Le Jura Libertaire, interview about the French anarchist blog

The Good Fuckers at Le Jura Libertaire
Interview conducted by Paco
http://www.notbored.org/le-jura-libertaire.html

Ever since Spring 2006, Le Jura Libertaire ("Libertarian Jura") has diffused on the Internet first-hand news accounts about social and political struggles. Consequently, this blog is much more passionate and reliable concerning the libertarian movement and its satellites than the nonsense spread by the official media.

Paco: Why "Libertarian Jura"? I would imagine that the audience for this blog, which is often referred to, extends much farther than the Jura [Mountains]!

Le Jura Libertaire: Before being a blog, Le Jura Libertaire was a paper bulletin that intended to reflect local anarchist activity. But it is an open media. Le Jura Libertaire is inevitably internationalist. Locally and very widely, it can serve as [a point of] contact and linkages. The near-totality of the echoes that return to us are enthusiastic and testify to the blog's utility. Despite this, it could be better if it had a fuller team. As things are, we receive comments and contributions with interest, from wherever they come.

Paco: How does La Jura Libertarire function? The news that you provide, sometimes in several languages, are always in direct contact with the reality of the struggles. Your blog is, for example, a precious source concerning what's going on in Greece. Where do the reports and the excellent photos and videos that accompany them come from? For example, bravo for the article Urbanism and Modern Letters, published on 31 December [2008].

Le Jura Libertaire: The majority of the items that are published have been found elsewhere on the Internet. But more and more we receive reports directly through email. For example, the [English] manifesto from Greece Why Ravage? which we translated into French . . . before others had the Greek version. We also make available texts that are not available [on-line]. The theme Debordiana brings together texts devoted to theoretical critique. This year, we put on-line the chapters of the book Enrages and Situationists in the Occupations Movement, which was available at bookstores but not on-line, or if so, only in other languages, even though it is the first book one should read about the revolutionary crisis of May-June 1968.

Paco: The blog abounds in themes. Solidarity, the Carceral, Education, International[ism], Atheism, the Police, Press, Racism, History, Unemployment, Women, the Environment and The Coming Insurrection. The last theme is directly inspired by the title of a book that titillates our sinister Minister of the Interior. By freely reprinting the Echoes of Taiga, the journal of the Support Committee for Those Arrested on 11 November, don't you risk provoking serious insomnia among the Big Brother family, those poor things?

Le Jura Libertaire: First of all, and even if we had the ambition to be so, we could never be as extreme as this world. That said, we are [operating] in "public space" and on the Internet. Thus, we are concretely subjected to social censorship, to the control of our enemies as well as to police inquisitions. But our freedoms only atrophy if they are not used. Before they come fear Big Brother, children play "cops and robbers." And when they get caught, they are not faced by Big Brother, but Pere Ubu, instead. As for the insurrection that is coming here, there, and everywhere: it has no need of us. It manages very well all by itself! It is by conducting the war for freedom with anger that proletarians will be strategists, not otherwise.

Paco: Without sectarianism, Le Jura Libertaire features links to all elements of the French libertarian movement (the Anarchist Federation, Coordination of Anarchist Groups, Libertarian and Social Offensive, the National Confederation of Workers . . .), but also to many Spanish, German, Argentine, Polish, Czech, English and Quebecois groups . . . bookstores, publishers, free radio stations, alternative and anti-authoritarian sites. . . . A real Tower of Babel that shows the great diversity of the anarchist family. All this at least proves that libertarians have missed the Internet revolution. Do you think that, to win other kinds of revolutions, the unity of libertarians will be more and more indispensable on the ground [sur le terrain]?

Le Jura Libertaire: Constantly overcoming petty quarrels is quite important from our point of view. Organizing ourselves is important but, beyond that, neither experiences that escape labels nor the fetishism of initials should not make us forget who our real class enemies are. The revolution is not a lecture about morality: there is no choice between a wildcat strike, a slogan on a wall, a film by Pierre Carles, an appeal to solidarity, a song by Rene Biname, an act of sabotage, or the creation of a social alternative. The police do their work. It falls to revolutionaries to work in the other direction, by all means, existing and to be invented. Action can be coordinated, or not: one can recognize oneself quite well in the gestures of comrades who are far away, without actually knowing them. And this multiform subversion is, no doubt, more dangerous to all the powers than an unattainable unity of the "libertarian movement." In any case, the revolution will not wait. It will be necessary to be in the melee, that's all.

Paco: Le Jura Libertaire offered us a surprising soap opera this summer. Your hot altercation with the Maoists had a retro-Surrealist side. It was quite hilarious. Have the adepts of The Little Red Book calmed down?

Le Jura Libertaire: This did indeed make many people laugh. These particular Maoists -- because they are others, raving about other dogmas -- attacked us following the reprise of an interview with Jean-Claude Michea. In sum, according to their categories, anarchists are fascists; and, at the same time, Le Jura Libertaire is on the side of Autonomy, which supposedly has nothing to do with Anarchism or, rather, with Anarcho-syndicalism, which is the source of all the evils experienced by working people. . . . In brief, here we found ourselves confronted with the essence of Stalinist fuckery and calumny, in a quite pure incarnation. To such a point that these alleged "revolutionaries" had nothing to say when they were justly accused of being as priests and cops! Our exchange with these tigers made of paper and computer pixels thus ended with an anti-Maoist poem written specially for the occasion. . . .

Paco: There is an originality to the entries at Le Jura Libertaire. Mixed among the articles about Tarnac, the massacres in Gaza, student struggles and riots in Greece are music-videos by Nina Hagen, Bob Dylan, Jethro Tull, The Pogues, Gnawa Diffusion, George Brassens and Claude Nougaro. Is this because music softens behavior?

Le Jura Libertaire: One could also that that "class struggle has a soundtrack." From the start, we tried to embellish historic or current texts with songs of struggle. One must also say that Le Jura Libertaire is the avatar of a local, self-managed experiment in which "DIY" music played a role. . . . Ever since the summer, the blog has offered a bit of zik every day, and this quite something in itself.

Paco: My eagle eye has also detected the presence of a small, very animated inlay within a few a priori serious articles. In it, one sees two charming pin-up girls in bikinis, swinging their hips in a no-doubt frenzied twist. Doesn't it pose too many problems for our anarcho-feminist friends?

Le Jura Libertaire: Emma Goldman, the grandmother of [the musician] Jean-Jacques Goldman, used to say, "Where there is no dancing, my revolution is absent."[1] Le Jura Libertaire also reprints without comment some articles from mass-circulation papers. This is a choice that distinguishes us from the charters of Indymedia, for example. Our wager is that our readers will be able to read between the lines. Because reality is always more subtle than a militant's big wooden clogs, fortunately.

Paco: In this bark-and-forth exchange [Entre chien et chat], I leave the last word to you. Carte noire au Jura Libertaire.[2] Best New Year wishes to you, on the Internet and in your struggles.

Le Jura Libertaire: Thanks, Paco. Confronted with the dogs of oppression, long live camaraderie, solidarity and direct action! Let us act by ourselves, and remain elusive!

(Published in Le Maque on 8 January 2009. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! 11 October 2009. Footnotes by the translator.)

[1] There are many variants of this well-known quip. The French here is "La ou on ne danse pas, ce n'est pas ma revolution."

[2] Carte Noire ("Black Card") is an expensive brand of French coffee.