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Title: One but Many Movements
Author: CrimethInc.
Date: April 23, 2018
Language: en
Topics: ZAD, analysis, France
Source: Retrieved on 16th June 2021 from https://crimethinc.com/2018/04/23/one-but-many-movements-two-translations-from-the-zad-on-isolation-division-and-pacification

CrimethInc.

One but Many Movements

Two weeks ago, thousands of French police attacked the ZAD—the Zone a

Défendre (Zone To Defend)—an occupied area in which the French

government tried for decades to build a widely unpopular airport. Yet

every conflict conceals other conflicts within it. Inside the movement,

there have been bitter differences about how to deal with power

dynamics, whether to negotiate with the authorities, and how to resist

the divide-and-conquer tactics of the state.

In the US, we have watched the struggle around the ZAD without presuming

to understand all the factors at play. Yet the debates taking place

there have spilled over to our side of the Atlantic as well. In hopes of

helping other rebels who may confront similar challenges to think

through the nuances in advance, we’ve translated two texts from

different sides of these debates, “ZAD: Second Round” and “When Lama

Fâché, Llama Spit!” Both appear below with annotations.

Although we can only speak hypothetically from this distance, the fact

that the disputants frame their arguments as matters of strategy and

principle compels us to weigh in on these questions ourselves. We don’t

pretend to offer a comprehensive analysis of the events; we can only

evaluate the narratives put forward in the texts that are currently

available.

While we want all the perspectives in these debates to be heard, we have

reservations about both sides. It’s precisely because we identify with

both parties in any conflict between anti-authoritarians that we always

aim to be critical. Our chief goal must be to come out of each conflict

stronger and more capable of evaluating our effectiveness rather than

simply getting drawn into ideological gang warfare complete with

jingoism, loyalty pledges, and smear campaigns.

A Little Background

On January 17, in the same statement in which he announced the

abandonment of the airport project, French Prime Minister Edouard

Philippe declared that the French government was determined to regain

control of the ZAD:

This is the second decision that I announce today: we will end the area

of lawlessness that has flourished for almost 10 years in this area…

The three roads that cross the site of Notre-Dame-Des-Landes must now be

returned to free circulation for all. Squats overflowing onto the road

will be evicted, obstacles removed, traffic restored. Otherwise, the

police will carry out the necessary operations…

The illegal occupants of these lands will have to leave by the spring or

will be expelled.

The same day, an “official” press release signed by five of the many

organizations involved in the struggle at the ZAD asserted that they

would oppose all evictions, but also that they would grant at least one

of the Prime Minister’s demands themselves:

Regarding the question of the reopening of the road D281, a road closed

by the state in 2013, the movement will take the matter in its own

hands.

A few days later, on January 22, against the wishes of an outraged

minority, a group from the ZAD destroyed the barricades and habitations

along road D281. This did not stop the state from raiding the ZAD on

April 9 with the intention of evicting and destroying dozens of

habitations.

Comments on “ZAD: Second Round”

In “ZAD: Second Round,” below, and another widely circulated text, “The

ZAD Will Survive,” the authors justify negotiating with the state and

destroying the inhabited fortifications along the road D281 on the

grounds that it was necessary to maintain the unity of the movement. By

this standard, however, the strategy failed on its own terms. We

wouldn’t be debating this in the US if their wager had succeeded.

The blame for the dispute is laid at the doorstep of people who are

described as “ultra-radicals,” whom the authors accuse of willfully

snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in order to be beautiful

losers—all this, for not wanting to open up the route that the police

then used to carry out the eviction. If this debate were taking place

here in the US, we would almost certainly hear these people called

“outside agitators,” and the ones calling them that would be either

Democrats or authoritarian leftists.

The authors’ charge is that those who wished to keep the road fortified

had not made themselves comprehensible to the rest of the movement. But

it seems to us that there was already a problem if the movement could

divide along these lines. It’s all well and good for those who won the

ensuing power struggle to congratulate themselves on not “withdrawing

into their own private domains,” to speak about seeking “a path in

common” while carping about those who have spread “a binary and

depressive account of the situation.” Rather than blaming those who lost

the power struggle, however, we should concern ourselves with the

processes by which “radicals” end up “outside.”

There are always conflicts within social movements. We agree with the

authors of “ZAD: Second Round” and “The ZAD Will Survive” that the more

we can hold together in the face of state pressure, the stronger we will

be. But if a rupture is inevitable and we are forced to choose, we

should not justify siding with those who seek to coexist with the state

over those who seek to confront it on the grounds that this decision is

necessary in order to confront it. Those who make a habit of this may

indeed be able to “build power,” but only on the terms set by the state.

The same goes for making decisions in order to be “intelligible” in the

media. That should never outweigh the necessity of showing others who

choose to confront the authorities that we can be reliable comrades.

Obviously, it is always better not to have to make this choice, to

resist the pressure to divide a movement into tractable and intractable.

But the authors of “The ZAD Will Survive” and “Second Round” themselves

acknowledge that this division has taken place, in accusing those who

have not taken their particular approach of marginalizing themselves. It

seems to us that this marginalization cannot have been a unilateral

process. The goal of not letting “radical” ideas or goals be

marginalized cannot justify marginalizing those who espouse them.

There are larger questions at play here. Is unity necessarily the best

way for a movement to build strength? Or is it better to foster an

irreducible diversity of approaches, so that negotiation will be, if not

impossible, at least—useless? By asserting the necessity of pursuing a

“common” strategy and speaking of “the” movement as a unitary thing—a

singular noun—the authors come down firmly on the side of the former

approach. Yet the only way that those who wish to negotiate with the

state can speak from a position of strength is if they are flanked by an

“intractable” alternative that the authorities fear will gain momentum

if negotiations fail.

In the US, this phenomenon is famously illustrated by the leverage that

the negotiator Martin Luther King, Jr. gained from the “intractable”

Malcolm X. The disciples of MLK ended up occupying public office,

ultimately perpetuating the status quo, while many who followed the

example of Malcolm X spent decades in prison. We should try to avoid

being forced to choose between this binary, but that always begins by

refusing to sell out the “intractables,” from whom all leverage

originates.

This is not to say that, if everyone at the ZAD had agreed on it, it

would necessarily have been a mistake to dismantle the barricades on the

D281. There are limits to what any group of people can do—the number of

risks they can run, the number of barricades they can defend at once.

The problem, rather, is that some participants forced their strategy on

others and then sought to justify this in the name of unity and

efficacy.

If negotiating with the state and evicting the D281 was intended to

diminish the likelihood of an attack from the state, then, once again,

it failed on its own terms. It’s axiomatic—and countless decades of

struggle confirm this—that you can’t make the state stop demanding

compromises by compromising with it.

We have heard various arguments in the name of pragmatism in favor of

negotiation—to the effect that if it could secure the ZAD as a space to

foster future rebellions, that would ultimately justify it. It seems to

us that it was naïve to imagine that the state could be placated. Siding

with those who wished to negotiate against the “intractables” does not

strike us as a bold refusal to fall into a trap set by the state, but

rather as a choice to step directly into it. To avoid falling into the

trap set by the state, the proponents of the ZAD would have had to

refuse any kind of division whatsoever. As usual, the internal fault

lines that run through our movements are our greatest vulnerability.

There’s a bigger question here, once again, about what counts as

success. What is the essence of the battle being fought here? According

to one account, it is a contest for control of a piece of land, pitting

two different social bodies against each other; in that case, it is

strategic to use any means to expand the composition of one’s preferred

side. According to another account, it is a battle between two different

ethics—an ethic of governing, and an ethic of resisting governance,

refusing to govern. If the latter is the battle that we are really

invested in, then courses of action that are otherwise quixotic start to

make sense.

To quote Durruti, “It’s not the barricade but the rifle you have to hold

on to.” If you lose the barricade (e.g., the ZAD, a squat, a particular

engagement with the state) but retain the rifle (the collective ability

to fight, immunity to narratives that legitimize state violence, a

commitment to solidarity over opportunism), you can still move from one

engagement to the next, building capacity. If you lose the rifle, but

retain the barricade, it may appear that you have won, but thirty years

later you will look around and find that you are where the

once-formidable Dutch squatting movement is today.

This illustrates how the charge of being “ideological” rather than

practical or flexible can conceal genuinely different goals, different

standards of what counts as effective. Various parties have hurled the

charge of being “ideological” rather than strategic at anarchists since

at least the 1870s. None of them have proven to be more strategic when

it comes to the question of how to undermine the state without simply

replacing it.

A few of the arguments implicit in “Second Round” would be less

surprising coming from authoritarian socialist parties—above all, the

stuff about the “ultra-radicals” giving the police an excuse to

“justify” their presence. If we let the police determine for us what

counts as “good optics,” what “the general public” will be able to

understand and what they won’t, we’ll never be able to build the

capacity to take on the state. In the final analysis, we can gauge our

success by how difficult we have made it for the police to justify

themselves at all.

From across the Atlantic, we presume honest intentions on the part of

the authors of “The ZAD Will Survive” and “Second Round.” Under

tremendous pressure from all sides, determined not to fracture, they

made a wager that they could hold the movement together and dissuade the

state from attacking if only they… carried out a little internal

policing. When the smoke cleared, their wager had not succeeded, and

they had acted against their own anti-authoritarian values. Most any

organization could have made the same mistake; there are

anarcho-syndicalist and platformist groups that might have made this

mistake more readily. What we’d like to hear from the authors, ideally,

is a critical evaluation of their wager and some reflection on whether

it is actually consistent with their ethics and goals.

Comments on “When Lama Fâché, Llama Spit!”

Now we turn to the opposing perspective, the one expressed in “When Lama

Fâché, Llama Spit!” as well as a variety of other Indymedia articles.

For want of better terminology, we’ll call this the position of the

“intractables.” If “ZAD: Second Round” and “The ZAD Will Survive” pass

briskly over the controversy in a soothing voice, the Indymedia articles

present strident cries of betrayal.

The authors of all of these texts—“Second Round,” “The ZAD Will

Survive,” “Lama Fâché,” and the other Indymedia articles—agree that it

is a problem that the less radical wing of the movement around the ZAD

might be inclined to collaborate with the government towards the

“normalization” of the area. The authors of “Second Round” have a

solution for this, however problematic: by breaking solidarity with the

“ultra-radicals,” they hope to maintain ties with those who might

otherwise simply place their faith in the state. While the authors of

“Lama Fâché” do not make this error, they don’t propose an alternative,

either. Passing judgment on those guilty of betrayal is a poor

compensation for giving them cause not to betray.

In this light, their critique of the logic of “composition” is useful as

a diagnosis but offers no solutions. It is not enough to decry the logic

of coalition building. Any effective resistance will need to involve

many people of many perspectives. The question is how to legitimize

autonomous action and open defiance, so the state and reformist elements

cannot arrange for it to be isolated and defeated.

We would prefer to hear from the “intractables” an analysis of how it

was that they permitted themselves be sidelined. What were the strategic

points along the way at which they could have made their case more

convincing? Surely they too could have built a consensus with a wider

range of ZADists. If not a consensus strong enough not to fracture in

the face of state pressure, then at least a consensus strong enough

that—when the fracture came—the other insurrectionists would stand with

them.

If their perspective is the one that we would prefer to see legitimized,

it’s shameful for them to limit themselves to standing at the back of

the room, shouting insults as the meeting goes on without them. It is

not enough to be in the right. We have to find effective strategies that

give force to our ethics. We depend on the “intractables” to find ways

to surmount the impasses, to overcome binaries, to transform would-be

betrayers into trustworthy comrades.

The narrative can’t simply be a story of betrayal. If the only thing we

can learn from this conflict is that even those who also claim to be

against the state will also betray us, that won’t help us to prepare for

future struggles. It won’t help us to be more strategic. It won’t help

us to put the pieces in place so we won’t have to worry that when we

refuse to back down, our actions will “justify” the actions of the

police in the eyes of the media and the general public—even after 40,000

people have come together to defy the police.

---

ZAD – ROUND TWO

Published on April 9 at Lundimatin.

We have been preparing for this for five years, while at the same time

having so far ensured it could never happen. But we are now at the

beginning of a new, great police operation whose breadth and duration we

still don’t know. The State was supposed to take its revenge, there was

always supposed to be a second round. Everywhere in this country, the

people who have come to the ZAD ask themselves how far Macron will go to

put an end to one of the most beautiful collective political adventures

of the past decade, to put an end to the possibility of a space where

other forms of life are sought. While barricades are again formed on the

roads of the ZAD’s wooded grove, everyone here embraces each other and

asks themselves what will still exist tomorrow of all that has formed

the vibrant heart of our existences day after day. What tonight’s

embraces say, above all, is that five years after Operation Caesar,[1]

we must face this new invasion, hold on at all costs and again make sure

the future stays open.

In the wake of the airport project’s abandonment, we have lived through

a turbulent time of numerous tensions and temptations—temptations to

withdraw into our own private domains, or to simply give up altogether.

Yet for many of us, this time has also been marked by a continuous

investigation into what could still sketch out a path in common. Over

these last weeks, it has at times been quite upsetting to see how far a

binary and depressive account of the situation has been able to spread.

For our part, in this hour of truth, we prefer to return to what seems

to still allow us the capacity to conceive of a path in common. Before

the storm blows in again here, these lines we write provide a way to

transmit why it remains vital for us to continue to defend the ZAD, both

here on the terrain and wherever you are in the following days. In the

following months as well, because Caesar 2 will not overcome what we

continue to uphold here.

WHAT NEGOTIATION DOESN’T MEAN

After the abandonment of the airport project, the movement decided to

enter into dialogue with the government in an attempt to negotiate its

vision for the future of the ZAD. This sequence forced us to confront

ourselves with new challenges. We felt guided by objectives that were at

once clear and extremely complex:

• neutralize in the best way possible the near absolute need for the

State to take revenge on the ZAD by an operation of eviction, and by

doing so allow the inhabitants of this territory to remain in all their

diversity;

• maintain as much as possible the margins of autonomy that have given a

proper meaning to this experience, while also finding the means for a

stability desired by a number of people here;

• maintain and amplify, finally, collective control over the lands of

the ZAD and its connections with other ongoing forms of resistance.

In this period, for us, there was never a choice between negotiating OR

fighting. We never bet that we would at once obtain, in the offices of

the State’s institutions, what we wanted. Negotiation is only one of the

levers of which the movement availed itself after the government’s

abandonment of the airport project, supported by a relation of forces

maintained through years of resistance. According to this perspective,

the same forces that plan an offensive negotiation also organize in

parallel an assembly before the prefecture when the State’s response is

unsatisfying. The same forces that, over the course of the past weeks,

have led a juridical and political combat against all the evictions and

organized a protest in Nantes with refugees and those living with

inadequate housing, are also those that plan to engage in physical

resistance when they come to try to evict the places of the ZAD.

Throwing themselves in to the gamble of negotiation with the fear of

losing the ZAD’s cutting edge in the process wasn’t something that was

obvious for the occupiers. It wasn’t any more obvious for others who are

part of the ZAD to pursue struggle and to include the fate of the

post-abandonment period, together with the other urgent decisions that

this period would require, in the hands of large and heterogeneous

assemblies. These are the risks and mutual overcomings that, as always,

have permitted us to continue to move forward together rather than to

desert or wither in isolation. In this case, we firmly believe it was

then necessary to make an attempt there at that moment so that, each

time the negotiation revealed its limits, we could continue to go beyond

it.

The capacity of the airport movement’s composition has been a lasting

nightmare for the government, for whom it was extremely unpleasant to

imagine the movement could last beyond the project’s abandonment. At the

start of these negotiations, clearly one of the government’s primary

objectives was to explode our decision to organize a common delegation.

The government also had to curb its desire to address future stakes in a

divided manner: from the refusal of evictions to the movement’s

collective control of lands, from a firm opposition to the return of

classical agricultural management to the wider question of amnesty. The

prefecture tried to separate representatives from among us and convene

them one by one to a steering committee strictly dedicated to

agricultural management. One cannot forget the force of this bait and

the energy the prefecture put into avoiding rejection. The framework we

had slowly developed almost exploded—but the maneuver finally failed.

The ACIPA[2] declined the prefect’s invitation, while the peasant

Confederation called an organized assembly before the steering

committee, which decided to hear and respect the message of the

movement. The common delegation survived. The prefecture had to

immediately go back on its positions and accept to speak again with the

steering committee. The maintenance of only agricultural activities

turned into “agriculture that is wholistic in every sense.” It has

almost already been won that several hundred hectares of lands saved and

maintained collectively, beyond the historical lands, must be dedicated

to projects connected to the movement. It is a considerable first step,

but still doesn’t resolve the fate of the combat connected to the ZAD’s

habitats and the need for collective control over the property after

this transitional phase to ensure it is viable for whatever comes next.

RESISTING DIVIDE-AND-RULE

In this first phase of negotiations, the prefecture announced its desire

to sort out unacceptable criteria and called on those who wanted to have

a chance to remain to apply for a personal agreement and to register as

soon as possible with the MSA.[3] Some were unable to scrutinize the

horizon with anything other than preconceived schemas and the passion

for defeat; immediately they portended betrayal by those who would

surely benefit themselves at the expense of others. Indeed, it would

have been easy to cut a deal and run at any time over the last few weeks

with some simple short letters and paperwork. The prefecture was waiting

for that. But the reality is that, despite the pressures, no one fell

into this trap.

Nobody filed to go individually through the selective examination: we

did not agree to let ourselves be separated out. On the contrary, there

was a political and concrete refusal of these injunctions. What was

maintained was the claim to the land and the search for a protective and

collective framework for all, including a global agreement regarding the

lands of the movement. It is this real solidarity that impedes the

prefecture today on at least two levels: to continue the negotiation in

the way that it initially sought and to legitimize its operation of

selective eviction.

In this context, however, there is still much talk of “radicals” or

“intractables” on the one hand and cowards eager to negotiate or

peasants quick to normalize conditions on the other. It is remarkable to

see how much this fiction pleases both the dominant media, the

prefecture and the preachers of the good morals of a fantasized

radicalism. But for most of those who have defended the ZAD, cultivated

and lived in this grove in recent years, this division is only a

fiction. Among those who hold to a common line in the movement through

negotiation AND the fight, among those who want to stay here and really

maintain the ZAD as a shared space, there are also people and crews from

each category: peasants, younger and older squatters, the “historical

ones,” adherents of the ACIPA, neighbors, naturalists, syndicalist

comrades, nature enthusiasts, activists of the Coordination…[4] In the

optics that the ZAD continues to spread, the idea that everything should

be legal or remain illegal forms two sides of the same (bad) coin. These

positions come from ideological fetishes, one as sterile as the other

when applied to pursuing struggles on the terrain. Those who really

participated in the unfolding of the movement in recent years, who were

not content to merely comment on the internet, are well aware that these

oversimplified “legalistic” or “illegal,” “violent” or “non-violent”

visions never corresponded to what made our force effective and allowed

us to bend the will of the State. They are not more adapted today to

meet the horizons and objectives of the “6 points.”

It was never a question for us of entering a process of normalization

with a bowed head, but rather to determine what would allow us to hold

onto all the places of life and activity through this reconfiguration of

the situation. To do this, it is necessary to determine, step-by-step,

what will be best at preserving margins of autonomy and support so that

we do not end up submitting in isolation to all the constraints imposed

by forms of market and industrial production. This entails very real

practices in a concrete power struggle with a powerful enemy and not

fancies of an ideal world. To know this, it is enough to trust the

attachment we have to the meaning that has been found for years in the

free re-invention of the relation to what we produce.

ENOUGH WITH THE ROAD MYTHOLOGY

From weeks of physical resistance to Operation Caesar in 2012, we know

that the effectiveness of the ZAD’s defense has never rested solely on a

road barricaded by an isolated group, much less on the nostalgic

obsession for this device outside of times of attack. But, it has always

been a possibility for us, when the time comes, to block the different

strategic access points and to hold the ground in very different ways,

with a varied set of supports both in and outside of the zone.

Unfortunately, the tension of recent weeks surrounding the road has,

among other risks, the potential to undermine this possibility of broad

resistance.

We have tried for months to leave no political opening for the State to

evict anyone. Having won this bet many times in recent years, in our

opinion it was still absolutely tenable to remain after the abandonment

of the D281 road barricades, despite the threats of the Prime Minister.

The prefecture needed a suitable story to make these threats concrete.

He needed people who could embody the caricature of the famous

“ultra-radicals.” Some brilliantly took the role expected of them,

especially on the issue of the road D281, reducing the stakes of the

struggle to a story that became more and more incomprehensible for the

vast majority of those with whom they had fought, for their neighbors

and in general for most people near and far who heard about it. By

blocking the work the first time, a few people—not to be confused with

people living near the road—justified the police presence we had for

weeks, allowing them to get boots back on the ground. The destruction of

some asphalt at the end of the job, while the police could still

withdraw, while the situation was clear and we could still hope to find

a common strength, brought despair (for a time at least) to many of

those who have continued to provide unwavering support for the threat of

evictions. When the General Council[5] refused to open the road under

these conditions, the evictions in question found a major justification

and became almost inevitable.

FACING WHATEVER COMES

The force of this struggle has been to constantly go against the current

of certainties maintained by both the identitarian “radical” ghetto as

well as the classic “citizen” militancy. In this respect, the movement

has always collided with those that enclosed themselves within one of

these polarizations and forced disruptions upon those that have wanted

to accompany it. It has found its own path and laid a foundation for a

unique front at once anchored, offensive, and popular. This simple fact

has been for many of us an astounding political event and the motor of a

historical defeat of the State. It is not surprising, however, that the

advent of another phase brings new concerns and new hopes along with

ideological scleroses. The sequence following victory is a moment of

truth where the real consequences of the groups involved are unveiled.

In this tense phase, there have typically been two responses that

sabotage our common engagements and the movement: block the work on the

road OR publicly dissociate from an assembly organized by the movement

in the face of the steering committee in order to support the mixed

delegation. The sad truth is that, on one side some have preferred to

weaken the common structure by wasting away over obsessions that are

indefensible to the rest of the movement, while on the other side some

have been quick to forget about holding a common line in the face of

governmental pressure. Some brilliantly applied themselves to justifying

a partial eviction and putting those who would be targeted in the most

isolated position possible. Others kept virtually silent as the eviction

operation approached. We could hold onto and rehash such bitter

observations endlessly. But another much brighter truth is that, all

told, most people who over the years formed the basic community of this

struggle also braved its dangers and trials together and remained

faithful to the promises they made to one another. It is this truth that

we must continue to cling to if we do not wish to perish in

self-fulfilling prophecies of the inevitable downfall of spaces of

autonomy and collective adventures.

Despite the disputes that have undoubtedly weakened the movement and its

legibility in recent weeks, it goes without saying that the State’s

plans to evict will be met with a fight. Whatever pitfalls we fell into

at times, the actual foundation of the ZAD and the hopes it continues to

raise did not fall apart over a few weeks of sadness. We can feel this

in the forces that remobilized on the eve of the operation, in those who

had their doubts but then heard the call and immediately got on the

road, in the last minute assemblies, in the barricades of all kinds of

things that stand up against the armed forces of the State and the story

that the government is getting ready to tell…

We are going to have to go through a violent ordeal that could reshuffle

all the cards. But we have no doubt that the ZAD will survive Caesar 2.

What we continue to bring to the movement will be neither a docile

display of alternativeness nor a radical ghetto. Rather, we will

continue to make of struggle a breadbasket and of resistance a common

good, a place where people who live and meet are as diverse as they are

surprising, a territory that makes you want to organize seriously, to

live fully, a permanent building site for wonderful constructions and

waking dreams. We still need places where not relying on the economy and

institutional management is visibly desirable and possible. And we need

these places to last, even if they have their share of impurities and

messiness. Because the spaces that excite us most compel us to assemble

and put our ready-made politics into question. We believe that,

essentially, it is through the ZAD that we will continue to galvanize

tens of thousands of people across the country.

And now we must stand up!

Voices in common

---

When Lama Fâché, Llama Spit!

Published on April 10 on Indymedia Nantes, after initially appearing in

print, as described below.

This text has been handed out a first time during the demonstration of

March 31 against all evictions at Caen. We gave it out again this Monday

night [April 9, 2018, the day the evictions at the ZAD of

Notre-Dame-des-Landes started] while about 200 people walked the streets

with a beautiful energy before reaching an empty train station with no

departing trains.[6] During this action, the cops were discreet.

By handing out this text, we wanted to show our solidarity with the

people facing the current evictions [at the ZAD] of which Lama Fâché

[“Angry Llama”] was the first cabin raided. At the same time, we wanted

to express where this solidarity was coming from and convey that it was

not duped by the games of power in the zone, and by the appetites of

composition that are making their way at the ZAD as well as in many

other cities…

Finally this text, written at the end of March, does not mention the

aggression that took place at the ZAD these last days.

“All parties, all trade unions, and their bureaucracies, are oppressing

the proletariat, as much as the bourgeoisie. (…)”

-Comité pour le maintien des occupations (“Committee for Maintaining the

Occupations,” CMDO) [the original one, not the copy (sic)] La Commune

n’est pas morte (“The Commune’s Not Dead”), June 1968.

On January 17, the Macron government decided to drop the airport project

at Notre-Dame-des-Landes. Just this once, opponents succeeded in

stopping a major project. Needless to say, Manu [Emmanuel Macron] is not

captivated by the virtues of a grove free from those concrete masses.

His friendships and interests are completely different. Except that, in

this situation, there is a strategic occasion to seize: an opportunity

to disarm a solidarity movement that inhabits more than just a grove,

but also some lives and imaginaries. And to do this by normalizing a

space where, for many of its protagonists, a deeply rooted struggle was

questioning much more than just an airport.

Unfortunately, as is frequently the case in such circumstances, some

fringes of the movement decided to respond positively to this

normalization. In the hours following the announcement from the

government, the Assembly of the movement decided in an authoritarian

manner to defer to the recommendations of the prefecture by paving the

way for a military occupation of the site, by agreeing to clear the

[road] D281 of obstacles and barricades. And this by evicting, against

some inhabitants, two cabins occupied occasionally or more permanently.

Quickly, troops of gendarmes took possession of the place. Drones, video

devices, and directional microphones invaded the landscape.

If this same Assembly, in a text of 6 points, affirmed wanting to

maintain unity among the various components of the struggle, being

opposed to all evictions, and taking charge of the future of the

movement, its first actions have been on one hand to “liberate” a part

of the ZAD and to offer it to its new partner, the State; and on the

other hand to negotiate with the institutions in power. On March 19, the

Assembly made a call for a gathering to support “a delegation including

all of its components—inhabitants, farmers, elected representatives,

naturalists, neighbors” that seemed to represent the whole movement.

Here, the old adage that says that in politics it is necessary to judge

actions rather than words applies again…

When the State ordered the launch of Operation Caesar against the ZAD in

2012, it did not expect to hit a snag. Within a few days, the eviction

got bogged down in this wetland before some 50,000 people decided to

reoccupy the land and build cabins. That day, when political activists,

non-profit volunteers, and trade unionists were invited to put their

respective flags away, marked the prelude to a massive and determined

resistance, the famous “cyst” described by Manuel Valls [Minister of the

Interior and then Prime Minister under Holland’s presidency].

In the past, this geographical area has known numerous struggles, such

as the protests against the nuclear plants of Carnet and Pellerin, in

which some connections appeared between farmers and the workers of 1968.

These fragile but rich complicities continued to develop while rooting

themselves in past struggles, as well as in a strong sense of resistance

sharpened within occupations that had begun several years earlier.

However, over the years and due to the success of this struggle, the

legitimate complicities formed in this resistance have finally given way

to a strategic and instrumental way of understanding the struggle:

composition.

Contrary to the image that certain people have never ceased to convey,

there have always been conflicts at the ZAD and within the movement

against the airport. From daily conflicts regarding the different ways

of living the occupation that played out between livestock farmers and

anti-speciesists, between anti-feminists and feminists, etc., to the

ways of living the struggle between partisans of direct action and

partisans of disobedience, between institutional activists and

autonomists, between supporters of assemblies and supporters of affinity

groups, between the pro-media and the anti-media, between “against the

airport” and “against this world.”

What took place here was built on a juxtaposition of logics. From its

origin, the slogan against the big useless infrastructural projects

encompassed intentions and operational modes that were completely

opposed. The far left saw economic mismanagement; EELV [Europe Ecologie

Les Verts, the French Green Party] saw a project that was not compatible

with their vision of green capitalism; farmers saw the theft of their

lands; primitivists saw an attack on a sanctified nature; and for some

radicals, they saw one of the many ways that capital and the State

control the conditions of our lives. The first three are hoping for a

development dictated by capital and the State that will be more likely

to correspond to their desires; the last two want to put an end to the

development of the land itself, for reasons that are sometimes not very

compatible. Moreover, some activists are managers and administrators,

while others promote horizontality and self-organization.

What held everyone together was that everyone had always needed each

other to keep the struggle going. The ACIPA needed the help of the

ZADists to occupy the lands that were about to be destroyed; the ZADists

needed the help of the farmers and organizations to serve as a shield

and to legitimate their struggle. The relationships between these groups

were based on reciprocal dependency, which bound them in an instrumental

way. Although, obviously, the struggle contained much more fun moments.

Behind the public image of unity, deep antagonisms waited to resurface

at any opportunity—for example, when activists threw stones at cops.

There will always be a Julien Durand from the ACIPA to denounce, in the

lineage of Bové or Mélenchon [respectively, the political figures of

EELV and La France Insoumise], the dangerous irresponsible persons

inhabiting the grove dedicated to destruction, or a team of the Verts

(members of the Green Party) to ape the opening of a house while wearing

new boots bought the same morning at Montparnasse [the Parisian train

station that link the French capital to the West region of France]. This

occurred on many occasions—for example, during the demonstration in

Nantes in February 2014 when we saw Julien Durand, spokesperson of the

ACIPA, playing the contortionist by disassociating his organization from

the property destruction that took place that day while avoiding openly

condemning the “casseurs” [thugs]. In other words, marking his

disapproval with some strategies and actions while seeking to maintain

unity with a part of the inhabitants of the ZAD whose help he still

needed at the time. In the following months, pacification involved

refusing any new demonstration to take place at Nantes. Part of the

“ZADists” did not fail to respect this injunction.

This composition is organized around components that pile up acronyms.

L’ACIPA is one of the historical anti-airport groups. It is a

coordination of opponents that gather smaller organizations. The COPAIN

brings together the farmers who, for the most part, are linked to the

Confédération Paysanne [Farmers Confederation]. Then, there is the

movement Assembly, initiated by occupiers.

“For a long time, [the movement Assembly] was a place of debate and

pooling of ideas and projects from the different groups that took part

in the struggle, without the pretention of making decisions in a unitary

way. For me, the ‘movement’ was linked to this creative space where

different tendencies could obtain information and respond to each other,

assert themselves and criticize each other, without denying their

autonomy in taking initiatives. I think that this is what some people

started to call ‘composition’—anyway, that is where I heard the word for

the first time. In the heat of the moment, I didn’t really pay attention

to it; people were talking of the ‘movement’ and its ‘components.’

Later, I concluded that the concept of composition seemed more like a

way of pacifying the situation, to talk about it with more appealing

words that didn’t reveal the conflicts and contradictions. In short, to

send us to sleep, in order to undercut this boiling energy by constantly

looking for a ‘middle path’ [a path of compromise and concessions], and

that when we hear the word ‘movement’ we end up forgetting the diversity

that can give us the element of surprise in our hurry to make a mass

that moves ‘all together.’”

-Testimony, Le movement est mort vive… la réforme!, Une critique de la

composition et de ses élites [“The Movement Is Dead, Long Live… Reform!

A Critique of Composition and Its Elites”], February 2018, by an

insignificant groupuscule.

There is never a shortage of self-proclaimed revolutionary or reformist

strategists to impose in the name of unity, pragmatism, urgency, a

specific direction and the uniqueness of a movement. Some leaders

emerged among the occupiers themselves, mobilizing their material force,

their networks, their power… not only for the benefit of the community

as a whole, but also to structure an ideological hegemony in the zone

and within the struggle. Alongside the “institutional” activists, they

condemned some actions, like the attack on a journalists’ car, or the

action in which some manure was thrown during a conference for an

electoral campaign of France Insoumise at the Vacherie, an occupied

dwelling at the ZAD. Their vision of “composition” is to muzzle

divergences and impose their discipline on the movement.

In charge, the Comité pour le maintien des occupations (CMDO) and some

accomplices, pompously baptized as a reference to its Situationist

ancestor of ’68. An ancestor that, back then, maintained a clear

distance from all the trade unionists and leftist bureaucracies. In this

committee, some old celebrities from the autonomous movement do not

hesitate to play the role of spokespersons for the media, to arrange

complicities with all kinds of bureaucracies, to accept the game of

negotiating with the State. In other words, to become managers of the

struggle.

These same celebrities, thanks to their class backgrounds, can

monopolize resources and discourses, systematically discredit their

opponents, insult them, threaten them. The last of the uncontrollable

activists who had not left the movement Assemblies yet ended up leaving

them, disgusted by this behavior.

Composition ends up showing its limits once the objective has been

achieved or the struggle defeated. If a text in 6 points officially

claims the management of the ZAD by an authority arising from the

movement, the components of the movement are essentially seeking

negotiation. However, for the moment, the State does not give up

anything.

For several months, a specific assembly focused on thinking about the

future of the ZAD after the airport. On this issue, certain groups like

ACIPA or COPAIN took the lead. The proximity of many of their

protagonists with some old Larzac activists enables them to present some

old recipes. The proposal is a “normalized” zone, under a STCL lease

with the State, co-managed by the farmer confederation and the State

environmentalists. This is this option defended by José Bové, an old

Larzac and EELV activist, friend of Hulot (the current Minister of

Ecological and Solidarity Transition) and Julien Durant from ACIPA.

The normalization of the [road] D281 bears the influence of this

strategy. For this occasion, accustomed to its hegemony, the CMDO did

not even take care to abide by the rules, nor rely on an Assembly vote.

In the days that followed, about 200 people dismantled the

barricades—not without jostling some reluctant activists who refused the

decision, getting ahead of the work of law enforcement on this occasion.

Lama Fâché, a cabin installed on the road, was dismantled. Some

activists rebuilt it a little further. Since then, the Assembly that

represents only one side of the ZAD, admittedly the side involving the

majority of occupants and those taking part in the struggle, attempts to

negotiate.

To maintain unity, the ideologues of the composition have broken off

unity with those for whom this struggle meant something more than just

obtaining a farm or field through negotiation with the State. This

struggle has reminded us that the “Friends” are not necessary friends,

that COPAIN [“friend” in French] are not necessarily friends.

All this reminds us that one format alone cannot ensure horizontality.

Some activists who always hated assemblies have invested themselves in

them. Not for the potential of freedom and self-organization that they

could offer, but on the contrary, for the logic of government, control,

and submission that they promised. If on our side we are still attached

to assemblies, it is for completely different reasons: to coordinate, to

be able to expose the power games of some groups, to avoid feeding the

narcissistic postures of groups. In short, for their anti-authoritarian

potential.

Composition is to self-organization what chains are to freedom. For our

part, during assemblies, we have always defended the collectives and

organizations of individuals that were against strategic composition

between organizations or groups. We are of those who have always refused

to cosign texts with organizations, and not only “political” ones.

The piling of acronyms is not an identity, nor an autonomous force, but

on the contrary expresses submission to a general staff. It is as if

there were some kind of concern at seeing the decomposition of the

Left—the Left that has never been anything other than a facet of

submission—and that we should help it to get back on its feet, or even

become part of it. To compose is to play a role, to play a role in

creating a broad front. It means carrying out your activities via an

essentially strategic approach rather than an ethical one. Above all,

all this only produces dispossession, and spaces where everyone is urged

to follow the path already drawn for them, rather than seeking to build

complicities and create something common without suppressing differences

and different personal realities. To compose essentially means to renew

the old political tradition in its most sordid aspects.

Today this ideological apparatus of the milieu seems to have caught on

like a fever. Assemblies for asylum seekers can now welcome a senator of

EELV previously allied with Valls to visit their squats; anti-repression

collectives are thinking of informing the local CGT union of their

actions, although this union condemned the actions of “casseurs” in

2016; the Maison de la grève (“House of the Strike”) welcomed Houria

Bouteldja [an author criticized for open anti-Semitism and homophobia];

members of the Parisian cortège de tête protected the premises of

Emmaus, an organization that is an accomplice of the machinery of

eviction… It is necessary to say that for others, it has been some time

now that as “elected representatives of ‘the territories they inhabit,’

it can be riots on Thursday, and Municipal Council on Monday.”

What the ideology of composition spreads is a discipline of the milieu

that favors connections with the syndicalist, political, and associative

Left [i.e., unions, politicians, and non-profits] over any effective

radical alternative. The ritualized spectacle of controlled direct

action serves to satisfy activist impulses and warlike affects while

maintaining a false insurrectionary image. The spectacle of contestation

rather than the contestation of the spectacle.

The Comité El Condor, in passing.

Caen, March 2018.

[1] Operation Caesar was a failed police operation on behalf of the

French State to evict the ZAD in 2012.

[2] ACIPA is an acronym for the Association citoyenne intercommunale des

populations concernées par le projet d’aéroport, or Intercommunal

Citizen Association of Populations Concerned by the Airport Project, a

group created in the year 2000 with the goal of fighting the airport

project at Notre-Dame-des-Landes.

[3] The MSA, or Mutualité Sociale Agricole, is a social insurance agency

that provides health care, pensions, and other social protections for

agricultural workers.

[4] The coordination des opposants. The “Coordination of Opponents” of

the Notre-Dame-des-Landes Airport Project was created by 14

organizations opposed to the airport project in September 2003 in order

to prepare a joint letter to Prime Minister Raffarin and Minister of

Transport de Robien during the project’s early research stage. Since

then, these organizations meet monthly to discuss the issue and organize

joint actions. Today, more than 60 organizations comprise the

Coordination, including associations, unions, political movements, and

collectives.

[5] Conseil regional, the “General Council” or departmental assembly,

departments being regional administrative entities in France. The

specific general council referenced here is the one that oversees the

Loire Atlantique department of France.

[6] For several weeks now, railroad workers have carried out numerous

strikes to defend their status and oppose the opening of the railway

market to competitors.