that point had adopted a position of abstention” due to the fact that “the critique of the spectacle had itself become spectacular, etc”.

The thinking and the existence of the SI must be very annoying for some of the arrivistes of the Leftist bureacracy, and they must find themselves totally unable to apply the least real critique to it, in order for them to end up behaving in such a way. In the end they have discovered nothing better to “demonstrate” that any part of the SI has ever featured in their pathetic grouping, as they’ve insinuated to journalists hundreds of times.

We are now able to confirm that this imposter is a certain Mustapha Saha, currently a student at Nanterre of Moroccan origin. Despite the indisputably police-like style of this impersonation and his spying on revolutionaries, we don’t believe that Saha’s activity is aimed towards intelligence-gathering or denunciation to benefit the French or Moroccan authorities. The truth is extraordinary enough: he was an agent of the group that was at the centre of the erstwhile “Movement of March 22” who (their allied members having rejoined their true affiliations) remain under the direction of a certain Jean-Pierre Duteuil.

These manipulators, who are always behind the times, draw their inspiration from the practices that aid the Stalinist destruction of the revolutionary movement. However now that this movement has begun to reform itself, it knows that the practice of truth is both its milieu and its historical goal. All those who wish to participate in this movement will obviously boycott the Duteuils, the Sahas and those close to them.

Translated by Ian Thompson. From https://isinenglish.com/12-8-7-a-particularly-vile-and-clumsy-manoeuvre-by-some-anti-situationists/