• Julia Cagé et Thomas Piketty livrent une vision inédite de l’histoire politique française
    https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2023/09/05/julia-cage-et-thomas-piketty-livrent-une-vision-inedite-de-l-histoire-politi

    Dans « Une histoire du conflit politique », les économistes publient une somme sur l’histoire électorale de la France. En fonction des revenus, du milieu social et du lieu d’habitation des votants, ils analysent les rapports de force – bipartition ou tripartition – qui dominent le champ politique et leurs liens avec les inégalités sociales.

    La classe géosociale

    Mais comment fait-on pour savoir qui vote pour qui ? A cette question centrale, les auteurs ne peuvent s’appuyer que sur des informations électorales à l’échelon des communes – ce qui implique un niveau territorial et non individuel. Ils ne bénéficient pas, en effet, d’études d’opinions avant les années 1950. D’où la nécessité, de l’aveu même des auteurs, de redoubler de prudence quant aux interprétations, mais aussi de trouver une autre base de référence : la classe géosociale.

    Grâce à l’usage systématique de cette notion, les deux économistes arrivent à des conclusions fortes qui viennent contredire les débats politiques actuels. Ils expliquent notamment que les variables liées à la religion et aux origines étrangères ont beaucoup moins d’importance que celles liées à la classe géosociale. « Autrement dit, ce sont bien les enjeux socio-économiques – et non les questions identitaires ou la proportion d’étrangers – qui déterminent les clivages électoraux. » Ces résultats sont valables pour les scrutins présidentiels de 1848, mais aussi de 1965 à 2022, malgré l’omniprésence de ces thèmes dans le débat public.

    Les auteurs proposent aussi une chronologie originale de deux cent trente ans de vie politique française. Celle-ci a connu, expliquent-ils, des périodes de « bipolarisation » et de « tripartition ». Ainsi, de 1848 à 1910, on assiste à une première tripartition, avec des socialistes et radicaux-socialistes à gauche ; des républicains modérés et opportunistes au centre, et, à droite, des conservateurs catholiques et des monarchistes, permettant aux partis du centre de gouverner.

  • La #géographie, c’est de droite ?

    En pleine torpeur estivale, les géographes #Aurélien_Delpirou et #Martin_Vanier publient une tribune dans Le Monde pour rappeler à l’ordre #Thomas_Piketty. Sur son blog, celui-ci aurait commis de coupables approximations dans un billet sur les inégalités territoriales. Hypothèse : la querelle de chiffres soulève surtout la question du rôle des sciences sociales. (Manouk Borzakian)

    Il y a des noms qu’il ne faut pas prononcer à la légère, comme Beetlejuice. Plus dangereux encore, l’usage des mots espace, spatialité et territoire : les dégainer dans le cyberespace public nécessite de soigneusement peser le pour et le contre. Au risque de voir surgir, tel un esprit maléfique réveillé par mégarde dans une vieille maison hantée, pour les plus chanceux un tweet ironique ou, pour les âmes maudites, une tribune dans Libération ou Le Monde signée Michel Lussault et/ou Jacques Lévy, gardiens du temple de la vraie géographie qui pense et se pense.

    Inconscient de ces dangers, Thomas Piketty s’est fendu, le 11 juillet, d’un billet de blog sur les #inégalités_territoriales (https://www.lemonde.fr/blog/piketty/2023/07/11/la-france-et-ses-fractures-territoriales). L’économiste médiatique y défend deux idées. Premièrement, les inégalités territoriales se sont creusées en #France depuis une génération, phénomène paradoxalement (?) renforcé par les mécanismes de #redistribution. Deuxièmement, les #banlieues qui s’embrasent depuis la mort de Nahel Merzouk ont beaucoup en commun avec les #petites_villes et #villages souffrant de #relégation_sociospatiale – même si les défis à relever varient selon les contextes. De ces deux prémisses découle une conclusion importante : il incombe à la #gauche de rassembler politiquement ces deux ensembles, dont les raisons objectives de s’allier l’emportent sur les différences.

    À l’appui de son raisonnement, le fondateur de l’École d’économie de Paris apporte quelques données macroéconomiques : le PIB par habitant à l’échelle départementale, les prix de l’immobilier à l’échelle des communes et, au niveau communal encore, le revenu moyen. C’est un peu court, mais c’est un billet de blog de quelques centaines de mots, pas une thèse de doctorat.

    Sus aux #amalgames

    Quelques jours après la publication de ce billet, Le Monde publie une tribune assassine signée Aurélien Delpirou et Martin Vanier, respectivement Maître de conférences et Professeur à l’École d’urbanisme de Paris – et membre, pour le second, d’ACADIE, cabinet de conseil qui se propose d’« écrire les territoires » et de « dessiner la chose publique ». Point important, les deux géographes n’attaquent pas leur collègue économiste, au nom de leur expertise disciplinaire, sur sa supposée ignorance des questions territoriales. Ils lui reprochent le manque de rigueur de sa démonstration.

    Principale faiblesse dénoncée, les #données, trop superficielles, ne permettraient pas de conclusions claires ni assurées. Voire, elles mèneraient à des contresens. 1) Thomas Piketty s’arrête sur les valeurs extrêmes – les plus riches et les plus pauvres – et ignore les cas intermédiaires. 2) Il mélange inégalités productives (le #PIB) et sociales (le #revenu). 3) Il ne propose pas de comparaison internationale, occultant que la France est « l’un des pays de l’OCDE où les contrastes régionaux sont le moins prononcés » (si c’est pire ailleurs, c’est que ce n’est pas si mal chez nous).

    Plus grave, les géographes accusent l’économiste de pratiquer des amalgames hâtifs, sa « vue d’avion » effaçant les subtilités et la diversité des #inégalités_sociospatiales. Il s’agit, c’est le principal angle d’attaque, de disqualifier le propos de #Piketty au nom de la #complexité du réel. Et d’affirmer : les choses sont moins simples qu’il n’y paraît, les exceptions abondent et toute tentative de catégoriser le réel flirte avec la #simplification abusive.

    La droite applaudit bruyamment, par le biais de ses brigades de twittos partageant l’article à tour de bras et annonçant l’exécution scientifique de l’économiste star. Mais alors, la géographie serait-elle de droite ? Étudier l’espace serait-il gage de tendances réactionnaires, comme l’ont laissé entendre plusieurs générations d’historiens et, moins directement mais sans pitié, un sociologue célèbre et lui aussi très médiatisé ?

    Pensée bourgeoise et pensée critique

    D’abord, on comprend les deux géographes redresseurs de torts. Il y a mille et une raisons, à commencer par le mode de fonctionnement de la télévision (format, durée des débats, modalité de sélection des personnalités invitées sur les plateaux, etc.), de clouer au pilori les scientifiques surmédiatisés, qui donnent à qui veut l’entendre leur avis sur tout et n’importe quoi, sans se soucier de sortir de leur champ de compétence. On pourrait même imaginer une mesure de salubrité publique : à partir d’un certain nombre de passages à la télévision, disons trois par an, tout économiste, philosophe, politologue ou autre spécialiste des sciences cognitives devrait se soumettre à une cérémonie publique de passage au goudron et aux plumes pour expier son attitude narcissique et, partant, en contradiction flagrante avec les règles de base de la production scientifique.

    Mais cette charge contre le texte de Thomas Piketty – au-delà d’un débat chiffré impossible à trancher ici – donne surtout le sentiment de relever d’une certaine vision de la #recherche. Aurélien Delpirou et Martin Vanier invoquent la rigueur intellectuelle – indispensable, aucun doute, même si la tentation est grande de les accuser de couper les cheveux en quatre – pour reléguer les #sciences_sociales à leur supposée #neutralité. Géographes, économistes ou sociologues seraient là pour fournir des données, éventuellement quelques théories, le cas échéant pour prodiguer des conseils techniques à la puissance publique. Mais, au nom de leur nécessaire neutralité, pas pour intervenir dans le débat politique – au sens où la politique ne se résume pas à des choix stratégiques, d’aménagement par exemple.

    Cette posture ne va pas de soi. En 1937, #Max_Horkheimer propose, dans un article clé, une distinction entre « #théorie_traditionnelle » et « #théorie_critique ». Le fondateur, avec #Theodor_Adorno, de l’#École_de_Francfort, y récuse l’idée cartésienne d’une science sociale détachée de son contexte et fermée sur elle-même. Contre cette « fausse conscience » du « savant bourgeois de l’ère libérale », le philosophe allemand défend une science sociale « critique », c’est-à-dire un outil au service de la transformation sociale et de l’émancipation humaine. L’une et l’autre passent par la #critique de l’ordre établi, dont il faut sans cesse rappeler la contingence : d’autres formes de société, guidées par la #raison, sont souhaitables et possibles.

    Quarante ans plus tard, #David_Harvey adopte une posture similaire. Lors d’une conférence donnée en 1978 – Nicolas Vieillecazes l’évoque dans sa préface à Géographie de la domination –, le géographe britannique se démarque de la géographie « bourgeoise ». Il reproche à cette dernière de ne pas relier les parties (les cas particuliers étudiés) au tout (le fonctionnement de la société capitaliste) ; et de nier que la position sociohistorique d’un chercheur ou d’une chercheuse informe inévitablement sa pensée, nécessitant un effort constant d’auto-questionnement. Ouf, ce n’est donc pas la géographie qui est de droite, pas plus que la chimie ou la pétanque.

    Neutralité vs #objectivité

    Il y a un pas, qu’on ne franchira pas, avant de voir en Thomas Piketty un héritier de l’École de Francfort. Mais son texte a le mérite d’assumer l’entrelacement du scientifique – tenter de mesurer les inégalités et objectiver leur potentielle creusement – et du politique – relever collectivement le défi de ces injustices, en particulier sur le plan de la #stratégie_politique.

    S’il est évident que la discussion sur les bonnes et les mauvaises manières de mesurer les #inégalités, territoriales ou autres, doit avoir lieu en confrontant des données aussi fines et rigoureuses que possible, ce n’est pas manquer d’objectivité que de revendiquer un agenda politique. On peut même, avec Boaventura de Sousa Santos, opposer neutralité et objectivité. Le sociologue portugais, pour des raisons proches de celles d’Horkheimer, voit dans la neutralité en sciences sociales une #illusion – une illusion dangereuse, car être conscient de ses biais éventuels reste le seul moyen de les limiter. Mais cela n’empêche en rien l’objectivité, c’est-à-dire l’application scrupuleuse de #méthodes_scientifiques à un objet de recherche – dans le recueil des données, leur traitement et leur interprétation.

    En reprochant à Thomas Piketty sa #superficialité, en parlant d’un débat pris « en otage », en dénonçant une prétendue « bien-pensance de l’indignation », Aurélien Delpirou et Martin Vanier désignent l’arbre de la #rigueur_intellectuelle pour ne pas voir la forêt des problèmes – socioéconomiques, mais aussi urbanistiques – menant à l’embrasement de banlieues cumulant relégation et stigmatisation depuis un demi-siècle. Ils figent la pensée, en font une matière inerte dans laquelle pourront piocher quelques technocrates pour justifier leurs décisions, tout au plus.

    Qu’ils le veuillent ou non – et c’est certainement à leur corps défendant – c’est bien la frange réactionnaire de la twittosphère, en lutte contre le « socialisme », le « wokisme » et la « culture de l’excuse », qui se repait de leur mise au point.

    https://blogs.mediapart.fr/geographies-en-mouvement/blog/010823/la-geographie-cest-de-droite

  • "Affaire de Grenoble" : Annulation des #poursuites contre Thomas Mandroux

    Vous vous souvenez de l’affaire de l’IEP de Grenoble avec les accusations d’islamophobie et les représailles judiciaires, administratives et médiatiques contre les étudiants et ces horribles « Islamo-gauchistes » . Et bien le Tribunal a annulé les porsuites. A suivre...


    https://twitter.com/AA_Avocats/status/1637814005489074176
    #graffitis #Institut_d’études_politiques (#IEP) #Klaus_Kinzler #justice #Thomas_Mandroux #Vincent_Tournier
    –----

    Pour mémoire, la métaliste sur ce qu’on a surnommé l’#affaire_de_Grenoble
    https://seenthis.net/messages/943294

  • France info TV le 10 février 2023 : #Jean-Pierre_Mercier face à une députée macroniste, #Nadia_Hai

    Extrait :

    Affaire #Thomas_Porte ?

    – MERCIER : Ce qui est violent, c’est de nous faire travailler deux ans de plus : c’est ça la violence. […] C’est impressionnant à quel point vous êtes déconnecté de la vie de tous les jours, de notre quotidien, du quotidien des travailleuses et des travailleurs, de ceux qui créent les richesses. Quand on voit ce spectacle à l’#Assemblée_nationale

    – HAI : Monsieur Mercier, j’ai une question à vous poser : est-ce que vous pouvez tenir une promesse devant un ouvrier qui a commencé à travailler à 25 ans, à 26 ans, une femme de ménage, qui a commencé à travailler à 30 ans, 32 ans, parce qu’elle est en situation de séparation avec son époux, est-ce que vous pouvez lui garantir à l’heure où nous nous parlons qu’elle aura une retraite à taux plein à 60 ans, 62 ans ? Dites-le face au français.

    – MERCIER : Je vais vous répondre.

    – HAI : Laissez-moi terminer. Dans le système de retraites actuel, dans ces situations-là, c’est 67 ans. C’est pourquoi nous voulons mettre en place un compte de prévention de pénibilité qui permet, justement, à ces carrières d’opérer une reconversion professionnel ou de déclarer une inaptitude qui leur permet de partir avec un départ anticipé, voilà ce que prévoit la réforme des retraites […].

    – MERCIER : Je remarque que vous êtes une vraie politicienne. Oui, il y a des moyens largement, largement faisable pour revenir à une retraite à 60 ans. Avec 37,5 ans d’annuité. Il suffit de puiser là où il y a de l’argent, c’est-à-dire dans le #CAC40. Vous allez avoir tous les résultats financiers qui vont tomber les uns derrière les autres, avec des dizaines et des dizaines de milliards. C’est nous qui les avons crées, c’est milliards. Et je rappelle simplement que tous les ans, il y a 18 milliards d’euros d’#exonération_de_cotisation_sociale_patronale. Si, simplement, ils payaient ces cotisations sociales, on aurait les moyens de pérenniser le système. Il faut avoir la volonté politique de prendre l’argent là où il est : dans la poches des riches.

    #réforme_des_retraites #affaire_Thomas_Porte #lutte_de_classe

  • A #Sciences_Po_Grenoble, des plaies toujours vives après l’affaire des professeurs dénoncés par des colleurs d’#affiches

    La direction de l’#IEP a choisi de garder le #silence après la récente suppression de subventions décidée par le conseil régional d’Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. Deux ans après, deux procès viennent raviver cette affaire.

    « Vous émettiez souvent des avis sur les cours dispensés à Sciences Po ? », s’enquiert la juge, le regard interrogateur. A la barre du tribunal correctionnel de Grenoble, mardi 10 janvier, la voix de #Thomas_Mandroux, ex-coprésident de l’#Union_syndicale (US) des étudiants de l’institut d’études politiques de la ville, est posée, mais porte peu.

    Accusé de #diffamation et d’#injure par #Vincent_Tournier, l’un des deux enseignants dont le nom avait été placardé sur les murs de l’école, le 4 mars 2021, le jeune homme a tenté de justifier l’appel à témoignages lancé sur la page Facebook de l’US, le 22 février 2021, pour collecter « les propos problématiques » et « islamophobes » qui auraient pu être tenus lors du cours de M. Tournier sur l’islam et les musulmans en France.

    Désormais diplômé de l’institut, Thomas Mandroux a indiqué qu’il n’avait pas poursuivi en thèse. « Je suis considéré comme horrible, a-t-il commenté. Cela a mis un terme à toute possibilité de trouver un directeur de thèse. »

    Cette comparution rappelle que la crise qui a ébranlé l’IEP il y a près de deux ans est encore loin d’être soldée. Le président (Les Républicains) de la région, Laurent #Wauquiez, a récemment soufflé sur les braises : un vote du conseil régional Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, le 16 décembre 2022, a acté l’annulation du versement d’une somme de 400 000 euros, habituellement allouée aux étudiants de Sciences Po pour leur cursus à l’étranger. En cause : la supposée « longue dérive idéologique et communautariste » de l’école, qu’il avait dénoncée fin 2021. Un professeur d’allemand, #Klaus_Kinzler, venait d’être suspendu pour une durée de quatre mois par sa direction pour avoir qualifié son établissement d’« institut de rééducation politique » où des enseignants « endoctrineraient » les étudiants.

    « On est là pour étudier »

    Ce professeur, dont le nom avait été placardé auprès de celui de Vincent Tournier, accolé à la phrase « Des fascistes dans nos amphis. L’islamophobie tue », s’était opposé à Mme M., une historienne, fin 2020, sur l’usage du terme « islamophobie » auprès des mots « racisme » et « antisémitisme », ces trois thèmes devant servir à définir le contenu d’une table ronde. Près de deux ans plus tard, les colleurs de ces affiches n’ont pu être identifiés, indique au Monde le procureur de #Grenoble, Eric Vaillant.

    https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2023/01/11/a-sciences-po-grenoble-des-plaies-toujours-vives-deux-ans-apres-la-polemique

    –—

    ajouté à la métaliste atour de ce qu’on a surnommé l’#affaire_de_Grenoble :
    https://seenthis.net/messages/943294

  • À l’école de la justice
    Agnès Faivre > 4 décembre 2022
    https://afriquexxi.info/A-l-ecole-de-la-justice

    Podcast · En octobre 2021, trente-quatre ans après les faits, le procès des assassins de Thomas Sankara et de douze de ses camarades s’est ouvert à Ouagadougou. Six mois d’audience, une centaine de témoins, un grand livre d’histoire... Au micro d’Afrique XXI, des acteurs de ce procès le racontent en toute simplicité et évoquent leurs souvenirs de la révolution. Huitième et avant-dernier épisode avec Raymond Poda.

    Tous les épisodes : https://afriquexxi.info/Thomas-Sankara-Un-proces-des-histoires
    #Thomas_Sankara

  • The Making of an SS Killer - The Life of Colonel Alfred Filbert - 7
    #Alfred_Filbert #Einsatzgruppen #génocide #shoa #Thomas_Harlan #Wundkanal

    Notes part 2

    36. The corresponding passage can be found in UniA GI, ‘Urteil Landgericht Berlin vom 22. Juni 1962’, fols. 91–92.
    37. Wundkanal, 00:57:09 – 00:57:40: ʻJa, was sage ich denn dazu? Da wäre ja allerhand zu sagen dazu.ʼ
    38. See Schmiedecker, ʻFassungslose Geschichtsschreibungʼ, p. 75. Schmiedecker correctly points out that the name ‘Albert Filbert’ is not used at all during the film, but incorrectly claims that this is the name of the ‘real person’ (see Schmiedecker, ʻFassungslose Geschichtsschreibungʼ, pp. 74–75 and 81).
    39. Internationales Forum des jungen Films / Freunde der deutschen Kinemathek, ed., 15. internationales Forum des jungen Films, Berlin 1985, p. 1.
    40. Ibid., p. 8.
    41. Interview with Robert Kramer’s widow, Erika Kramer, Paris, 6 April 2013. I am very grateful to Erika for her time and her candour.
    42. Notre Nazi, 00:03:26 – 00:03:35; Ulrich Greiner, ʻÜber den Tod hinaus: Liebe und Haß. Die 41. Filmfestspiele von Venedigʼ, Die Zeit, 14 September 1984, p. 52; Jonas Engelmann, ʻSauvater, du Land, du Un, du Tierʼ, Jungle World, 18 February 2010; Bert Rebhandl, ʻAus der Generation der Unbedingtenʼ, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 26 October 2010.
    43. Thomas Harlan – Extrasplitter, 01:18:50 – 01:19:29. See also Christoph Schneider, ʻTäterarbeitʼ, Einsicht 03. Bulletin des Fritz Bauer Instituts, Vol. 2 (spring 2010), p. 82.
    44. Thomas Harlan – Extrasplitter, 01:20:38 – 01:23:43 and 01:29:25 – 01:30:17 (quote 01:23:29 – 01:23:31). See also Stephan, Thomas Harlan, p. 172.
    45. Thomas Harlan – Extrasplitter, 01:22:58 – 01:23:03: ʻEr wartete fiebernd dar- auf, am nächsten Tag wieder geschminkt zu werden.ʼ
    46. Written notification from Ursula Langmann, Paris, 4 September 2013. Harlan later referred erroneously to a ‘Mercedes with a uniformed chauffeur’ (Mercedes mit einem Chauffeur in Uniform). See Thomas Harlan – Extrasplitter, 01:22:45 – 01:22:47.
    47. See Notre Nazi, 00:55:49 – 00:59:31.
    48. Interview with Robert Kramer’s widow, Erika Kramer, Paris, 6 April 2013.
    49. See Stephan, Thomas Harlan, p. 173.
    50. Ekkehard Knörrer [sic], ‘Der Täter im Spiegelkabinett’, Die Tageszeitung, 10 December 2009.
    51. Stephan, Thomas Harlan, p. 179. The moment it happens can be seen in Notre Nazi, 01:42:51–01:43:00.
    52. Written notification from Ursula Langmann, Paris, 12 March 2013.
    53. Interview with Ursula Langmann, Paris, 25 June 2013. I am very grateful to Ursula for generously giving of her time and for the effort she took to recall the events of thirty years before.
    54. See Chapter 5.
    55. Thomas Harlan in Notre Nazi, 01:34:41 – 01:35:04: ‘[. . .] ce barbare, qui est resté un barbare. Il n’est pas que vous trouvez [sic] devant un homme. C’est le reste, la dépouille mortelle de quelqu’un qui n’existe plus, et qui n’a jamais existé, qui n’a même pas existé comme enfant. C’est un des pires des [sic] individus que la terre a vu, qui a le malheur de ne pas le savoir.’ I am grateful to Ursula Langmann and Martin Holler for their assistance in transcribing this passage from the film.
    56. See Notre Nazi, 01:35:06–01:45:05: ʻMein Bruder war in Buchenwald und er ist totʼ (quote 01:42:05–01:42:09). According to Robert Kramer’s widow, Erika, the six men were in fact spontaneously ‘scooped up and brought in’ that same day, in order that Harlan could shoot this scene with the Jewish men (interview with Erika Kramer, Paris, 6 April 2013). Ursula Langmann confirms that Thomas Harlan had the spontaneous idea during the shoot, though she insists that – whatever the recruitment process may have been – the men were genuine Holocaust survivors (interview with Ursula Langmann, Paris, 25 June 2013).
    57. Notre Nazi, 01:31:09–01:31:29: ʻIch habe durch meinen Bruder, durch diese Aussage, musste ich 18 [sic] Jahre sitzen. Ich habe meine Augen dabei verloren, verlorene Ehre, Nervenbelastung. Ja, danke schön!ʼ
    58. Ibid., 01:33:46–01:33:52.
    59. Ibid., 01:33:14–01:33:27: ‘[. . .] schuldig sind an einem der größten Verbrechen, die gegen die Menschheit möglich sind.’ According to his widow Erika, Robert Kramer was ‘playing himself’ here (interview with Erika Kramer, Paris, 6 April 2013).
    60. Notre Nazi, 01:18:58–01:23:16 (quote 01:20:03–01:20:09): ‘Ich habe natürlich schwer darunter gelitten.’
    61. M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Travelled, 25th Anniversary Edition (Rider: London, 2003 [1978]), pp. 163–167 (quote: p. 165).
    62. Dicks, Licensed Mass Murder, p. 251.
    63. Stephan, Thomas Harlan, p. 179.
    64. Interview with Erika Kramer, Paris, 6 April 2013.
    65. ʻInterview mit Thomas Harlan. Von Noël Simsoloʼ, p. 3.
    66. Stephan, Thomas Harlan, p. 178: ʻEin Film, der Wundkanal die Maske abreißt. Wundkanal ist ein Film über die Schuld, und Nôtre Nazi ist ein zweiter Film über die Schuld. Der Film über die Schuld geht in den Film über die Entstehung der Schuld über. Diese neu entstandene Schuld, von der Nôtre Nazi handelt, war unsere Schuld. Es war kein Wunder, daß diese Selbstentblößung durch das Publikum bestraft werden mußte über kurz oder lang.ʼ
    67. Stephan, Thomas Harlan, pp. 178 and 180.
    68. Thomas Harlan, ʻDas Gesicht des Feindesʼ, in Stefan Drössler and Michael Farin, eds., Thomas Harlan. Wundkanal (Munich: Filmmuseum München/ Goethe-Institut München, 2009) [12-page booklet accompanying the DVD].
    69. ʻInterview mit Thomas Harlan. Von Noël Simsoloʼ, p. 3: ʻHier wird ein Großvater entführt, nicht ein Vater, und verhört und gequält. Und der Großvater ist sympathisch; die Enkel können nicht leiden, daß ein gestandener Ahne – auch wenn er viel auf dem Kerbholz hat – in diesem Alter zum zweiten Mal Verfolgungen ausgesetzt wird; ihnen schaudert bei der Einkreisung eines Familienoberhauptes und seiner Ausfragung nach 40-Jahre alten Morden und Selbstmorden; ganz besonders, wenn sie dann Robert Kramers Unser Nazi, sehen, den Spiegelfilm von WUNDKANAL: hier legen wir uns selbst bloß und zeigen, wie Verfolger rasch die Eigenschaften des Verfolgten annehmen, wir werden ekelhaft, vor allem ich selbst. [. . .] Unser Nazi, das bin dann ich selbst.ʼ
    70. Written notification from Manfred Hobsch, Zitty, Berlin, 8 June 2013.
    71. Written notification from Danièle Brey, Paris, 9 April 2013.
    72. Greiner, ʻÜber den Tod hinausʼ; ʻImmensee in Wilnaʼ.
    73. See ʻInterview mit Thomas Harlan. Von Noël Simsoloʼ, p. 4.
    74. Notre Nazi, 01:45:56–01:46:35.
    75. Standesamt Wilmersdorf von Berlin, Sterbeeintrag 1391/1990, Sterbeurkunde Alfred Filbert, Beglaubigte Abschrift aus dem Sterbebuch, 3 August 1990. I am grateful to Dieter Filbert for providing me with a copy of this document. Incorrect date of death (30 July) in Klee, Das Personenlexikon zum Dritten Reich, p. 150; ‘Biografie Alfred (Albert) Filbert’, in Drössler and Farin, eds., Thomas Harlan. Wundkanal.

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    Notes part 1

    1. Written notification from Dieter Filbert, Berlin, 17 March 2013.
    . See the correspondence in BStU, MfS, HA IX/11, AK 3101/83, ‘Überprüfung zur Person Fillbert [sic], wohnhaft: Westberlin [sic]’, Bezirksverwaltung für Staatssicherheit Rostock, Abteilung II, II/1138/83 A, 2 June 1983, fol. 3, and ‘Auskunftsersuchen vom 02.06.1983, 1138/83 A, eck-sto’, Ministerrat der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik, Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, Hauptabteilung IX/11, gei-br/3377/83, 28 July 1983, fols. 1–2.
    3. BStU, MfS, HA IX/11, AK 3101/83, ‘Überprüfung zur Person Fillbert [sic], wohnhaft: Westberlin [sic]’, Bezirksverwaltung für Staatssicherheit Rostock, Abteilung II, 2 June 1983, fol. 3.
    4. BStU, MfS, HA IX/11, AK 3101/83, fol. 5, Memorandum, 28 July 1983.
    5. Hachmeister, Der Gegnerforscher, pp. 224 (with photo) and 372, n. 69.
    6. Wundkanal, 01:38:34. The film was viewed by the author on the DVD released jointly in 2009 by the Filmmuseum München and the Goethe- Institut München as volume 49 in the series Edition Filmmuseum.
    7. Jean-Pierre Stephan, ʻFritz Bauers Briefe an Thomas Harlan. Eine deutsche Freundschaftʼ, Einsicht 09. Bulletin des Fritz Bauer Instituts, Vol. 5 (spring 2013), pp. 36–44, here p. 36.
    8. ʻInterview mit Thomas Harlan. Von Noël Simsoloʼ, in Internationales Forum des jungen Films / Freunde der deutschen Kinemathek, ed., 15. internationales Forum des jungen Films, Berlin 1985. 35. Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin. Nr. 9: Wundkanal (Execution a Quatre Voix):Notes to pages 111–113 205 Hinrichtung für Vier Stimmen (Berlin: Internationales Forum des jungen Films, 1985), pp. 2–4, here p. 3: ʻDer Film ist eine Arbeit über den Plural, ich fange lediglich mit meinem Vater an [. . .].ʼ See also Notre Nazi, 00:06:45 – 00:07:50. The film was viewed by the author on the DVD released jointly in 2009 by the Filmmuseum München and the Goethe-Institut München as volume 49 in the series Edition Filmmuseum.
    9. Stephan, Thomas Harlan, p. 170. On Geschonneck see F.-B. Habel, ed., Lexikon Schauspieler in der DDR (Berlin: Neues Leben, 2009), pp. 117–119.
    10. Written notification from Ulrich Adomat, Berlin, 18 September 2013. Adomat was the accountant of the production firm Quasar Film at the time Wundkanal was made and was present during the entire shoot.
    11. Thomas Heise, ‘Das Projekt “Wundkanal”’, Der Freitag, 23 February 2010.
    12. See the closing credits of Wundkanal, 01:42:06.
    13. Written notification from Heike Geschonneck, Berlin, 11 April 2013. On the Zentrale Stelle see Weinke, Eine Gesellschaft ermittelt gegen sich selbst.
    14. See LArch Berlin, B Rep. 058, Nr. 7189, fol. 49, Letter from Thomas Harlan, c/o Smolinska, Smolna 13, Warszawa, POLSKA, to the Generalstaatsanwalt beim Landgericht Berlin, AZ: 3 P (K) Js 45/60, 26 April 1961.
    15. Stephan, Thomas Harlan, pp. 171–172: ‘[. . .] er war gerührt über den Besuch eines Harlan-Sohns, eines Sohnes des großen Trösters, und es war an dem ersten Tag unserer Bekanntschaft schon klar, daß er bereit war zu sprechen; ob zu spielen, das konnte niemand wissen. Und später auch dauerte es zwei Wochen, bevor wir merkten, daß er angebissen hatte und Schauspieler werden wollte; es war an dem Tag, an dem wir in der Wüste stehen mit ihm und er bereit ist, die Pistole zu halten, wie sie Andreas Baader gehalten haben soll an seinen Nacken, aber nicht gehalten haben konnte.’ Parts of Veit Harlan’s wartime film Immensee (1943) are shown in Wundkanal and Dr S. watches it with a captivated smile on his face. His kidnappers also briefly question Dr S. about the film.
    16. Stefan Aust, Der Baader-Meinhof-Komplex, exp. and rev. ed. (Hoffmann und Campe: Hamburg, 1997 [1985]), pp. 651–652; Stephan, Thomas Harlan, pp. 166 and 174–175.
    17. Wundkanal, 00:05:28.
    18. Stephan, Thomas Harlan, p. 166.
    19. Ibid., pp. 174–175 (quote: p. 175); Thomas Harlan – Extrasplitter, 01:16:12 – 01:16:34. See also Robert Kramer’s questions as one of the interrogators in Wundkanal, 00:24:51 – 00:24:59: ‘Why did the prisoners then kill themselves? Why? Answer: to prove that they had been murdered, right?’.
    20. See Thomas Harlan – Extrasplitter, 01:32:39 – 01:32:44.
    21. Stephan, Thomas Harlan, p. 170.
    22. See the closing credits of Wundkanal, 01:42:06. See also Stephan, Thomas Harlan, p. 170.
    23. Written notification from Ursula Langmann, Paris, 15 May 2013; written notification from Danièle Brey, Paris, 9 April 2013; written notification from Heike Geschonneck, Berlin, 11 April 2013.
    24. Written notification from Ursula Langmann, Paris, 15 May 2013. The duration of the shoot is incorrectly given as three weeks in ‘Immensee in Wilna’, p. 210.
    25. Pierre Joffroy, ‘Les faussaires de la mort’, Libération, 30 November 1983. Pierre Joffroy receives special thanks in the closing credits of Wundkanal (01:41:50).
    26. Written notification from Ursula Langmann, Paris, 12 March 2013.
    27. Written notification from Ursula Langmann, Paris, 14 April 2013: ʻKein Unwohlsein, nicht das geringste Schuldgefühl . . . Das hatte in seinen Augen mit ihm und seiner Geschichte überhaupt nichts zu tun.ʼ
    28. On Feltrinelli see Stephan, Thomas Harlan, pp. 123–125.
    29. Ibid., pp. 96–97: ʻDie Wahrheit, die man nicht mehr verbergen muß, hat die größte Wuchtʼ (quote: p. 96).
    30. Wundkanal, 00:04:16.
    31. See Mitteilungen der Forschungs–und Arbeitsgruppe ‘Geschichte des BND’, ed. Bundesnachrichtendienst, special issue ‘Kassationen von Personalakten im Bestand des BND-Archivs’, 22 December 2011.
    32. According to the BND, there is no record of Filbert in the BND Archives (written notification from Dr Andreas Elbach, Leiter der Arbeitsgruppe Archiv, Bundesnachrichtendiesnt, Pullach, 4 January 2013; written notification from Ulrich Utis, Leiter der Arbeitsgruppe Archiv, Bundesnachrichtendienst, Berlin, 19 April 2012). According to Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, or BfV), there is no record of Filbert in the BfV Archives (written notifications from Laura Kempers, Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, Cologne, 9 January 2013 and 10 April 2012).
    33. See Wundkanal, 00:04:27. See also Andreas Schmiedecker, ʻFassungslose Geschichtsschreibung. Geschichtliche und biografische (De) Konstruktionen bei Thomas Harlanʼ, in Thomas Marchart, Stefanie Schmitt and Stefan Suppanschitz, eds., reflexiv. Geschichte denken, SYN. Magazin für Theater-, Film–und Medienwissenschaft, Vol. 2 (Berlin/ Münster/Vienna/Zürich/London: LIT, 2011), pp. 69–83, here p. 74. It is tempting to speculate that the character of ‘Colonel Humphrey Ian Donald Calleigh’ may be a reference to Second Lieutenant William Laws Calley, who was sentenced to life imprisonment for his role in the My Lai massacre of 16 March 1968 during the Vietnam War (though the sentence was subse- quently commuted to 20 and then 10 years imprisonment, and Calley was in fact released after only three-and-a-half years under house arrest).
    34. Paul Werner was head of Group A in the Reich Criminal Police Office (Office V of the RSHA) and Nebe’s deputy. After the war he held a senior position in the Interior Ministry of the federal state of Baden-Württemberg. The city of Stuttgart is located in Baden-Württemberg. In Wundkanal he is referred to as being responsible for the construction of the secure wing of Stammheim Prison that housed the RAF leadership. On Werner see Wildt, Generation des Unbedingten, pp. 314–316.
    35. Wundkanal, 00:04:57.

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    In spite of the commotion that took place on the final day of the shoot and the resulting alleged injury to his ribs, Filbert stated his willingness to return and continue shooting. Some months later, a member of the crew happened to see Filbert in Berlin. Filbert confided in him that his experience of the movies had been the single greatest moment of his life.(74) Karl Wilhelm Alfred Filbert died in Berlin’s Saint Gertrude Hospital at 11:30 on the morning of Wednesday, 1 August 1990, five-and-a-half weeks short of his 85th birthday.(75) Although Filbert had been stripped of his doctor of laws title more than twenty-six years previously, he was still adorned with the qualification on his death certificate.

    Sankt Gertrauden-Krankenhaus
    https://sankt-gertrauden.de
    #Paretzer_Straße 12
    10713 #Berlin #Wilmersdorf
    https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/119398219

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    It was not the first time during the shooting of Wundkanal that Filbert had presented himself as a victim on account of the fate of his brother. On another occasion he explains his imprisonment not as a result of the atrocities he had committed in Lithuania and Belarus but instead as a result of his brother expressing regret at the failure of the attempt on Hitler’s life in November 1939: ‘I had to as a result of my brother, as a result of this statement [following the attempt on Hitler’s life], I had to sit in prison for 18 [sic] years. I lost my eyesight in the process, I lost my honour, the nervous strain. Yes, thanks a lot!’(57) In Filbert’s eyes, it was ‘a crime under constraint’ ( ein erzwungenes Verbrechen ).(58) This response was aimed at Robert Kramer, who described Filbert as ‘guilty of one of the greatest crimes against humanity possible’.(59) On another occasion, Filbert weeps whilst talking about the fate of his brother. It initially appears to the viewer that Filbert’s show of emotion is on account of the suffering and death of his brother, before it becomes clear that he is in fact weeping – at least in part – for himself and his damaged career in the SS: ‘I naturally suffered a lot from this.’(60) In his bestselling book The Road Less Travelled , psychiatrist M. Scott Peck describes a not dissimilar situation he encountered during an interview with the parents of a schizophrenic patient, Susan. Describing to them Susan’s great progress in therapy, Peck was surprised to find Susan’s mother crying. It soon became clear that these were not tears of joy but tears of sadness. He eventually realised that Susan’s mother ‘was not crying for Susan but for herself’. Peck defined this failure to perceive the separateness of another person on an emotional level and the use of the other as a vehicle to express one’s own needs as narcissism.(61) Henry V. Dicks also characterised Filbert as a ‘narcissistic prig’.(62) In Filbert’s case, it was his brother Otto whom he was using as a vehicle to express his own needs.

    The two films, Wundkanal and Notre Nazi , should be watched consecutively,(63) and Harlan indeed drew up a legal contract to prevent Notre Nazi from being shown without Wundkanal.(64) Harlan, who also produced Notre Nazi,(65) later explained the film’s purpose:

    A film that unmasks Wundkanal . Wundkanal is a film about guilt, and Nôtre Nazi is a second film about guilt. The film about guilt merges into the film about the origins of guilt. This newly formed guilt, which Nôtre Nazi deals with, was our guilt. It was no wonder that this self-exposure had to be punished by the audience sooner or later.(66)

    Harlan was referring here to the public reaction when the two films were premiered at the Venice International Film Festival ( Mostra Internazionale d’Arte Cinematografica di Venezia ) at the end of August 1984. The film provoked anger, uproar, fits of dizziness and shattered glass doors.(67) Harlan was beaten at the exit to the cinema.68 As Harlan himself well knew, the shock provoked by the film was because of the perceived hounding of an old man:

    Here, a grandfather is kidnapped, not a father, and interrogated and tormented. And the grandfather is likeable; the grandchildren cannot stand to see how a seasoned forebear – even if he has much to answer for – is persecuted for a second time at his age; they shudder to see the patriarch encircled and questioned about 40-year-old murders and suicides, especially when they then watch Robert Kramer’s Our Nazi , the mirror image of WUNDKANAL: here, we expose ourselves and show how the persecutors quickly assume the attributes of the persecuted; we become revolting, above all myself. [. . .] Our Nazi , that is then myself.(69)

    It was a similar story at the Berlin International Film Festival ( Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin ) in February 1985, though the two films did share the Prize of the Readers’ Jury of the alternative Berlin magazine Zitty.(70) The films were also shown at the Strasbourg International Film Festival on Human Rights ( Festival International du Film des Droits de l’Homme de Strasbourg ) in 1984.(71) Lengthy articles appeared in the national weekly newspaper Die Zeit and the weekly news magazine Der Spiegel following the premiere in Venice.(72) Hans-Dieter Seidel from the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung found the juxtaposition of Auschwitz and Stammheim to be scandalous and ‘com- pletely obscene’ ( vollends widerwärtig ). This in turn provoked a response by the Hamburg-based, left-wing monthly magazine konkret in its October 1984 issue.(73)

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    Wundkanal thus offers the viewer a total of six different identities for Filbert: 1. The name ‘Dr Alfred Selbert’, as used in the opening credits; 2. ‘Paulssen’, a pseudonym for ‘Dr Alfred Selbert’; 3. ‘Grodnow’, like- wise a pseudonym for ‘Dr Alfred Selbert’; 4. The name ‘Alfred Filbert’, also used in the opening credits; 5. ‘Dr S.’, who – as the closing credits make clear – is the name of the character we see on the screen, and who is also referred to during the reading of the (real) judgement against Filbert and seen written on various sketches laid out on the floor; and 6. ‘Alfred F.’, the name of the actor playing ‘Dr S.’, according to the closing credits.(38) So many identities evidently confused the organisers of the Berlin International Film Festival, at which the film was shown in February 1985, as in a data sheet containing crew, cast and plot they listed the actor playing the part of ‘Dr S.’ as ‘Alfred Selbert’ and even added that the role of ‘Dr S. II’ was played by ‘Aldred [sic] Selbert’.(39) Or was this merely a ploy on the part of Thomas Harlan to further confuse his audience? It was he, after all, who was cited as the editor of the data sheet.(40)

    As soon as Harlan decided to replace Erwin Geschonneck with Filbert, that is, an actor with a real perpetrator, Wundkanal ceased to be a fictional film. Instead, it became an experiment. From this point on, the entire crew was only concerned with Filbert the person, with his crimes and with the question of his guilt. The making of the film became the actual event, rather than the film itself. For this reason, the documentary Notre Nazi (‘Our Nazi’), which was shot at Harlan’s request by the American film- maker Robert Kramer parallel to the shooting of Wundkanal and designed to document the whole process, became just as important as Wundkanal and considerably more interesting. Harlan and Kramer had met each other during the mid-1970s in Portugal, where both men were making films about the Carnation Revolution of 1974, Torre Bela (1975) and Scenes from the Class Struggle in Portugal (1977), respectively. Harlan subsequently visited Kramer at his home in San Francisco in the late 1970s, but it was only later, after Kramer and his family had moved to France, that Harlan invited him to document the filming of Wundkanal . Kramer accepted the offer, though he remained very independent from Harlan and shot less a companion piece to Wundkanal than a film of his own, which can be watched in its own right.(41)

    Why did Filbert agree to star in a film in which he not only played himself as a recognised mass murderer but in which he was also subjected to an intensive interrogation over twenty years after his trial in Berlin? First of all, Filbert was paid a fee of 150,000 French francs (or 50,000 German marks) for his involvement in the film.(42) Above and beyond that, however, there are several indications to the effect that Filbert did not realise what he was getting himself into. Towards the end of Wundkanal , when asked to make a confession, Dr S. refuses, adding ‘I’ve had enough’ ( Mir hat’s genügt ). The viewer has the feeling that it is not (just) Dr S. who has had enough but in fact the actor Filbert himself. Before shooting began, Harlan – by his own admission – had deceived Filbert into believ- ing that he wanted to make a film about him. By means of this tactic, Harlan succeeded in persuading Filbert to take part in the film Harlan actually wanted to make, which was not in fact about Filbert as such.(43) Harlan and his crew treated Filbert so well, paid him so much attention and gave him a feeling of importance that he had not enjoyed for decades, that Filbert was soon prepared to become an actor (see Figure 25). Harlan later said that ‘little pressure and a whole lot of seduction’ had brought this about.(44) ‘He feverishly waited to be made up again the next day.’(45) Ursula Langmann was effectively Filbert’s ‘chauffeur’, among other things, and she drove him around every day in a mid-range rental car.(46) On Filbert’s birthday, which fell during the shoot, Harlan arranged flowers and a cake for him.(47) Erika Kramer, Robert Kramer’s widow, spent a great deal of time on set and later described the interaction between Harlan and Filbert as ‘a chess game of egos’. She cites three things as the principal motivations for Filbert agreeing to take part in the film: money, his identification with whom Harlan was (i.e. the son of Veit Harlan) and a belief on Filbert’s part that any guilt had been expiated because he had served his time in prison.(48) In an interview that he gave Pierre Joffroy from the French daily newspaper Libération at the time, Filbert stated that he had obeyed Harlan like he had once obeyed Heydrich.(49) This, in the words of the film critic Ekkehard Knörer, demonstrated the willingness of an authoritarian character to do as he is told.(50)

    Although Dr S. is released at the end of Wundkanal without any physical harm being done to him, the film shoot did not conclude quite so peacefully. On the final day of shooting, Harlan’s Algerian assistant director, Aziz Bel Milloud, allegedly broke five of Filbert’s ribs. This incident cost Harlan and his crew 5,000 German marks, 1,000 for each rib.(51) Filbert did not require inpatient treatment,(52) however, and Ursula Langmann suspected that Filbert obtained a falsified medical certificate attesting to the five broken ribs in order to be freed from his contract.(53) How the injury came about can be seen in Notre Nazi . The backdrop to the injury was a discussion initiated by Harlan about a massacre of 100 Jewish men in Belarus in August 1941. Filbert had personally com- manded the shooters.(54) Harlan also notes that two prisoners had mana- ged to flee the execution and escape. The viewer sees Harlan briefing a group of six Jewish men, telling them about Filbert: ‘[T]his barbarian, who has remained a barbarian. You are not facing a man here. It is the remnant, the mortal remains of somebody who does not exist anymore, and who existed forever as a child. It is one of the worst individuals that the earth has seen, which has the misfortune not to know it.’(55) Filbert does not want to talk about the massacre in question, which he in any case denies being involved in, instead making Tunnat responsible. He stands up and attempts to leave the set; a physical confrontation ensues. Filbert is confronted by the men briefed by Harlan, Holocaust survivors, one of whom may or may not be one of those who fled the massacre. One of the men then rolls up his sleeve and shows Filbert a tattoo on his arm, which he says came from Auschwitz, where his entire family was murdered. Filbert responds by saying, ‘My brother was in Buchenwald and he is dead.’(56)

  • The Making of an SS Killer - The Life of Colonel Alfred Filbert - 2
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    Following his return from Hungary, Harlan wanted to resume shooting in the Peruvian jungle, though the state of Filbert’s health did not permit this.(21) Instead, shooting took place at Exposure Studios in Charenton outside Paris.(22) The shoot began on 22 August 1983(23) and lasted for eight weeks.(24) According to the French journalist Pierre Joffroy, during his Parisian outings, Filbert carefully avoided certain quarters, where there were surviving witnesses to the Holocaust, and he insisted that the production car that took him from his hotel to the studio and back stick to the same route every day; otherwise, he panicked and was afraid the driver might be attempting to abduct him.(25) The interpreter on set, Ursula Langmann, relates a very different and telling story. She was responsible not only for translating between Filbert and the largely French crew (only Thomas Harlan and Heike Geschonneck spoke German) but also for taking care of Filbert on and off the set, including picking him up from his hotel on the Rue Kepler in the morning, driving him back to the hotel in the evening, eating with him, attending costume fittings, etc.(26) One Saturday, Langmann had to accompany Filbert to a costume fitting at a tailors in the 9th arrondissement in Paris, where the costume designer had ordered a couple of suits for the film shoot. Afterwards, around lunch- time, Filbert was hungry and wanted to eat something. Langmann suggested various restaurants at more conventional tourist locations in Paris in order that they could leave that particular quarter of the city as soon as possible. The reason for her desire to go elsewhere was that at the time around the cabaret music hall Folies Bergère there were predominantly restaurants belonging to Tunisian or Moroccan Jews and Langmann wanted to reach what she termed ‘neutral ground’ with Filbert. As Filbert was a little hard of hearing and therefore spoke very loudly, the thought was anathema to Langmann that Filbert might trumpet some- thing about his past in one of the restaurants. Yet Filbert, ‘stubborn’ as he was, could not be persuaded to eat elsewhere. The two of them ended up in a Jewish couscous restaurant, where the food was admittedly very tasty but where Langmann soon lost her appetite at the site of the large families gathered there on the Sabbath, unaware of who was sitting at the neighbouring table. Eventually, Langmann asked Filbert if he knew where they had ended up: he, of course, knew that the restaurant was run by North African Jews and that he was surrounded first and foremost by Jewish families, eating their lunch. Yet this did not bother Filbert in the slightest: ‘No qualms, not the least sense of guilt . . . In his eyes, it had nothing whatsoever to do with him or his past.(27)

    In the film Wundkanal itself, ‘Dr S.’, a war criminal, is kidnapped by a group of four young people, heirs to Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof, and imprisoned in a room filled with mirrors and monitors, where he is constantly confronted with his own image. The four voices, belonging to the unseen kidnappers, one of whom speaks English (the American film- maker Robert Kramer) and one of whom is a woman (Heike Geschonneck), interrogate him in a mock trial scenario, force him to pass judgement on himself and attempt to elicit a confession of guilt. Ultimately, whereas the prisoner is released, the film ends with the four kidnappers lying dead on the floor, evidently in reference to the fate of the four RAF members in Stammheim: Baader, Meinhof (or, alternatively, Irmgard Möller, who survived the night of 18 October 1977), Gudrun Ensslin and Jan-Carl Rasspe. Harlan dedicated the film to the memory of Giangiacomo Feltrinelli,(28) the Italian publisher and left-wing revolution- ary who had financed his research on Nazi perpetrators and their post-war careers. The release of Dr S. also prefigures Harlan’s advocacy of and admiration for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission created by Nelson Mandela and established in South Africa after the abolition of apartheid. Harlan later noted, ‘The truth that must no longer be con- cealed has the greatest power.’ He contemplated what might have hap- pened, had the National Socialists testified before a truth commission: it would have created in German society an awareness of the crimes com- mitted. A truth commission would have contrasted significantly with the criminal courts, before which the perpetrators felt compelled to deny their complicity.(29) Historical scholarship on National Socialist crimes would surely have benefitted immeasurably from a conception of justice that prioritised truth over guilt.

    The film Wundkanal mixes fact and fiction to such an extent that it is unclear to the viewer which is which. Filbert is mentioned for the first time during the opening credits, which include the following text (in English):

    DR ALFRED SELBERT ALIAS PAULSSEN ALIAS GRODNOW
    BORN SEPT. 8, 1906 AT HEIDELBERG (W. GERMANY)
    FORMER CHIEF SS INTELLIGENCE DEPT. 6.
    NOW IN LA PAZ, BOLIVIA, DIRECTOR SINCE 1971
    FEDERAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY B.N.D. (W. GERMANY)
    LOCAL REPRESENTATIVE.(30)

    Filbert had, of course, lived for the first six years after the war under the name ‘Dr Alfred Selbert’ and this was the man – thus, in effect, himself – whom he was now playing in Wundkanal. He was indeed born on 8 September, though in the year 1905, not 1906. Later in the film, however, Filbert – as Selbert – correctly states that he was born on 8 September 1905. Though his mother had been born in Heidelberg, Filbert himself was born in Darmstadt. Filbert was not the former chief of SS intelligence, department 6, but rather the former deputy chief of Office VI of the RSHA. The Bolivian connection was potentially also not far from the truth, depending on whether one believes Harlan’s afore- mentioned claim that Filbert had worked for the CIA in Bolivia after the war. Without any hard evidence to this effect, however, his assertion must be regarded as tenuous. Although Filbert was still in Berlin’s Tegel Prison in 1971, the holding of a function in the BND either prior to or subse- quent to his imprisonment is not in itself entirely unlikely in light of the high number of former Nazis in the BND(31) and also the close working relationship between the CIA and the BND (including its forerunner, the Gehlen Organisation).(32)

    The slight inconsistencies contained in the information given are not accidental, they are not errors. They are, on the contrary, intentional and have the purpose of disorientating the viewer, of persuading the viewer to accept the possibility that everything he/she sees is factual or, conversely, that nothing is factual at all. The very real continuity of Nazi biographies in the Federal Republic of Germany is merged with the possibility of foul play in the Stammheim deaths but also with clearly fictitious elements such as the figure of Colonel Humphrey Ian Donald Calleigh, director of the ‘Office of Peace Planning & Security’ of British Military Intelligence in Hertfordshire, England.(33) This approach allows Harlan to play with the accepted conventions of documentary filmmaking and to straddle the boundary between fact and fiction.

    When Filbert is mentioned for a second time during the opening credits, it is his real name that is used:

    PAUL WERNER(34) ALFRED FILBERT PAUL WERNER THE AUTHORS OF THE 1939–1945 GENOCIDE NOW STILL ACTIVE & INVOLVED IN THE GERMAN PRISON KILLINGS (1977 . . .)(35)

    The 1977 ‘German prison killings’ were, of course, the aforementioned deaths of the RAF leadership in Stuttgart’s Stammheim Prison. Just over halfway through the film, Dr S. is instructed to read an abridged but verbatim passage on the liquidation of the Vitebsk ghetto from the actual judgement against Filbert from 1962.(36) The only alteration made to the passage is that the words ‘Dr Filbert’ are replaced with ‘Dr S.’, though Filbert is on the verge of saying ‘Dr Selbert’ (!) and only at the last moment corrects himself. Even Greiffenberger is mentioned by name during the reading of the passage. Confronted with his own image on another monitor, Dr S. concludes the passage by removing his spectacles and saying: ‘Yes, what can I say to that? All sorts of things could be said to that.’(37)

  • The Making of an SS Killer - The Life of Colonel Alfred Filbert 1905–1990 - 1
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    Alex J. Kay,
    Institute of Contemporary History, Berlin
    Chapter 10 - ‘A chess game of egos’
    Wundkanal and aftermath, 1975–1990

    Following his release from prison for health reasons in June 1975, Filbert lived for another fifteen years. He returned to 49 #Bamberger_Straße in West #Berlin (#Schöneberg), where he would remain until his death in 1990.(1) In 1983, Filbert’s pre-1945 biography was the subject of a request for information submitted by the District Administration for State Security in Rostock in East Germany to the Main Department IX/11 within the Ministry of State Security, commonly known as the Stasi, in East Berlin.(2) The request was made in the context of the ‘processing of operative material’ ( Bearbeitung eines operativen Materials ).(3) The backdrop to the request appears to have been the fact that the District Administration for State Security in Rostock had become aware ‘that in the FRG a film is being made with the professional advice of Fillbert ( sic )’ ( daß in der BRD ein Film unter Fachberatung des Fillbert gefertigt wird ).(4) In fact, Filbert was providing much more than specialist advice: he was acting in the lead role.

    The former SD officer, RSHA member and Italy specialist Karl Haß – whose wife had officially declared him dead in 1953 – had played small supporting roles in various feature films during the 1960s, including a bit part in Luchino Visconti’s La caduta degli dei (‘The Damned’, 1969), generally as a member of the SA or the SS.(5) The only time a convicted Nazi mass murderer has played a mass murderer in a feature film, how- ever, was in 1984 in the film Wundkanal – Hinrichtung für vier Stimmen (‘Gun Wound – Execution for Four Voices’). According to the film’s closing credits, it stars ‘Alfred F.’ in the lead role of ‘Dr S.’.(6) This was Alfred Filbert, wearing a toupee and, intermittently, a false moustache. The character’s name was no coincidence. Filbert had once before been known under the name ‘Dr S.’: Dr Selbert, the name he had used for the first six years after the war. In Wundkanal , Filbert was in many ways playing himself. The director and producer was Thomas Harlan, son of Veit Harlan, director of the notorious Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda film Jud Süß (‘The Jew Süss’). Harlan junior devoted his life, initially in the Polish archives, later in films and novels, to tracking down and uncovering mid-level Nazi perpetrators and their post-war careers; men like his father, men like Filbert. He ultimately brought criminal charges against more than 2,000 Nazi perpetrators who were still alive. As Harlan stated in an interview after the release of Wundkanal : ‘The film is a work about the plural; I merely start with my [own] father’.(8)

    The shooting of the film Wundkanal began in 1981, initially in Hungary with the actor Erwin Geschonneck, a former concentration camp prisoner and one of East Germany’s most celebrated actors. According to Harlan, the West German embassy managed to have the film shoot stopped, however, on the grounds that Harlan and his crew were allegedly engaging in propaganda for terrorism.(9) The abrupt ter- mination of the shoot led to a legal dispute between the production firm Quasar Film and Hungarofilm.(10) After returning to East Berlin, Harlan decided to shoot Wundkanal with a real perpetrator in the lead role: Alfred Filbert.(11) Harlan and Heike Geschonneck, the fourth wife of the aforementioned Erwin Geschonneck and executive producer(12) of Wundkanal , came across Filbert’s name whilst at the Central Office of the Judicial Authorities of the Federal States for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes ( Zentrale Stelle der Landesjustizverwaltungen zur Aufklärung nationalsozialistischer Verbrechen ) in the German city of Ludwigsburg.(13) This, however, was not the first time that Harlan had been acquainted with the name Alfred Filbert: two decades earlier, Harlan had corresponded with the Chief Public Prosecutor attached to the Regional Court in Berlin, regarding the trial against Filbert. The Public Prosecutor’s Office had been at the time in the process of pre- paring the indictment against Filbert and his co-defendants.(14) Harlan met with Filbert over coffee and cake in the latter’s West Berlin apartment at 49 Bamberger Straße. According to Harlan, Filbert

    [. . .] was touched by a visit from the son of Harlan, the son of the great consoler, and it was already clear on this first day of our acquaintance that he was prepared to speak; whether [he was also prepared] to act, this no-one could know. And later it lasted two weeks before we noticed that he had taken the bait and wanted to become an actor; it was on the day when we are standing in the desert with him and he is prepared to hold the pistol how Andreas Baader is supposed to have held it to his neck, but could not have held it. (15)

    This comment (see Figure 24) was a reference to Harlan’s theory that the leadership of the radical left-wing RAF had not in fact committed suicide in Stuttgart’s Stammheim Prison on the night of 18 October 1977 but instead had been murdered. Baader, for example, was supposed to have shot himself in cell 719 in the base of the neck so that the bullet exited through his forehead. Tests indicated, however, that it was virtually impossible for a person to hold and fire a pistol in such a way at the distance necessary to cause the powder burns found on the skin of Baader’s neck. Harlan concluded that one’s own arm is too short.(16) His conclusions are reflected in the opening credits of Wundkanal : ‘IN THE NECK AT A DISTANCE LONGER THAN A MAN’S ARM / AT A DISTANCE OF 30.5 CENTIMETERS FROM THE WOUND / THE BULLET BEING FIRED INTO THE NECK BY STRANGERS’.(17) In Wundkanal , Dr S. compels another man, whom he has just finished interrogating, to shoot himself in precisely the same way in which Baader was supposed to have killed himself. The title of the film, Wundkanal , is based on this idea: the ‘Wundkanal’, or wound channel, is the trajectory taken by a bullet in a body (in this case, a skull) between the point of entry and the point of exit.(18) On other occasions, Harlan argued that the RAF leadership had indeed killed themselves, though only ‘in order to prove that they were to be murdered’.(19) One of the principal concerns of the RAF was also Harlan’s principal concern and the real subject of the film: the continuity of Nazi biographies in the Federal Republic of Germany and of murder in the name of the state. Harlan was, by his own admission, less concerned with the murder of Jews than with the murderers of Jews.(20)

  • Thomas S. Kuhn, La vérité scientifique n’a pas besoin d’être unique, 1995
    https://sniadecki.wordpress.com/2022/11/16/kuhn-itw

    Thomas S. Kuhn (1922-1996) a enseigné successivement aux universités Harvard, Berkeley et Princeton, avant de terminer sa carrière au Massachusetts Institute of Technology de Cambridge (Massachusetts). Après avoir consacré en 1957 un travail à La Révolution copernicienne (le Livre de poche, Biblio Essais, 1992), il a publié en 1962 un livre, La Structure des révolutions scientifiques (Flammarion, 1983), qui a durablement marqué l’histoire et la philosophie des sciences.

    Une conception discontinuiste du développement de la connaissance se trouve au centre de ce dernier ouvrage. Loin d’être linéaire, le progrès scientifique s’accomplit par « bonds » et par « coupures ». Les plus importantes de ces mutations correspondent à des moments où la communauté des chercheurs remet en question les cadres fondamentaux de sa vision du monde, où elle passe d’un « paradigme » à un autre – le nouveau paradigme ayant pour fonction de définir l’espace des croyances et des recherches possibles jusqu’à ce qu’il soit, à son tour, remis en cause par l’effet de nouvelles découvertes.

    En rompant ainsi avec l’idée, chère à Popper comme à la tradition classique, selon laquelle la science se rapprocherait inéluctablement d’une vérité préexistante et unique, Kuhn a souligné ce que les connaissances scientifiques d’une époque doivent au langage, à la culture, bref à la convention. Il n’a cependant cessé de lutter contre certaines interprétations « extrémistes » de sa pensée, ainsi qu’en témoignent les textes réunis dans La Tension essentielle (Gallimard, 1990).

    Dans l’entretien qu’il nous a accordé, Thomas S. Kuhn, en jetant un regard sur l’ensemble de son œuvre, effectue le bilan d’un demi-siècle de recherches.

    #Thomas_Kuhn #philosophie #histoire #épistémologie #science #langage

    • Thomas Kuhn et la notion de paradigme scientifique | Pierre Macherey
      https://philolarge.hypotheses.org/annee-2007-2008

      Si le livre de Kuhn a été perçu, à juste titre, comme radicalement innovant et a fait en conséquence l’objet de violentes polémiques, c’est d’abord [...] en raison de son caractère expressément réactif et polémique : il remettait en cause sur le fond une conception de la connaissance scientifique, reçue jusqu’alors dans le monde anglo-saxon comme une évidence, dont les maîtres mots étaient neutralité et progressivité sur fond de continuité. Neutralité : Kuhn refuse de considérer que l’investigation scientifique puisse se dérouler dans un champ non balisé, non orienté, non préalablement structuré selon certaines lignes de forces qui, en lui ouvrant certaines voies, lui en ferment d’autres en mettant en place tout un système d’intérêts préférentiels et d’interdits, donc des contraintes. Progressivité continue : Kuhn nie que la science, si on peut dire qu’elle « avance », le fasse de manière cumulative en additionnant les unes aux autres des connaissances produites chacune pour elle-même et dont la valeur de vérité ou de non falsifiabilité ait été établie isolément, sans tenir compte de la relation qu’elles entretiennent avec d’autres positions de savoir auxquelles elles sont organiquement liées. Ces deux refus relèvent d’une logique commune : la conception cumulative du développement des connaissances suppose que celui-ci s’effectue sur la base d’atomes de savoir flottant librement dans le vide, ce qui est la condition pour que ceux-ci puissent faire l’objet d’un examen rigoureux et lucide, exempt de tout risque de confusion et de préjugé, comme l’exige un idéal de scientificité qui exclut toute compromission dans sa recherche de la vérité. Or l’image de la science bâtie à partir de cet idéal est, selon Kuhn, complètement coupée des réalités du travail de la connaissance, qui dépend de conditions dont rien ne permet d’affirmer qu’elles soient de part en part rationnelles, au sens d’une rationalité réfléchie et consciente, relevant des seules exigences de la logique et de l’expérimentation. Etant reconnue l’inadaptation de cette représentation pure et désintéressée de la science, il faut en conséquence lui substituer une tout autre conception : celle, selon Kuhn, d’une connaissance qui procède de manière, non analytique ou fragmentaire, mais synthétique ou globalisante, en insérant à chacune de ses époques ses actes de pensée et ses procédures expérimentales dans des « paradigmes » ayant chacun leur nécessité propre, et en conséquence exerçant une contrainte spécifique sur les acteurs de la connaissance, les savants ; ce dont il résulte que, si la science progresse, elle ne parvient à le faire qu’en passant de paradigme en paradigme : or ce passage ne peut s’effectuer par transition continue, mais suppose des crises par lesquelles les paramètres du savoir sont tous ensemble, et non séparément, remis en cause, ce qui est la condition pour que s’opèrent les grandes « révolutions scientifiques » qui jalonnent l’histoire des connaissances humaines sur le monde, révolutions dont les grands exemples sont la révolution copernicienne (à laquelle Kuhn avait consacré tout un ouvrage avant d’élaborer et de publier sa théorie générale des révolutions scientifiques), la révolution newtonienne et la révolution einsteinienne.

      http://philolarge.hypotheses.org/files/2017/09/19-03-2008.pdf

    • Avons-nous besoin de « paradigmes » ? | Bruno Latour
      https://books.openedition.org/pressesmines/164?lang=fr

      On lui a attribué l’idée de briser la Science en morceaux incommensurables et d’en faire une aventure « purement sociale » au cours de laquelle des révolutionnaires finiraient par renverser des paradigmes en s’appuyant sur les anomalies, les contre-exemples, les déchets des paradigmes contraires. On a fait de lui le père de ce monstre qu’est « la construction sociale des sciences ». Jamais accusation ne fut plus injuste, car toute sa vie il détesta le sociologisme. Le malentendu s’explique pourtant facilement. Kuhn utilise souvent des métaphores psychologiques assez calamiteuses, comme celle de ces dessins dans lesquels on peut voir alternativement une femme au miroir ou une tête de mort. On a cru que les paradigmes opéraient comme des vues du monde, des interprétations toutes justes, toutes fausses, d’un monde à jamais inaccessible dans lesquelles s’obstinaient aveuglément des scientifiques bornés jusqu’à ce qu’ils soient remplacés par d’autres, formés à d’autres regards, d’autres écoles. Bref, on a fait du paradigme une sorte de prison derrière les barreaux de laquelle des chercheurs regardent la réalité sans pouvoir jamais la saisir.

      Or, le paradigme, malgré les exemples empruntés à la psychologie de la Forme, n’est pas une métaphore optique. Un paradigme n’est pas une vision du monde. Il n’est pas une interprétation et encore moins une représentation. Il est la pratique, le modus operandi qui autorise des faits nouveaux à émerger. Il ressemble plus à une route qui permet d’accéder à un site expérimental, qu’à un filtre qui colorerait à jamais les données. Un paradigme agit plutôt à la manière du tarmac d’un aéroport. Il rend possible, si l’on peut dire, « l’atterrissage » de certains faits. On comprend mieux l’importance pour Kuhn de tous les aspects sociaux, collectifs, institutionnels de ces paradigmes. Rien de toute cette matière n’allait affaiblir, à ses yeux, la vérité des sciences, leur commensurabilité, leur accès à la réalité. Au contraire, en insistant sur les aspects matériels de ce qui permet aux faits « d’atterrir », on allait comprendre aussi, d’après lui, pourquoi les sciences avancent d’une façon aussi conservatrice, aussi lente, aussi visqueuse. Pas plus qu’un hydravion ne peut atterrir à Orly, un quanta ne peut « se poser » chez Newton. Inutile de s’arracher les cheveux en prétendant que les paradigmes sont devenus incommensurables et que l’unité des sciences a été brisée. Non, mesurons plutôt le coût fantastique d’une modification de paradigme. Kuhn incarne les théories au point que l’on pourrait utiliser, pour suivre leur histoire, des métaphores techniques plutôt que mentales.

  • Italian fascists quoting #Samora_Machel and #Sankara

    The use of Marxist-inspired arguments, often distorted, to support racist or nationalist political positions, is known as “rossobrunismo” (red-brownism) in Italy.

    Those following immigration politics in Europe, especially Italy, may have noticed the appropriation of the words of Marxist and anti-imperialist heroes and intellectuals by the new nationalist and racist right to support their xenophobic or nationalist arguments. From Samora Machel (Mozambican independence leader), Thomas Sankara (Burkinabe revolutionary), Che Guevara, Simone Weil (a French philosopher influenced by Marxism and anarchism), to Italian figures like Sandro Pertini an anti-fascist partisan during World War II, later leader of the Socialist Party and president of the Italian republic in the 1980s, or Pier Paolo Pasolini (influential communist intellectual).

    The use of Marxist-inspired arguments, often distorted or decontextualized, to support racist, traditionalist or nationalist political positions, is referred to as rossobrunismo (red-brownism) in Italy.

    In Italy it got so bad, that a group of writers—some gathered in Wu Ming collective—made it their work to debunk these attempts. They found, for example, that a sentence shared on several nationalist online pages and profiles—attributed to Samora Machel—that condemned immigration as a colonial and capitalist tool to weaken African societies, was fake news.

    It also contaminated political debate beyond the internet: During his electoral campaign, Matteo Salvini, leader of the anti-immigration party Lega and current minister for internal affairs in Italy’s government, explicitly mentioned the Marxist concept of “reserve army of labor” to frame the ongoing migration across the Mediterranean as a big conspiracy to import cheap labor from Africa and weaken Italy’s white working class. As for who benefits from cheap, imported labor (as Afro-Italian activists Yvan Sagnet and Aboubakar Soumahoro have pointed out), Salvini says very little.

    The typical representative of red-brownism is Diego Fusaro, a philosopher who first became known, about a decade ago, for a book on the revival of Marxism in contemporary political thought. More recently, he promoted through his social media profiles and collaborations with far-right webzines like Il Primato Nazionale (published by neo-fascist party Casa Pound), a confused version of an anti-capitalist critique aggressively targeting not only the liberal left, but also feminist, LGBT, anti-racist activists and pro-migrant organizations. Fusaro has theorized that immigration is part of a “process of third-worldization” of Europe, where “masses of new slaves willing to do anything in order to exist, and lacking class consciousness and any memory of social rights” are deported from Africa. As if collective action, social movements and class-based politics never existed south of the Sahara.

    Yet, the appropriation of pan-Africanist thinkers and politicians like Machel and Sankara brings this kind of manipulation to a more paradoxical level. What could motivate the supporters of a xenophobic party, whose representatives have in the past advocated ethnic cleansing, used racial slurs against a black Italian government minister, or campaigned for the defense of the “white race,” to corroborate their anti-immigration stance through (often false) quotations by Machel or Sankara?

    To make this sense of this, it is useful to consider the trajectory of Kemi Seba, a Franco-Beninese activist who has sparked controversies in the French-speaking world for quite some time, and has only recently started to be quoted in Italian online discussions and blogs.

    Initially associated with the French branch of the American Nation of Islam, Kemi Seba has been active since the early 2000s in different social movements and his own associations, all positioned across the spectrum of radical Afrocentrism. In the polarized French debate, traditionally wary of even moderate expressions of identity politics, Kemi Seba’s radical statements predictably created public outcry and earned him the accusations of racial hatred—for which he has been repeatedly found guilty. An advocate of racial separatism (or ethno-differentialisme, as he defined it), he has quoted among his sources Senegalese historian Cheikh Anta Diop, from whom he took inspiration for his “kemetic” ideology claiming a black heritage for ancient Egyptian culture, and Marcus Garvey, whose ideas he reformulated in his call for all the black people living in France and in Europe to return to the African motherland—while classifying those remaining as “traitors.”

    While one would expect white oppressors to be his main target, Kemi Seba’s vehement attacks have often been directed toward other black activists and personalities living in France, accusing them of promoting integration or collaborating with the white system (and often qualifying them as macaques, monkeys, or as nègres-alibis, “negroes-alibis”). In recent years, however, he has declared he would abandon his initial supremacist positions to embrace a broader pan-African stance, and moved his main residence first to Senegal, later to Benin. Now addressing a predominantly West African audience, he has co-opted personalities, such as the late Burkinabe president and revolutionary Thomas Sankara—still the most powerful political reference for the youth in Francophone Africa—among his claimed sources of inspiration. He has also endorsed the struggle against the CFA France—an ongoing critical reflection that was started by the work of economists such as Ndongo Samba Sylla and Kako Nubupko, well before Seba started campaigning about the issue. In August 2017, he burned a CFA banknote in public in Dakar—an illegal act under the Senegalese law—and was briefly detained before being deported from the country.

    The ambiguous relationship between Kemi Seba’s ideology and the far right has a long history, especially in France. Understandably, his initial racial separatism and his call for a voluntary repatriation of all blacks to Africa constituted an appealing counterpart for French white racists committed to fight the possibility of a multiracial and multicultural France. Kemi Seba, on his side, repeatedly hinted at possible collaborations with white nationalists: in 2007, he declared:

    My dream is to see whites, Arabs and Asians organizing themselves to defend their own identity. We fight against all those monkeys (macaques) who betray their origins. (…) Nationalists are the only whites I like. They don’t want us, and we don’t want them.

    Some years later, in 2012, commenting the electoral growth of Greek neo-nazi party Golden Dawn in a radio program, he argued:

    I want people to understand that today there is nothing to win by remaining in France, and everything to win by remaining in Africa. And the best solution for this… unfortunately, black people only awaken when they realize that they are in danger, when they are slapped in the face. (…) Black people are unfortunately slow on the uptake, they understand only when there is bestiality, brutality. So, maybe, if we had a movement similar to Greece’s Golden Dawn, established in France, and if they threw black people in the sea, if they raped some, then maybe someone would understand that it is not so nice to remain in France and would return to their fucking country, to their motherland the African continent.

    His supporters later qualified his statements as simple provocations, but Seba continued to be a favorite guest and interlocutor for far-right groups. For example, the webzine Egalité et Reconciliation, founded by Alain Soral—a well-known personality of French red-brownism who shifted from his juvenile communist engagement to later support for Front National and has been condemned for homophobic and anti-Semitic statements—has often provided a platform for Seba’s declarations. In 2006, Seba praised young white nationalist activists in a long interview with Novopress, an online publication by Bloc Identitaire. The latter is a white nationalist movement which works to popularize the conspiracy theory of the “great replacement”—an alleged plan of “reverse colonialism” to replace demographically the white majority in Europe with non-white migrants and which inspired anti-semitic white nationalists in the US. Bloc Identitaire recently formed extra-legal patrols in order to stop asylum seekers from crossing the border between Italy and France.

    In 2008, Seba’s association organized a tiny demonstration against French military presence abroad with Droite Socialiste, a small group whose members were later involved in shootings and found guilty of illegal possession of weapons and explosive material. Their hideout was also full of Adolf Hitler’s books and other neo-Nazi propaganda.

    Relatively unknown until recently on the other side of the Alps, Seba has made his appearance on Italian websites and Facebook profiles in recent months. Since Lega’s promotion to national government in coalition with the Five Star Movement, the country has become the avant-garde of an attempt to connect different reactionary political projects—rossobrunismo, anti-EU and anti-global sovranismo (nationalism), white nationalism, neo-Fascism and others—and has attracted the attention of globally known ideologues, such as Trump’s former counselor Steve Bannon and pro-Putin populist philosopher Alexander Dugin (who, not by chance, organized a meeting with Seba in December 2017). Small webzines like Oltre la Linea and L’Intellettuale Dissidente, which following Dugin’s example mix pro-Putin positions with an anti-liberal critique and traditionalist nostalgia, inspiring attacks against feminism, anti-racism and “immigrationism.” Collectively, they have dedicated space to Seba’s ideas and interviewed him, profiting from his visit to Rome in July 2018.

    Invited by a group of supporters in Italy, Seba visited a center hosting asylum seekers and gave a speech where, amidst launching broadsides against the EU and African elites who are impoverishing Africa (thus forcing young people to try their luck as migrants in Europe), he slipped in a peculiar endorsement to Italy’s xenophobic minister of internal affairs:

    Matteo Salvini [he then asked people in the audience who started booing when they heard the name to let him finish] defends his people, but he should know that we will defend our people too!

    He repeated this sentiment in an interview published later on a nationalist blog. Seba basically endorsed the ongoing anti-NGO campaign voiced by representatives of the Italian government. The interviewer suggested to Seba:

    Salvini’s battle against boats owned by NGOs, which transport migrants from Lybian shores to Italian harbors, sometimes funded by Soros’ Open Society, reflects your [Kemi Seba’s] same struggles for the emancipation from those Western humanitarian associations that operate in the African continent and enclose you all in a permanent state of psychological and moral submission.

    “Yes, I realize this very well, we have the same problem,” replied Seba.

    Attacks against the NGOs organizing rescue operations in the Mediterranean have multiplied in the Italian political debate since last year. The Five Star Movement started a campaign against what they called the “sea taxis” and the previous government tried to force them to sign a code of conduct imposing the presence of police personnel on their boats. NGOs have been alternatively accused of complicity with Libyan smugglers (but neither the investigation of a parliamentary committee, nor judges in different Sicilian courts, could find evidence for this allegation).

    More broadly, a dysfunctional regime governing migration flows, and the bungled reception of asylum seekers, allows such positions to take root in the Italian political sphere. What is often obscured, though, is that such a dysfunctional regime was originated by the restrictive policies of the Italian government and the European Union, through the abandonment of a state-sponsored rescue program and the externalization of border control to Libya (where media reported the dehumanizing treatment reserved to Sub-Saharan migrants) and other third countries.

    Echoing Seba, Italian right-wing bloggers and opinion-makers make increasing use of anti-imperialist quotations—for example, by Thomas Sankara—to fuel this anti-NGO backlash and denounce the plundering of Africa’s wealth and resources by multinational corporations in consort with venal governments, abetted by the development industry. By the right’s bizarre logic, stopping migration flows to Europe would be a part of the same coordinated strategy to reverse Africa’s impoverishment by Europe. This use not only overlooks the fact that African migration to Europe is a tiny portion of the massive migration flows taking place across the whole planet, but also that intra-African migration is significantly more common.

    It also distorts Thomas Sankara’s critical views of development, which he formulated at a time when aid mainly consisted of bilateral contributions and loans from international financial institutions, rather than NGO-sponsored interventions. And, ultimately, it generates confusion between the critique of the classical development sector—which is fundamental and has been developed for a long time by dependency theory and other schools of critical scholarship—and an analysis of the rescue sector: indeed, most NGOs currently operating in the Mediterranean are associations created in the last few years with the explicit goal of reducing mortality along the Libyan or the Aegean routes. They have never participated in development projects in sub-Saharan Africa.

    What would Samora Machel and Thomas Sankara think today of the so-called “refugee crisis” and of the populist and xenophobic reactions it has provoked all over Europe? White nationalists think that they would be on their side. But what we know from their writings is that their revolutionary politics was never based on an exclusionary form of nationalism, let alone on racial separatism. Rather, it was associated with an analysis of the production of material inequalities and exploitation at the global level, and with class-based internationalism.

    This is clearly articulated in many speeches pronounced by Sankara, for example in his frequently quoted intervention on foreign debt at the African Union summit in July 1987 (a few months before he was murdered), where he declared that “by refusing to pay, we do not adopt a bellicose attitude, but rather a fraternal attitude to speak the truth. After all, popular masses in Europe are not opposed to popular masses in Africa: those who want to exploit Africa are the same who exploit Europe. We have a common enemy.”

    While many representatives of red-brownism and the new right would probably declare that they subscribe to this principle on paper, most of them are currently engaged in defusing any possibility of a class-based critique of capitalism, to which they prefer sovranismo and its emphasis on renewed national sovereignties. Furthermore, they are more or less directly legitimizing the action of a government that capitalizes on the anxieties of the white majority and of the impoverishment of middle and lower classes, building a consensus around xenophobia, racial discrimination and policies of strict border control, no matter the consequences. The creative use, made by the African youth, of Sankara’s thought in reclaiming and obtaining political change, such as in the Burkinabe revolution in 2014, is a demonstration of the legacy of his thinking as an effective tool for emancipatory struggles—a precious legacy that anti-racists should protect from the re-appropriation and manipulation attempted by the European racist right.

    https://africasacountry.com/2018/09/twisting-pan-africanism-to-promote-anti-africanism
    #Italie #fascisme #marxisme #rossobrunismo #racisme #nationalisme #anti-impérialisme #Thomas_Sankara #Che_Guevara #Simone_Weil #Sandro_Pertini #Pier_Paolo_Pasolini #rouge #brun #Salvini #Matteo_Salvini #Diego_Fusaro #Casa_Pound #extrême_droite #extrême_gauche
    ping @cede @isskein

    • Il rossobrunismo

      Perché anche un giornalista noto come Andrea Scanzi [1] si è soffermato sul tema del rossobrunismo, descrivendolo peraltro impropriamente come un neologismo? Approfittiamone per fare chiarezza da un punto di vista marxista sul tema, già trattato tangenzialmente in altre occasioni, come ad esempio nel passo seguente [2]:

      «si è assistito in effetti anche a questa sottile strategia messa in atto negli ultimi anni in Italia: alcuni settori della “sinistra”, al fine di legittimare il prosieguo di un eclettismo ideologico “liberal”, hanno iniziato a tacciare di rossobrunismo tutti coloro che ponevano la contraddizione antimperialista come la contraddizione principale.

      Ci sono cioè settori della “sinistra” che si presentano come “progressisti”, talvolta perfino come “comunisti”, ma alla prova dei fatti utilizzano la questione antifascista come prioritaria su ogni altro aspetto (antimperialismo, anticapitalismo, lotta di classe), approdando spesso e volentieri ad una posizione morbida, se non conciliante, con il PD, con il centro-sinistra e con le strutture e sovrastrutture imperialiste (prime tra tutte NATO, UE, euro), in nome dell’unità contro le “destre”.»

      ORIGINE STORICA E POLITICA

      Negli anni ’70 si diceva “nazimaoista” quel settore del radicalismo di destra che univa suggestioni nazionaliste e sociali ad una lettura spiritualista dell’esperienza maoista e stalinista.

      Un ulteriore precedente storico-politico è il concetto di “nazional-bolscevico” o “nazional-comunista”, nato in Germania nel primo dopoguerra e usato sia da una branca dell’estrema destra rivoluzionario-conservatrice sia dai marxisti del KAPD di Amburgo, fautori entrambi di una convergenza strategica fra nazionalisti rivoluzionari e comunisti contro il “nuovo ordine europeo” uscito a Versailles. Da notare che il KAPD fu poi criticato da Lenin per questa strategia.

      Il termine “rossobruno” invece, come viene spiegato da Matteo Luca Andriola nella nuova edizione de La Nuova Destra in Europa. Il populismo e il pensiero di Alain de Benoist [3], nasce nel 1992 in Russia coniato dai giornalisti vicini all’entourage di Boris El’cin per screditare Gennadij Zjuganov, leader comunista russo a capo del Fronte di salvezza nazionale, coalizione patriottica antiliberista guidata dal PCFR a cui si aggregheranno piccoli soggetti patriottici e nazionalisti fra cui il piccolo Fronte nazionalbolscevico il cui leader era Eduard Limonov [4] e l’ideologo l’eurasiatista Aleksandr Dugin.

      ACCUSATORI E ACCUSATI ODIERNI

      Oggi, in Italia, assistiamo ad una deconcettualizzazione del termine e al suo uso spregiudicatamente propagandistico. Rossobruno è etichetta dispregiativa con cui liberali, libertari e “ex comunisti” convertitisi al globalismo e all’atlantismo delegittimano nel dibattito democratico i marxisti-leninisti, i socialisti internazionalisti [5] e la sinistra sovranista costituzionale [6].

      Di fatto le principali derive revisioniste del nostro tempo (apertura all’identity politics di stampo americano, al cosmopolitismo senza radici e all’immigrazionismo borghese, utopie di “riforma dell’Unione Europa dall’interno” e anacronistici “fronti popolari” con la sinistra borghese) vengono giustificate proprio con il pretesto della lotta al rossobrunismo.

      I rossobruni veri e propri quindi non esistono? Esistono sì, e non sono pochi, ma il conflitto di cui sopra li riguarda solo saltuariamente e incidentalmente. Il conflitto vero, infatti, è quello tra marxisti/socialisti e sinistra neoliberale/antimarxista (ovvero la sinistra oggi rappresentata in Parlamento, e anche una parte di quella extraparlamentare).

      LA DEFINIZIONE DI FUSARO

      Diego Fusaro [7] ha definito pubblicamente così il rossobrunismo:

      «Rossobrunismo è la classificazione di ogni possibilità di resistere al mondialismo, mentre l’unica resistenza possibile può scaturire solo da una dinamica di deglobalizzazione, difesa nazionale e risovranizzazione dell’economia. Rossobruno è chiunque che, consapevole che l’antagonismo odierno si basi sulla verticale contrapposizione tra servi e signori e non su vane divisioni orizzontali, oggi rigetti destra e sinistra. Pertanto, viene bollato come gli estremi di esse. Oggi chiunque propugni un’economia di mercato sovrana, viene automaticamente chiamato Rossobruno. La classe dirigente è tale non soltanto in termini economici e sociali, ma anche e soprattutto nella concezione simbolica del linguaggio. Previa una neolingua del modernismo postmoderno, il pensiero unico politicamente corretto, viene demonizzata ogni possibilità del “Pensare altrimenti”, di dissentire dal pensiero unico. Ci convincono così a orientarci come masse che legittimano il loro dominio. Dissentire da ciò è il reato di Rossobrunismo.»

      Ci sono elementi di verità in questa analisi, ma l’esposizione è carente, inadeguata e imprecisa; tanto meno sono condivisibili e accettabili la collaborazione con alcuni settori del nazifascismo italiano [8] e le conclusioni politiche di Fusaro: avere «idee di sinistra e valori di destra» [9].

      FASCISMO & ANTIFASCISMO, DESTRA & SINISTRA

      Nell’Introduzione teorico-politica al marxismo-leninismo di In Difesa del Socialismo Reale non ho affrontato direttamente il tema del rossobrunismo, per quanto la questione sia posta in maniera abbastanza chiara al lettore attento nel paragrafo “Il nesso strutturale tra fascismo e imperialismo”, che vado a riportare integralmente:

      «Alcuni di questi attacchi inconsulti odierni riguardano ad esempio la questione posta da alcuni intellettuali autodefinitisi marxisti secondo cui occorrerebbe rinnegare la dicotomia fascismo/antifascismo in nome della costruzione di un fronte comune antimperialista e anticapitalista. Questi assunti partono dal giusto assunto che dopo il 1991 e la ripresa di egemonia delle teorie socialdemocratiche (con evidenti e grossolani cedimenti all’ideologia liberista) all’interno delle organizzazioni progressiste, le “destre” e le “sinistre”, così come sono percepite a livello popolare, abbiano sostanzialmente messo in pratiche le stesse politiche (reazionarie), giungendo ad esempio in Italia a rafforzare l’idea che tutta la politica non sia altro che un gioco di corrotti e delinquenti (la questione insomma della cosiddetta “antipolitica” e della “casta”).

      È evidente che analizzando gli ultimi 20-30 anni le sinistre socialdemocratiche siano sempre più assimilabili alle destre popolari, all’insegna di una comune accettazione del sistema capitalistico imperialista. Da tutto ciò potrebbe anche scaturire una riflessione utile sull’utilità o meno per un’organizzazione comunista di utilizzare una parola sempre più logora e deturpata come “sinistra”, ormai forse perfino più bistrattata di termini considerati vetusti (ma sempre più sconosciuti per le giovani generazioni) come “socialista” o “comunista”.

      Da ciò non deve derivare però la caduta del concetto ontologico di destra e sinistra nato con la Rivoluzione Francese, che sanciva in maniera storica la differenza antropologica tra reazionari e progressisti, tra conservatori e rivoluzionari, tra chi in definitiva guarda al bene del proprio orticello e chi invece volge lo sguardo all’interesse di tutta l’umanità.

      Questa è la stessa differenza sostanziale che vige tra fascismo e antifascismo: il primo è un’ideologia reazionaria, nazionalista e xenofobo-razzista che nulla può avere a che vedere con chi si professa comunista, il quale invece pone l’internazionalismo e quindi l’antirazzismo come uno dei suoi fondamenti necessari e costituenti verso la lotta al Capitale.

      C’è però anche un altro motivo ben più evidente che rende questa alleanza non solo impossibile ma inconcepibile. Ciò risiede nel fatto che il capitalismo ed il fascismo altro non sono che due facce della stessa medaglia. Lo insegna la storia del movimento operaio. Non è un caso che la XIII sessione plenaria del Comitato Esecutivo dell’Internazionale Comunista definisse il fascismo al potere come “la dittatura terroristica aperta degli elementi più reazionari, più sciovinisti e più imperialisti del capitale finanziario”.

      Il fascismo non è altro quindi che una mostruosa creatura partorita e sostenuta nei momenti di crisi dalla stessa borghesia per i suoi obiettivi. Gramsci lo spiega assai bene:

      “Il ‘fascismo’ è la fase preparatoria della restaurazione dello Stato, cioè di un rincrudimento della reazione capitalistica, di un inasprimento della lotta capitalistica contro le esigenze piú vitali della classe proletaria. Il fascismo è l’illegalità della violenza capitalistica: la restaurazione dello Stato è la legalizzazione di questa violenza.”

      Questo è il motivo che rende chiaro a Gramsci il fatto che “la liquidazione del fascismo deve essere la liquidazione della borghesia che lo ha creato”.

      Impossibile quindi essere antifascisti senza essere anticapitalisti, come riuscì a sentenziare in maniera quasi poetica Bertolt Brecht:

      “Coloro che sono contro il fascismo senza essere contro il capitalismo, che si lamentano della barbarie che proviene dalla barbarie, sono simili a gente che voglia mangiare la sua parte di vitello senza però che il vitello venga scannato. Vogliono mangiare il vitello, ma il sangue non lo vogliono vedere. Per soddisfarli basta che il macellaio si lavi le mani prima di servire la carne in tavola. Non sono contro i rapporti di proprietà che generano la barbarie, ma soltanto contro la barbarie. Alzano la voce contro la barbarie e lo fanno in paesi in cui esistono bensì gli stessi rapporti di proprietà, ma i macellai si lavano ancora le mani prima di servire la carne in tavola.”

      Ma nell’epoca in cui il capitalismo è nella sua fase imperialistica come si può quindi predicare l’unione con i fascisti che dell’imperialismo rappresentano l’agente più terribile? Non val la pena approfondire ulteriormente tale questione posta da settori dell’intellettualità che evidentemente nulla hanno a che spartire con il marxismo.»

      IL ROSSOBRUNISMO COME USCITA DAL CAMPO DEL COMUNISMO

      C’è un confine nella normale dialettica interna al campo comunista. Non si possono accettare pensieri nazionalisti, razzisti o in qualche pur morbida maniera “esclusivisti”. Non si può cioè pensare che i diritti debbano essere riservati eternamente solo ad alcune comunità umane, andando ad escluderne altri per criteri di etnia, religione, lingua, sesso, ecc.

      Ci sono ragioni accettabili per considerare comunista solo chi utilizza e coniuga opportunamente le categorie di patriottismo, internazionalismo, materialismo storico (e dialettico), lotta di classe, imperialismo, ecc.

      Partendo dal patrimonio (per quanto ormai semi-sconosciuto e assai scarsamente condiviso, quantomeno in Italia) del marxismo-leninismo, si può discutere su alcuni questioni tattiche, strategiche e di teoria ancora insolute; queste non sono poche e riguardano anche la dialettica e la concretizzazione dei diritti sociali e civili, oltre che le differenti caratterizzazioni nazionali al socialismo. Su questi temi i comunisti nel resto del mondo (cinesi, cubani, coreani, portoghesi, ecc.) sono molto più avanzati di noi italiani, che scontiamo ancora il retaggio dell’eurocomunismo.

      Tra i temi strategici del dibattito troviamo quelli del potere politico ed economico. Il rossobruno rifiuta la lotta di classe e considera prioritario non l’obiettivo del miglioramento sociale della classe lavoratrice, ma la difesa strategica della sovranità nazionale in un’ottica corporativa e interclassista. In questa ottica non c’è un nesso tra la sovranità nazionale e quella popolare. Si arriva così a elaborare concetti ambigui come «economia di mercato sovrana», in continuità con il mantenimento di un regime borghese. Il rossobruno insomma non propone la presa del potere politico ed economico da parte della classe lavoratrice ma nei casi migliori si limita a proporre una moderna “aristocrazia borghese” illuminata, che non mette in discussione il controllo sociale e politico dei mezzi di produzione dell’attuale classe dominante. Il “welfare state” non è implicito per il rossobruno, così come in generale alcuna forma di regime sociale avanzato. Qualora vi sia tale rivendicazione, essa non cessa di essere ambigua se non accompagnata dalla messa in discussione della struttura imperialista del proprio Paese.

      Ben diverso è il discorso del “socialismo di mercato”, ossia di un regime in cui il potere politico resta saldamente in mano alla classe lavoratrice organizzata dalla sua avanguardia, il partito comunista. Il potere economico viene in questo caso spartito consapevolmente e in spazi più o meno limitati con la borghesia nazionale non come obiettivo strategico, bensì tattico, con lo scopo di sviluppare le forze di produzione, creando ricchezza sociale che, seppur redistribuita in maniera inizialmente diseguale, è una delle condizioni concrete per il futuro passaggio al socialismo.

      Dietro la normale dialettica del dibattito democratico interno al campo marxista-leninista c’è sempre il pericolo del revisionismo, come mostra la crescita di certe correnti reazionarie nei partiti comunisti della seconda metà del ‘900: si pensi all’ala migliorista nel PCI, o alle correnti riformiste e nazionaliste rafforzatesi nel PCUS dagli anni ’70. Tale pericolo è ancora più accentuato oggi, sia per la fase di sbandamento ideologico (soprattutto europeo) conseguente al crollo del muro di Berlino, sia per i rischi insiti nel socialismo di mercato, che come abbiamo visto consentono in forme e modalità variegate il ripristino di alcuni elementi di un’economia capitalistica, con tutte le conseguenze moralmente corruttrici del caso. Il passaggio però non è automatico, ed in ultima istanza è il potere politico che ha l’ultima parola, il che ripropone il tema dell’adeguatezza ideologica del Partito come guida della classe lavoratrice.

      SUI REGIMI NAZIONALISTI DEL “TERZO MONDO”

      Un ulteriore tema di riflessione è dato da uno scambio di battute avuto con Francesco Alarico della Scala, uno dei maggiori esperti italiani della Repubblica Popolare Democratica di Corea, il quale mi ha messo in guardia da una semplificazione nell’uso del termine “nazionalismo”:

      «Nonostante i suoi ovvi limiti di classe, il nazionalismo borghese può svolgere e ha svolto una funzione progressiva nei paesi colonizzati o in genere asserviti all’imperialismo straniero, mentre ha un ruolo completamente reazionario solo nelle metropoli imperialiste.

      Proprio questo è il caso di Hitler e Mussolini, da te citati, che agirono in contesti dove la rivoluzione proletaria era, se non proprio all’ordine del giorno, una concreta possibilità che terrorizzava le classi sfruttatrici, e quindi assolsero non una funzione progressiva (di liberazione nazionale) ma regressiva (di contenimento e repressione della spinta rivoluzionaria delle masse lavoratrici), peraltro favoriti in ciò dal fatto che il movimento comunista dell’epoca non aveva saputo levare per primo la bandiera degli interessi nazionali e unire il destino della nazione alla causa del socialismo – come più volte osservato da Lenin e Stalin e contrariamente a quanto accadde vent’anni dopo.

      In altre realtà (Libia di Gheddafi, Egitto di Nasser, Iraq di Saddam, Siria degli Assad, ecc.) regimi molto diversi ma che comunque si richiamavano ad analoghe dottrine corporativiste hanno dato vita ad esperimenti molto interessanti, di fronte ai quali che fare: preoccuparsi per le deviazioni rossobrune che potrebbero veicolare oppure riconoscere la loro funzione storica positiva e il loro contributo alla diffusione degli ideali socialisti sia pur non rigorosamente marxisti?

      I comunisti coreani sono di questo secondo avviso, e da sempre intrattengono buoni rapporti con alcune forze nazionaliste non solo in patria e nel mondo post-coloniale ma anche in Giappone, in Europa e in America, e per questo incorrono spesso in accuse di “rossobrunismo” o di fascismo vero e proprio. Nondimeno la loro posizione è la più conforme alle tradizioni del movimento comunista mondiale intese in modo non folcloristico e nominale.»

      Al suo intervento stimolante ho risposto nella seguente maniera:

      «Tutte le realtà che possiamo definire “nazionaliste progressive”, quelle che hai citato ne sono esempi, sono alleate del movimento comunista nella lotta contro l’imperialismo internazionale, ma non le considero modelli marxisti-leninisti, seppur varianti nazionali del socialismo rispettabili per i differenti contesti.

      Per quanto riguarda l’Italia credo che la soluzione resti uno sviluppo diverso del marxismo-leninismo, che non apra a tali versioni eclettiche che sono adatte per Paesi molto diversi da noi per cultura, società, economia, ecc.

      È sbagliato comunque ritenerli rossobruni, così come bollare di rossobrunismo i comunisti che collaborino con loro in ambito nazionale o internazionale. Credo però che loro stessi sarebbero d’accordo a non considerarsi parte del movimento comunista internazionale.

      Sono d’accordo con te comunque che i maggiori pericoli ideologici vengano da altri fronti, ma proprio perché il nemico è ancora forte non bisogna dare il minimo argomento ai suoi attacchi, evitando di fare errori (o provocazioni) come quelle dell’ultimo Preve che è arrivato a dare indicazioni di voto per la Le Pen.»

      NON È MEGLIO RIGETTARE IL TERMINE ROSSOBRUNISMO?

      No. La storia [10] ci ha mostrato che le classi reazionarie hanno sempre cercato di infiltrare i movimenti rivoluzionari, talvolta pianificando a tavolino strategie culturali per introdurre elementi revisionisti e degeneratori nel campo culturale proletario. Questo vale chiaramente in particolar modo per il marxismo e il movimento comunista, che sono stati e sono tuttora il nemico principale dell’imperialismo.

      La borghesia dispone infatti dei mezzi politici, economici e mediatici per fomentare ad arte delle “deviazioni” politico-ideologiche, introducendo modelli “riformisti” o “rossobruni”, intendendo per questi ultimi, come abbiamo visto, delle teorie ibride tra socialismo e nazionalismo borghese che costituiscono forme degenerative della teoria rivoluzionaria in grado di confondere larghi strati della classe lavoratrice, sfruttando parole d’ordine e slogan solo apparentemente rivoluzionari. In questa maniera sono riusciti a “sfondare” casi famosi come Mussolini e Hitler, due esempi classici in tal senso, visto l’enorme sostegno che hanno ottenuto dal mondo industriale.

      La categoria di “rossobruno” è quindi valida tutt’oggi? Si. Pur essendo nata in un contesto borghese, essa esprime una posizione politica che per anni è stata respinta, seppur con altri termini, dal movimento comunista internazionale. Oggi resta valida in questa accezione, come arma ideologica a disposizione del movimento operaio, tenendo conto però che nella confusione ideologica in cui versa attualmente il movimento comunista, specie quello italiano, tale categoria è stata fatta propria dai think tank della borghesia liberale per delegittimare paradossalmente soprattutto i comunisti.

      Il che non deve stupire troppo, dato che la borghesia liberale è già riuscita a conquistare la categoria analitica della “sinistra”, bollando i comunisti prima come “estrema sinistra” (anni ’90 e inizio ’00), poi, negli ultimi tempi, di fronte ad alcuni nuovi fermenti teorico-politici che rischiano di incrinare la narrazione del totalitarismo liberale, come “rossobruna”.

      Per queste ragioni credo che in alcuni casi sia utile mantenere la categoria di rossobrunismo, specie laddove ci siano dei casi palesi di revisionismo anticomunista. Occorre insomma sempre mantenere la guardia imparando a muoversi in questo «mondo grande e terribile» (cit. Gramsci).

      NOTE

      [1] A. Scanzi, L’ossessione “rossobruna”: come etichettare il nemico, Ilfattoquotidiano.it, 31 dicembre 2018, disp. su https://infosannio.wordpress.com/2019/01/01/andrea-scanzi-lultimo-insulto-della-sinistra-a-chi-non-vota-be.

      [2] A. Pascale, Risposta alle accuse di Iskrae su Berlinguer e rossobrunismo, Intellettualecollettivo.it, 30 dicembre 2018, disp. su http://intellettualecollettivo.it/risposta-alle-accuse-di-iskrae-su-berlinguer-e-rossobrunismo.

      [3] La nuova edizione, riveduta, ampliata e corretta, è in uscita per le Edizioni Paginauno.

      [4] Un personaggio diventato famoso grazie al bel libro E. Carrère, Limonov, Adelphi, 2012.

      [5] F. Chernov, Il cosmopolitismo borghese e il suo ruolo reazionario, Bol’ševik, n° 5, 15 Marzo 1949, disp. su http://intellettualecollettivo.it/la-lotta-mondiale-contro-limperialismo-cosmopolita.

      [6] V. Giacché, Per una sovranità democratica e popolare. Cioè costituzionale. L’ultimo libro di Alessandro Somma: “Sovranismi”, Marx21.it, 3 gennaio 2019, disp. su https://www.marx21.it/index.php/internazionale/europa/29467-vladimiro-giacche-per-una-sovranita-democratica-e-popolare-cioe-costitu.

      [7] C. Fantuzzi, Fusaro: “Rossobrunismo e Interesse Nazionale: Armi Culturali Contro il Capitalismo mondialista”, Ticinolive.ch, 30 marzo 2017, disp. su http://www.ticinolive.ch/2017/03/30/fusaro-rossobrunismo-interesse-nazionale-armi-culturali-capitalismo-mondi.

      [8] Si veda ad esempio l’intervista al leader di Casapound Di Stefano sul sito dell’associazione culturale di Fusaro: A. Pepa, Di Stefano: “fascismo e antifascismo? Non c’è nessuna guerra civile in atto: è una truffa montata ad arte per distrarci”, Interessenazionale.net, 1 marzo 2018, disp. su https://www.interessenazionale.net/blog/di-stefano-fascismo-e-antifascismo-non-c-nessuna-guerra-civile-a.

      [9] D. Fusaro, Il vero rivoluzionario: idee di sinistra, valori di destra, Diegofusaro.com, 5 giugno 2018, disp. su https://www.diegofusaro.com/idee-sinistra-valori-destra.

      [10] Su questo non posso che rimandare alle ricerche presentate in A. Pascale, In Difesa del Socialismo Reale e del Marxismo-Leninismo, Intellettualecollettivo.it, 15 dicembre 2017, disp. su http://intellettualecollettivo.it/scarica-in-difesa-del-socialismo. Ulteriori elementi sono aggiunti nel volume A. Pascale, Il totalitarismo liberale. Le tecniche imperialiste per l’egemonia culturale, La Città del Sole, Napoli 2019.

      https://www.marx21.it/storia-teoria-e-scienza/marxismo/il-rossobrunismo

    • Rossobruni. Le prospettive dell’unione tra le frange più estreme della nostra politica.

      I l 28 aprile 2017, pochi giorni dopo il primo turno delle elezioni presidenziali francesi, Marine Le Pen ha rotto gli indugi: “Mi rivolgo agli elettori della France Insoumise (il partito di estrema sinistra del candidato Jean-Luc Mélenchon, nda) per dire loro che oggi bisogna fare muro contro Emmanuel Macron: un candidato agli antipodi rispetto a quello che hanno sostenuto al primo turno”. Più che una mossa della disperazione, si è trattata di una mossa logica, seguita a una campagna elettorale che la leader del Front National ha condotto nelle fabbriche, nelle periferie, tra i piccoli agricoltori. E che soprattutto l’ha vista prevalere nel voto operaio, dove ha conquistato il 37% (laddove Mélenchon si è invece fermato al 24%).

      Il tentativo della candidata dell’estrema destra di accreditarsi presso l’estrema sinistra era anche una logica conseguenza delle tante somiglianze, già più volte sottolineate, tra il suo programma e quello di Mélenchon: abrogazione della legge sul lavoro targata Hollande, ritorno dell’età pensionabile a 60 anni, innalzamento del salario minimo (pur se con misure diverse), no alla privatizzazione delle aziende pubbliche, protezionismo fiscale sotto forma di tasse sulle importazioni, rinegoziazione dei trattati europei e uscita dalla NATO.

      Lo sfondamento a sinistra, però, non ha funzionato: secondo l’istituto sondaggistico francese IFOP, solo il 13% degli elettori di Mélenchon ha deciso di votare Le Pen (percentuale comunque degna di nota), mentre la metà esatta si è rassegnata a votare per il liberista Macron (vincitore delle presidenziali) e il 37% si è rifugiato nell’astensionismo. Lo steccato ideologico destra/sinistra – seppur ammaccato – ha retto, facendo naufragare i sogni di gloria di Marine Le Pen e rendendo vani i suoi tentativi, che ormai durano da anni, di definirsi “né di destra né di sinistra” (stessa definizione utilizzata in campagna elettorale da Macron e che si sente spesso anche in Italia, mostrando come la corsa post-ideologica appartenga un po’ a tutti).

      Ma è proprio il fatto che Marine Le Pen abbia avuto la forza di rivolgersi direttamente all’estrema sinistra – senza timore di alienarsi la base elettorale – a dimostrare quanto sia ammaccata la divisione destra/sinistra. D’altra parte, è stato davvero politicamente più coerente che il voto di Mélenchon sia andato in larga parte al liberista Macron (che tra gli operai si è fermato al 16%)? Macron si può davvero considerare un candidato di sinistra? Su alcuni temi – come l’ambientalismo (sul quale si è speso molto) e i diritti civili – la risposta è senz’altro positiva; ma sul piano economico è difficile giudicare di sinistra chi ha in programma un taglio della spesa pubblica di sessanta miliardi di euro l’anno e la riduzione dal 33% al 25% delle imposte sulle società.

      Dal punto di vista economico, la collocazione più naturale di Macron è in quel liberalismo (o neo-liberalismo) al quale possiamo ricondurre buona parte dei candidati moderati che hanno imperversato per l’Europa in questi ultimi anni.

      Il fatto che Marine Le Pen si sia rivolta direttamente all’estrema sinistra – senza timore di alienarsi la base elettorale – dimostra quanto sia ammaccata la divisione destra/sinistra.

      Il campo liberale attraversa aree ben precise della destra e della sinistra ed è, in fin dei conti, quell’area alla quale Silvio Berlusconi (che agli esordi della sua carriera politica proponeva la “rivoluzione liberale”) si è sempre riferito con il termine “moderati”. La provenienza, ovviamente, conta e le differenze restano, ma sono superabili senza eccessivi traumi, come dimostra la pacifica convivenza delle numerose “grandi coalizioni” che negli anni hanno attraversato (notoriamente) Italia, Spagna e Germania, ma anche Austria, Belgio, Finlandia, Grecia, Irlanda e altri ancora. Grandi coalizioni spesso rese necessarie dal rifiuto delle ali estreme dello scacchiere politico di unirsi ai grandi partiti moderati della loro area (diversa, ma non troppo, la tripolare situazione italiana in cui il populista M5S rifiuta ogni apparentamento rendendo di fatto obbligatorie, nel quadro proporzionale, le larghe intese).

      E poco importa che i moderati di destra e di sinistra abbiano ancora le loro differenze: perché se i primi sono più duri su immigrazione e sicurezza, e i secondi (dovrebbero essere) più coraggiosi su diritti civili e ambientalismo, la decennale crisi economica ha concentrato tutta l’attenzione sui temi dell’economia e del lavoro. Così, i liberali di destra e di sinistra hanno avuto gioco facile a unirsi (o addirittura a fondersi, com’è il caso di En Marche di Macron) in nome dell’Europa e del liberismo economico.

      Un’unione di fatto che rende più facile la vittoria politica ma che viene pagata a caro prezzo in termini elettorali: le forze moderate si sono ormai alienate le simpatie delle classi più disagiate e vedono i loro consensi complessivi contrarsi elezione dopo elezione. In Italia, le due uniche formazioni che si possono considerare a tutti gli effetti liberali (Partito Democratico e PDL/Forza Italia) sono passate dai 25,6 milioni di voti complessivi del 2008 ai 15,9 milioni del 2013. Se si votasse oggi (considerando i sondaggi e l’astensione prevista) non andrebbero oltre i 13,7 milioni.

      Situazione non troppo dissimile in Francia: i due grandi partiti (UMP/Les Républicains e PSF) che solo cinque anni fa mettevano assieme venti milioni di voti, oggi sono scesi a 9 milioni. Unendo tutte le forze definibili (con qualche forzatura) come liberali, si scopre che il trio Hollande/Sarkozy/Bayrou, nel primo turno del 2012, aveva conquistato 23,1 milioni di voti; il trio Hamon/Macron/Fillon si ferma a 18 milioni. Tutti voti raccolti dalle ali estreme e “populiste” di Le Pen (quasi un milione e mezzo di voti in più) e di Mélenchon (oltre 3 milioni di voti in più).

      Le forze moderate si sono ormai alienate le simpatie delle classi più disagiate e vedono i loro consensi complessivi contrarsi elezione dopo elezione.

      I due turni di elezioni legislative francesi seguiti alle presidenziali hanno ampiamente sgonfiato il Front National (che ha preso solo il 13% dei voti al primo turno e conquistato otto seggi al secondo), così come la France Insoumise di Mélenchon (meno 8 punti percentuali, nel primo turno, rispetto alle presidenziali) e anche il partito Repubblicano di Fillon (che ha lasciato per strada cinque punti). L’unico a conquistare voti è stato En Marche di Macron (assieme agli alleati MoDem), salito al 32% e in grado di conquistare la maggioranza assoluta.

      Questa inversione di tendenza rispetto alle presidenziali, però, non deve essere fraintesa con un cambiamento sostanziale della dinamica in atto. E non solo perché, per fare un esempio, già nel 2012 il Front National era ampiamente sceso nei consensi nel passaggio tra le presidenziali e le legislative (dal 18% al 13%; il che non gli ha comunque impedito di diventare primo partito nelle seguenti Europee, elezioni fondamentali ai fini del nostro discorso), ma soprattutto perché la struttura stessa delle elezioni francesi è pensata affinché le legislative rafforzino il presidente appena eletto (e quindi in piena luna di miele), aiutandolo a conquistare una salda maggioranza parlamentare che lo aiuti a governare con stabilità (allo stesso modo, non si deve dare eccessivo peso ai risultati delle recenti amministrative italiane: elezioni in cui i temi fondamentali di oggi – Europa, immigrazione e politiche del lavoro – hanno un peso secondario se non irrilevante, rispetto a questioni di pubblica amministrazione locale, e in cui è quindi possibile riproporre con successo i vecchi schemi).

      I dati del primo turno delle presidenziali francesi (quelli che meno subiscono distorsioni), confermano quanto visto (pur nelle sue particolarità) anche nel referendum costituzionale italiano e (in maniera più controversa) nel referendum sulla Brexit: i partiti liberali sono ormai appannaggio degli “ottimisti”, di chi guadagna mediamente bene o comunque è soddisfatto della propria posizione sociale o delle prospettive che vede davanti a sé. Ma dieci anni di crisi economica hanno ingrossato enormemente le fila dei pessimisti e degli arrabbiati che, anno dopo anno, stanno ampliando gli spazi elettorali dei partiti populisti, di destra o sinistra che siano.

      Stando così le cose, non è per niente stupefacente che Marine Le Pen si rivolga agli elettori di estrema sinistra: il nemico non è più nel campo opposto, ma al centro. L’avversario non è la sinistra radicale, ma il liberalismo; la frattura politica fondamentale oggi è l’Europa governata dall’establishment. Per Marine Le Pen, “il nemico del mio nemico è mio alleato”. Tanto più se, lungo la strada, si scopre che ci sono anche parecchi aspetti che uniscono le due estremità: l’anti-atlantismo e l’anti-capitalismo (da sempre), e poi l’importanza della sovranità nazionale (riscoperta da parte della sinistra), la contrarietà all’euro e anche il problema dell’immigrazione (visto da sinistra, in chiave marxista, come “esercito industriale di riserva” del grande capitale); tutto condito da una consistente spruzzata di complottismo.

      Le due estremità sono unite da diversi aspetti: l’anti-atlantismo e l’anti-capitalismo, la contrarietà all’euro, l’importanza della sovranità nazionale e il problema dell’immigrazione.

      Tra i vari punti di contatto tra destra e sinistra populiste, il più interessante è quello della sovranità nazionale. Quando e perché la sinistra radicale, da sempre legata a concetti internazionalisti, ha riscoperto il valore della nazione? “Che la sovranità dello stato-nazione sia precondizione (…) del proprio stesso essere cittadini appartenenti a una comunità politica capace di decidere per il proprio futuro e per gli assetti e le strutture economico-sociali che si vogliono prevalenti, è cosa così ovvia che non dovrebbe neanche essere detta”, si legge sul sito Comunismo e Comunità. “Che la sinistra italiana sia stata fagocitata dall’ideologia ‘globalista’ e ‘unioneuropeista’ da ormai più di vent’anni, scambiando forse l’internazionalismo con la globalizzazione capitalistica e la tecnocrazia sovranazionale, è una tragedia storica i cui frutti si sono ampiamente manifestati da tempo”.

      Sulla questione della sovranità nazionale si sofferma anche un comunista duro e puro come Marco Rizzo: “Siamo assolutamente contrari all’Europa unita. Molti dicono che bisogna riformare questa Europa, che bisogna creare un’unione politica e non solo economica, ma noi pensiamo che l’Unione non sia riformabile, perché frutto di un progetto preciso che risponde agli interessi del Grande Capitale. Mettiamocelo in testa, questa è l’Europa delle grandi banche, dei grandi capitali e non sarà mai l’Europa dei popoli”. In chiusura, come salta all’occhio, Rizzo utilizza le stesse identiche parole sentite più volte da Matteo Salvini o Giorgia Meloni.

      Ovviamente, riviste online come Comunismo e Comunità o personaggi politici come Marco Rizzo sono dei punti di riferimento ascoltati solo da una sparuta minoranza di elettorato, insignificante dal punto di vista numerico. Eppure, discorsi simili sulla sovranità si possono sentire da figure più mainstream come Stefano Fassina, ex PD (oggi Sinistra Italiana) e soprattutto ex viceministro dell’Economia. Sostenitore a corrente alternata dell’uscita dall’euro, il deputato ha dichiarato in una lettera al Corriere che gli ostacoli insuperabili della moneta unica e dell’unione vanno ricercati nei “caratteri profondi, morali e culturali dei popoli europei e gli interessi nazionali degli Stati”.

      Se per la sinistra alternativa le radici dell’anti-europeismo vanno cercate nella sovranità popolare, come opposizione alla “tecnocrazia sovranazionale”; per la destra radicale, le ragioni per recuperare la sovranità perduta trovano nell’identità nazionale parte integrante del suo DNA. La cosa più importante, però, è che la ricetta è la stessa: uscire dall’euro e recuperare il controllo monetario. E così, oltre al comune nemico del liberalismo e del capitalismo, a unire le categorie alternative della politica europea troviamo anche uno degli aspetti più importanti dei nostri giorni: il rifiuto della moneta unica e del progetto europeo tout court.

      Con l’avvento di una generazione meno legata ai vecchi schemi ideologici, il superamento della dicotomia destra/sinistra potrebbe portare alla nascita di movimenti capaci di sintetizzare forze politiche oggi opposte.

      Ovviamente, sottolineare i punti di contatto non significa in alcun modo ritenere che estrema destra ed estrema sinistra siano uguali, ma solo che le tendenze storiche e politiche della nostra epoca, il graduale superamento della dicotomia destra/sinistra in direzione europeismo/populismo, l’avvicinamento delle forze liberali e moderate di destra e di sinistra potrebbero, con l’avvento di una nuova generazione meno legata ai vecchi schemi ideologici, portare alla nascita di movimenti in grado di fare una sintesi di forze politiche che oggi sono obbligate a guardarsi in cagnesco.

      “La convergenza al centro contro i populismi non può durare in eterno”, scrivono su Internazionale i ricercatori Marta Fana e Lorenzo Zamponi. Non è detto: potrebbe durare in eterno se i populismi di destra e di sinistra si uniranno a loro volta in ottica anti-liberale, dando ufficialmente forma a ciò che finora è rimasto più che altro un vagheggiamento limitato alle zone più estreme della politica europea (ma non in Italia, come vedremo più avanti): il rossobrunismo.

      D’altra parte, perché mai le due ali estreme dovrebbero continuare a restare separate, consegnandosi a inevitabile sconfitta? Il rossobrunismo, allora, si configurerebbe come la necessità di fare blocco contro la fusione delle forze liberali (Macron, in questo, è davvero un precursore). Le richieste di un “populismo di sinistra” da una parte e dall’altra di una “destra che deve diventare sempre più di sinistra” (come ebbe a dire l’ex Alleanza Nazionale Roberta Angelilli, in gioventù vicina a Terza Posizione), potrebbero (il condizionale è d’obbligo) sfociare tra qualche tempo nel proliferare di forze unitarie anti-establishment che, lungi dal definirsi rossobrune, potrebbe però attingere indifferentemente agli elettorati che oggi si rivolgono all’estrema destra e all’estrema sinistra.

      L’alternativa, comunque, esiste, ed è oggi incarnata dalla politica britannica che – dopo una lunga parentesi liberale (incarnata, in tempi recenti dalla segreteria del Labour di David Milliband e da David Cameron alla guida dei conservatori) – è tornata su posizioni più tradizionali, dando il partito laburista in mano a Jeremy Corbyn e il partito conservatore in mano alla securitaria Theresa May. Un ritorno all’antico che ha immediatamente cancellato l’UKIP (orfano di Nigel Farage), i cui elettori, stando a quanto scrive il Guardian, si sono rivolti in massa ai laburisti rossi di Corbyn.

      La lezione britannica – che potrebbe far riflettere profondamente chi continua a ritenere valido il mantra del “si vince al centro” – non è l’unico ostacolo che deve fronteggiare il rossobrunismo, una definizione che viene solitamente considerata come un insulto. Lo dimostra il fatto che tutte le figure ritenute appartenenti a questa galassia (da Stefano Fassina ad Alberto Bagnai, da Giulietto Chiesa allo scomparso Costanzo Preve e tanti altri ancora) rifiutano sdegnosamente l’etichetta.

      Perché le due ali estreme dovrebbero continuare a restare separate, consegnandosi alla sconfitta? Il rossobrunismo si configurerebbe come la necessità di fare blocco contro la fusione delle forze liberali.

      Esiste una sola eccezione: Diego Fusaro. Per quanto si tratti di un personaggio spesso criticato (se non sdegnato) da larga parte del mondo intellettuale italiano, può essere interessante vedere come lui stesso – ormai diventato, di fatto, il volto pubblico del rossobrunismo – inquadri il problema: “Rossobruno è chiunque – consapevole che l’antagonismo odierno si basi sulla verticale contrapposizione tra servi e signori e non su vane divisioni orizzontali – oggi rigetti destra e sinistra”, ha spiegato in un’intervista. “Oggi chiunque propugni un’economia di mercato sovrana, viene automaticamente chiamato rossobruno. (…) Rossobruno è colui che critica il capitale, che vuole una riorganizzazione in termini di sovranità e si pone in contrasto al capitalismo”.

      Non è una storia nuova, anzi: basti rievocare le origini di sinistra del primo fascismo italiano, la composizione ricca di ex socialisti ed ex comunisti delle SA tedesche o le idee del sovietico Karl Radek, secondo il quale era necessaria un’unione dei comunisti con i nazisti in funzione “anti-pace di Versailles” (ma ci sarebbero tantissime altre personalità “rossobrune ante litteram” da scovare nei primi decenni del Ventesimo secolo). I veri precursori del rossobrunismo, però, possono essere identificati in quei gruppi extraparlamentari che all’epoca della contestazione venivano etichettati come nazimaoisti – oggi passano sotto il nome di comunitaristi – e che sono il vettore principale attraverso il quale nei movimenti di estrema destra come Forza Nuova o CasaPound è entrata la spiccata attenzione per le questioni sociali. “Oggi, scomparso il problema politico del socialismo, questi si sono confusi con la retorica anti-globalizzazione”, si legge sul sito antagonista di sinistra Militant. “Hanno iniziato a usare linguaggi a noi affini e a dotarsi di una simbologia para-socialista che li rende facilmente fraintendibili”.

      Abbiamo quindi una sinistra che accoglie elementi di destra (sovranismo e critica nei confronti dell’immigrazione) e una destra che sposa battaglie di sinistra (l’attenzione al sociale e anche l’ambientalismo, come dimostra la fascinazione nei confronti della “decrescita felice” di Serge Latouche). A questi aspetti possiamo unire alcune radici storiche comuni e soprattutto la convergenza al centro del comune nemico (le forze liberali) che potrebbe costringerli a un’unione futura.

      E allora, perché tutto ciò non avviene? Perché la Le Pen riesce a sfondare tra gli operai (così come fa Salvini) ma non è in grado di raccogliere i voti di chi si considera di sinistra? Probabilmente, perché lo steccato ideologico destra/sinistra non può essere superato, per definizione, da forze che hanno le loro radici antiche proprio in questa divisione.

      Una vera forza anti-liberale capace di raccogliere voti da entrambi i lati degli schieramenti (contribuendo al consolidamento della nuova frattura establishment/populismo) e fare così concorrenza all’unione delle forze liberali (divise da steccati più facilmente aggirabili) può sorgere solo in chiave post-ideologica. In questo senso, è un’impresa che non può riuscire al Front National come non può riuscire a Syriza, forze troppo legate alla tradizione. Può però riuscire, e infatti sta riuscendo, a un partito nato già post-ideologico come il Movimento 5 Stelle.

      Una vera forza anti-liberale capace di raccogliere voti da entrambi i lati degli schieramenti può sorgere solo in chiave post-ideologica.

      Il movimento fondato da Beppe Grillo potrebbe cadere vittima delle sue enormi e vaste contraddizioni – e anche, come si è intravisto nelle ultime amministrative, di una classe politica spesso non all’altezza – ma oggi come oggi conserva un enorme vantaggio su tutti gli altri: è l’unica vera forza populista e anti-liberale non più definibile con le vecchie categorie, ma già definibile con le nuove. Una forza capace di unire temi sociali, ambientalismo, durezza nei confronti dell’immigrazione (fino a opporsi, di fatto, alla legge sullo ius soli), critica all’establishment e ai poteri forti, derive complottiste, ritorno alla lira e pure una certa fascinazione geopolitica per l’uomo forte Vladimir Putin (aspetto che farebbe la gioia del rossobruno nazional-bolscevico Aleksandr Dugin, teorico dell’euroasianesimo).

      Se le forze rossobrune “vere” (come i comunitaristi) sono confinate nelle nicchie più nascoste della politica italiana; se chi propugna il superamento della destra e della sinistra deve costantemente fare i conti con il passato (come Marine Le Pen e, in parte, la Lega Nord), ecco che l’unione dell’elettorato di destra e di sinistra radicale in nome del populismo e della rabbia nei confronti dei liberali, legati inestricabilmente ai poteri forti, può riuscire a chi, come il M5S, non deve scontare un passato ideologico e può contare su una percentuale elevatissima (42%) di elettori che si considerano “esterni” alle vecchie categorie politiche.

      E allora, chiariamo una cosa: utilizzare l’etichetta “rossobrunismo” è utile perché fa subito capire di che cosa si sta parlando; allo stesso tempo, però, non si può fare riferimento ai vecchi steccati ideologici per individuare il futuro della politica alternativa. Il rossobrunismo è ancorato fin dal nome a categorie che stiamo consegnando alla storia. È improbabile la nascita di un partito che includa Stefano Fassina e Giorgia Meloni, o Marine Le Pen e Jean-Luc Mélenchon, insieme in nome di ciò che li unisce e al netto di ciò che li divide. L’unione in chiave post-ideologica delle ali estreme dell’elettorato potrebbe però diventare realtà grazie a movimenti populisti post-ideologici che mettano in primo piano quegli stessi aspetti che accomunano la destra radicale e la sinistra alternativa, senza minimamente doversi curare del retaggio storico-politico.

      Il Movimento 5 Stelle è la prima forza di questo tipo, capace di unire il populismo di destra e di sinistra e di dimostrare quali siano le potenzialità elettorali di un progetto simile. Per questa ragione è assurdo il dibattito sul “M5S di destra e di sinistra”. Il Movimento 5 Stelle è oltre le vecchie categorie ed è già legato alle nuove, trovandosi così in posizione di netto vantaggio sulle vecchie forze radicali. Chiamarlo rossobrunismo può essere comodo, ma è un termine che lega al passato ciò che invece guarda al futuro.

      https://www.iltascabile.com/societa/rossobruni

  • 1. Thomas Sankara, l’enfance d’un chef
    https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceculture/podcasts/grandes-traversees-thomas-sankara/1-thomas-sankara-l-enfance-d-un-chef-2825000

    Comment Thomas Sankara est-il devenu ce bâtisseur de nations indépendantes ? Pour le savoir, il faut revenir sur ses années de formation à Madagascar où tout s’est joué, et sur sa découverte, fondamentale, de l’œuvre de Karl Marx, qui scella son destin de leader.

  • Une brève histoire des inégalités par Piketty ou comment ne pas attaquer le problème à la racine Henri Houben
    https://www.investigaction.net/fr/une-breve-histoire-des-inegalites-par-piketty-ou-comment-ne-pas-atta

    L’économiste Henri Houben analyse le dernier livre de Thomas Piketty, Une brève histoire des inégalités. Dans la lignée de ses ouvrages précédents, Piketty apporte quantité d’informations éclairantes sur l’écart riches-pauvres. Il situe utilement le tout dans un contexte historique. Manque hélas une analyse rigoureuse des mécanismes d’exploitation, si bien que ses appels à plus d’égalité prennent des allures de voeux pieux. Explications. (IGA)

    Bref est généralement une notion peu usitée par l’économiste français Thomas Piketty. Ses ouvrages majeurs, que ce soit Les hauts revenus en France au XXème siècle publié en 2001, Le Capital au XXIème siècle sorti en 2013 ou le dernier Capital et Idéologie paru en 2019, avoisinent chacun le millier de pages, voire les dépassent. De quoi rebuter plus d’un lecteur qui aurait pu être intéressé par ses propos.

    Sur ce plan, la Brève Histoire[1] permet de corriger ces longueurs, utiles pour approfondir un débat, mais qui peuvent se révéler peu accessibles au grand public. Le livre se présente clairement comme une synthèse des trois « briques » livrées précédemment. De fait, il se parcourt aisément et permet de se faire une idée précise des thèses avancées par Thomas Piketty. Il en a les qualités, mais aussi les défauts.

    L’œuvre de l’économiste, centrée sur les inégalités sociales, se décompose habituellement en deux parties liées, mais qu’on peut facilement séparer. Il y a d’abord son analyse, la plupart du temps précise, détaillée, émaillée de nombreuses preuves chiffrées, de tableaux évocateurs montrant l’évolution des revenus et des patrimoines depuis la fin du XVIIIème siècle. Il est évident que l’auteur est dépendant de la qualité des sources statistiques, qui s’améliorent avec les périodes, mais qui doivent donc être prises avec prudence pour les époques les plus anciennes.

    Il en tire un portrait qui paraît assez réaliste de la situation en Europe et aux Etats-Unis : un enrichissement global et progressif des catégories sociales les plus fortunées au cours du XIXème jusqu’à la Premier Guerre mondiale ; ensuite, une chute des avoirs en particulier pour ces strates à cause des guerres et de la crise des années trente ; une stabilisation de cette situation durant les Trente Glorieuses ; enfin, une remontée des inégalités depuis la fin des années 70.

    A partir de là, il souligne deux facteurs qui expliquent cette évolution, notamment après la Révolution française, ce qui pourrait paraître paradoxal, puisque cette dernière affichait sa volonté égalitaire : le colonialisme et l’esclavagisme. « La répartition des richesses en vigueur aujourd’hui entre pays du monde comme à l’intérieur des pays porte la trace profonde de l’héritage esclavagiste et colonial » (p.138). Dans ce capitalisme libéral, il ne pouvait y avoir, tout du moins au début, de libération pour ceux qui étaient enchaînés. Sur les quinze présidents américains qui ont précédé l’élection d’Abraham Lincoln en 1860, onze étaient propriétaires d’esclaves (p.119-120).

    Et Thomas Piketty de rappeler le cas emblématique de cette ancienne colonie française Haïti. Au moment de la Révolution française, il y avait environ 450.000 esclaves à Saint-Domingue du côté français[2]. Cela représentait 90% de la population de ce territoire (p.105). En 1789, environ 40.000 Africains arrivaient dans les ports antillais pour remplacer la force de travail qui mourait des conditions de travail épouvantables infligées. Cela montre le degré de surexploitation des travailleurs à cette époque sur l’île.

    Avec les événements à Paris, les Noirs demandent à participer à la nouvelle démocratie qui s’installe dans la métropole, notamment à travers le droit de vote. Cela leur est refusé. Ils se révoltent donc à partir d’août 1791 et la France envoie immédiatement des troupes pour mater les insurgés. Deux ans plus tard, les révolutionnaires de la métropole acceptent de décréter l’émancipation des esclaves, mesure étendue à l’ensemble des colonies en février 1794 (p.107). Mais ils n’ont pas réellement les moyens de faire respecter cette décision. En 1802, Napoléon rétablit l’esclavage. Mais il ne peut l’appliquer à Haïti, qui se déclare indépendant en 1804. Toutes les interventions militaires pour reconquérir la moitié de l’île échouent. Aussi, en 1825, Charles X reconnaît cette souveraineté (p.109).

    Mais il y a une condition que le nouveau gouvernement haïtien se doit de respecter : l’indemnisation des propriétaires d’esclaves. Cela implique pour le nouvel Etat un endettement de 150 millions de francs-or, soit 300% du revenu national du pays en 1825 (p.110). Entre 1840 et 1915, celui-ci doit verser annuellement 5% de ce produit pour rembourser les créanciers français. La dette représentait en données actuelles 30 milliards d’euros (p.111). Pour un pays qui affiche un PIB[3] de 13,6 milliards d’euros en 2020. Cette créance ne sera soldée qu’en 1950. Mais, là, d’autres problèmes surgiront qui maintiendront Haïti dans une situation de dépendance.

    Les propos de Thomas Piketty sont clairement accusateurs et à raison. Il estime à 5% le revenu supplémentaire par an obtenu par la France grâce aux placements internationaux et près de 10% pour la Grande-
    Bretagne avant la Première Guerre mondiale (p.208). Des montants sans doute sous-évalués. Pas étonnant que ces deux pays ont pu s’enrichir largement durant le XIXème siècle.
    Mais l’auteur est aussi un des rares économistes qui reconnaissent l’importance des luttes sociales dans les réalités économiques. Il écrit ainsi que « l’inégalité est avant tout une construction sociale, historique et politique » (p.20). Il ajoute qu’il y a une tendance lente, non linéaire vers l’égalité, en fonction des combats politiques, idéologiques et sociaux : « Cette marche vers l’égalité est la conséquence des luttes et des révoltes face à l’injustice, qui ont permis de transformer les rapports de force et de renverser les institutions soutenues par les classes dominantes pour structurer l’inégalité sociale à leur profit, afin de les remplacer par de nouvelles institutions, de nouvelles règles sociales, économiques et politiques plus justes et émancipatrices pour le plus grand nombre. » (p.20-21).

    C’est là que l’analyse de Thomas Piketty, qu’on peut trouver excellente jusqu’à maintenant, montre une lacune non comblée. Le spécialiste des statistiques et de l’inégalité arrive à un constat justifié, mais il semble un peu démuni lorsqu’il s’agit d’examiner les rapports du travail. Tant qu’il reste au niveau des chiffres, des données, il est brillant et déteint par rapport à bon nombre de ses confrères. Mais la tradition économique d’en rester à la surface et de ne pas approfondir les relations structurelles, qui se cachent derrière ces statistiques, reste prégnante et Piketty ne s’en est pas complètement détaché.

    Ainsi, le concept d’exploitation lui est quasiment étranger, car il ne ressort pas directement des données chiffrées. Ce qui apparaît, ce sont les inégalités sociales et il en reste à ce stade. Sans voir que ce sont justement ces relations dans le processus de production, entre des propriétaires d’entreprises, d’une part, et des salariés, d’autre part, qui provoquent ces discriminations humainement inacceptables. Ce sont les détenteurs de titres, comme le montrent très bien les livres de Piketty, qui s’enrichissent. Ce sont les ouvriers et employés qui fournissent le travail de production, sans en tirer les profits, à quelques rares exceptions près.

    De là réside le problème que posent les propositions de l’économiste français. Sa perspective centrale est d’étendre la tendance vers l’égalité qu’il a remarquée à travers l’histoire. Pour lui, « l’Etat social et l’impôt progressif constituent bel et bien une transformation systémique du capitalisme » (p.225). Il poursuit : « Poussés jusqu’au bout de leurs logiques, ces institutions représentent une étape essentielle vers une nouvelle forme de socialisme démocratique, décentralisé et autogestionnaire, écologique et métissé, permettant de structurer un autre monde, autrement plus émancipateur et égalitaire que le monde actuel. » (p.225)

    Mais ceci relève de la profession de foi. Il est évident qu’un univers où les riches paient de lourds impôts en regard de leur fortune, les mécanismes de sécurité sociale sont approfondis, la lutte contre les discriminations scolaires est poursuivie avec acharnement, l’égalité démocratique est recherchée, les dérives environnementales sont éliminées, serait infiniment plus acceptable que la situation actuelle où les inégalités s’accentuent et où la guerre et le conflit se trouvent régulièrement à nos portes. Mais ceci est-il possible sans changer les structures du capitalisme ?

    Thomas Piketty partage, sur ce point, les vues qui circulent, dans les partis socialistes ou sociaux-démocrates, en rejetant les expériences dites « communistes ». Il relève : « Historiquement, le mouvement socialiste et communiste s’est construit autour d’une plateforme sensiblement différente, à savoir la propriété étatique des moyens de production et la planification centralisée, qui a échoué et qui n’a jamais été véritablement remplacée par une plateforme alternative. Par comparaison, l’Etat social et surtout l’impôt progressif sont souvent apparus comme des formes « molles » de socialisme, incapables de remettre en cause la logique profonde du capitalisme » (p.225).

    Le problème est qu’il n’apporte pas vraiment dans ces écrits les éléments qui montreraient que la « plateforme communiste » a échoué, comme il l’affirme. Sur ce plan, il partage les analyses de ceux qui se sont ingéniés à diaboliser les Etats dits socialistes comme l’URSS, la Chine ou Cuba : « n’en parlons plus, cela n’en vaut pas la peine ». Au contraire, un examen scientifique plus sérieux serait de voir ce qui a fonctionné et ce qui a coincé.

    Traiter ces expériences d’échecs n’a tout simplement pas de sens sur le plan économique, quand on sait que l’URSS était un pays arriéré et techniquement attardée en 1913 et est devenue en cinquante ans la seconde puissance industrielle du monde, que la Chine a depuis 1949 une des croissances les plus fortes dans le monde, malgré toutes les péripéties qu’elle a connues, que Cuba assure à sa population un enseignement et des soins de santé gratuits, malgré le blocus américain. Haïti, par exemple, aurait sûrement bien aimé connaître des échecs pareils.

    Maintenant, l’opposition que Piketty reprend des conflits entre le mouvement socialiste et communiste, entre « réforme » et « révolution », entre « socialisme dit démocratique » et « socialisme nécessairement autoritaire » n’est pas aussi catégorique que présenté. Dans la situation présente de l’Europe et des Etats-Unis, un programme aussi radical que celui avancé par l’économiste français, qui détonne clairement par rapport à ce qu’avancent les partis socialistes, sociaux-démocrates, travaillistes, européens, peut tout à fait faire l’objet de batailles justifiées de la part des travailleurs et des simples citoyens.

    Certaines revendications fondamentales sur l’imposition des patrimoines, la démocratisation de l’enseignement, celle de la vie politique, le développement de la sécurité sociale et des services publics, le réchauffement climatique, peuvent rassembler tout le monde. La divergence ne porte pas sur ce plan, mais sur le caractère qu’on donne à ces luttes justifiées : apportent-elles en elles-mêmes la possibilité de s’émanciper du capitalisme ou montrent-elles qu’il faut aller un pas plus loin et déstructurer ce système pour le remplacer par un autre ?
     
    Notes :
    [1] Thomas Piketty, Une Brève Histoire des inégalités, éditions du Seuil, Paris, 2021, 351 pages. Les indications de page dans le texte se réfèrent à cet ouvrage.
    [2] L’île est partagée entre la France et l’Espagne. La partie française formera Haïti et l’autre la République dominicaine.
    [3] Le Produit intérieur brut (PIB) est la richesse marchande et monétaire créée en un an dans un pays.

    #inégalités #économie #piketty #thomas_piketty #capitalisme #france #Haïti #esclavage #capital #riches #travail #economie #dette #ue #pauvreté #austérité #fiscalité #politique #Russie #Chine

  • Ils nous ont oubliés - CABOU
    https://cabou.net/Ils-nous-ont-oublies

    Ils nous ont oubliés
    (lundi 25 avril 2022)

    Hier, jour d’élection présidentielle, je ne suis pas allé à la pêche. J’ai pris le métro avec ma compagne jusqu’à la porte de Clichy.

    Nous avons découvert en surface qu’il existe, à deux pas du très stalinien tribunal de Paris, un espace labellisé « Théâtre de l’Odéon » - Ateliers Berthier.

    Nous y avons passé tout l’après-midi, en présence de « Ils nous ont oubliés », spectacle mis en scène par Séverine Chavrier, basé sur La Plâtrière, un roman de Thomas Bernhard, datant de 1970.

    #théâtre #Thomas_Bernhard #Séverine_Chavrier #Kropotkine

  • Will The Reckoning Over Racist Names Include These Prisons?

    Many prisons, especially in the South, are named after racist officials and former plantations.

    Not long after an #Alabama lawyer named #John_Darrington began buying up land in Southeast #Texas, he sent enslaved people to work the soil. They harvested cotton and sugarcane, reaping profits for their absentee owner until he sold the place in 1848.

    More than a century and a half later, men—mostly Black and brown—are still forced to work in the fields. They still harvest cotton. They still don’t get paid. And they still face punishment if they refuse to work.

    They are prisoners at the #Darrington Unit, one of Texas’s 104 prisons. And not the only one in the South named after slaveholders.

    While the killing of George Floyd has galvanized support for tearing down statues, renaming sports teams and otherwise removing markers of a (more) racist past, the renewed push for change hasn’t really touched the nation’s prison system. But some say it should. Across the country, dozens of prisons take their names from racists, Confederates, plantations, segregationists, and owners of slaves.

    “Symbols of hate encourage hate, so it has been time to remove the celebration of figures whose fame is predicated on the pain and torture of Black people,” said DeRay McKesson, a civil rights activist and podcast host.

    Some candidates for new names might be prisons on former plantations. In #Arkansas, the #Cummins Unit—now home to the state’s death chamber—was once known as the #Cummins_plantation (though it’s not clear if the namesake owned slaves). In North Carolina, Caledonia Correctional Institution is on the site of #Caledonia_Plantation, so named as a nostalgic homage to the Roman word for Scotland. Over the years, the land changed hands and eventually the state bought that and other nearby parcels.

    “But the state opted to actually keep that name in what I would say is a kind of intentional choice,” said Elijah Gaddis, an assistant professor of history at Auburn University. “It’s so damning.”

    Among several state prison systems contacted by The Marshall Project, only North Carolina’s said it’s in the early stages of historical research to see what name changes might be appropriate. Spokesman John Bull said the department is “sensitive to the cultural legacy issues sweeping the country,” but its priority now is responding to the COVID pandemic.

    Two of the most infamous and brutal plantations-turned-prisons are #Angola in #Louisiana and #Parchman in #Mississippi—but those are their colloquial names; neither prison formally bears the name of the plantation that preceded it. Officially, they’re called Louisiana State Penitentiary and the Mississippi State Penitentiary.

    In some parts of the South, many prisons are former plantations. Unlike Darrington or Cummins, the vast majority at least bothered to change the name—but that isn’t always much of an improvement.

    In Texas, for example, most of the state’s lock-ups are named after ex-prison officials and erstwhile state politicians, a group that predictably includes problematic figures. Arguably one of the worst is Thomas J. Goree, the former slave owner and Confederate captain who became one of the first superintendents of the state’s penitentiaries in the 1870s, when prison meant torture in stocks and dark cells.

    “Goree was a central figure in the convict leasing system that killed thousands of people and he presided over the formal segregation of the prison system,” said Robert Perkinson, a University of Hawaii associate professor who studies crime and punishment. “Even though he thought of himself as a kind of benevolent master, he doesn’t age well at all.”

    In his book “Texas Tough,” Perkinson describes some of the horrors of the convict leasing practices of Goree’s era. Because the plantation owners and corporations that rented prisoners did not own them, they had no incentive to keep them alive. If you killed an enslaved person, it was a financial loss; if you killed a leased convict, the state would just replace him. For decades, Texas prison laborers were routinely whipped and beaten, and the leasing system in Goree’s day sparked several scandals, including one involving torture so terrible it was known as the “Mineola Horror.” Goree defended the system: “There are, of course, many men in the penitentiary who will not be managed by kindness.” Plus, he explained, prisoners in the South needed to be treated differently because they were different from those in the north: “There, the majority of men are white.”

    The present-day Goree Unit is in Huntsville, an hour’s drive north of Houston, but his family’s former plantation in Lovelady—about 20 miles further north—has been turned into another prison: The Eastham Unit, named for the later landowners who used it for convict leasing.

    James E. #Ferguson—namesake of the notoriously violent Ferguson Unit, also near Huntsville—was a governor in the 1910s who was also an anti-Semite and at one point told the Texas Rangers he would use his pardoning power if any of them were ever charged with murder for their bloody campaigns against Mexicans, according to Monica Muñoz Martinez, historian and author of “The Injustice Never Leaves You.”

    Ferguson got forced out of office early when he was indicted and then impeached. Afterward, he was replaced by William P. Hobby, a staunch segregationist who opposed labor rights and once defended the beating of an NAACP official visiting the state to discuss anti-lynching legislation.

    #Hobby, too, has a prison named after him.

    “In public he tried to condemn lynchings, but then when you look at his role in suppressing anti-lynching organizing he was trying to suppress those efforts,” Martinez said of Hobby. “It’s horrific to name a prison after a person like him. It’s an act of intimidation and it’s a reminder that the state is proud of that racist tradition.”

    Northwest of Abilene, the Daniel Unit takes its name from #Price_Daniel, a mid-20th-century governor who opposed integration, like most Texas politicians of the era. As attorney general he fought desegregating the University of Texas Law School, and later he signed the Southern Manifesto condemning the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education.

    The namesakes of the #Billy_Moore Unit and the frequently-sued Wallace Pack Unit were a pair of prison officials—a major and a warden—who died in 1981 while trying to murder a Black prisoner. According to Michael Berryhill, a Texas Southern University journalism professor who wrote a book on the case, it was such a clear case of self-defense that three Texas juries decided to let the prisoner off.

    “They should not have prisons named after them,” Berryhill said. He called it “a stain” on the Texas prison system’s reputation.

    In Alabama, the #Draper Correctional Center is named after #Hamp_Draper, a state prison director who also served as an interim leader—or “imperial representative”—in the #Ku_Klux_Klan, as former University of Alabama professor Glenn Feldman noted in his 1999 book on the state’s Klan history. The prison closed for a time in 2018 then re-opened earlier this year as a quarantine site for new intakes.

    In New York City, the scandal-prone #Rikers Island jail is one of a few that’s actually generated calls for a name change, based on the namesake family’s ties to slavery. One member of the Dutch immigrant clan, #Richard_Riker, served as a criminal court judge in the early 1800s and was known as part of the “#Kidnapping_Club” because he so often abused the Fugitive Slave Act to send free Blacks into slavery.

    To be sure, most prisons are not named for plantations, slave owners or other sundry racists and bigots—at least not directly. Most states name their prisons geographically, using cardinal directions or nearby cities.

    But some of those geographic names can be problematic. In Florida, Jackson Correctional Institution shares a name with its home county. But Jackson County is named after the nation’s seventh president, #Andrew_Jackson, who was a slave owner obsessed with removing Native people to make room for more plantations. Less than an hour to the south, #Calhoun Correctional Institution also bears the name of its county, which is in turn named after John C. Calhoun—Jackson’s rabidly pro-slavery vice president. The same is true of Georgia’s Calhoun State Prison.

    Also in #Georgia, Lee State Prison is in Lee County, which is named in honor of #Henry_Lee_III, the patriarch of a slave-owning family and the father of Robert E. Lee. A little further northeast, Lee County in South Carolina—home to violence-plagued Lee Correctional Institution—is named after the Confederate general himself.

    In #Arkansas, the namesake of #Forrest City—home to two eponymous federal prisons—is #Nathan_Bedford_Forrest, a Grand Wizard in the Ku Klux Klan who also controlled leased convicts in the entire state of Mississippi at one point.

    To many experts, the idea of changing prison names feels a bit like putting lipstick on a pig: No matter what you call it, a prison is still a prison. It still holds people who are not free. They are still disproportionately Black and brown.

    “If you are talking about the inhumanity, the daily violence these prisons perform, then who these prisons are named after is useful in understanding that,” Martinez said. “But what would it do to name it after somebody inspiring? It’s still a symbol of oppression.”

    But to Anthony Graves, a Texas man who spent 12 years on death row after he was wrongfully convicted of capital murder, the racist names are a “slap in the face of the justice system itself.” New names could be a powerful signal of new priorities.

    “At the end of the day the mentality in these prisons is still, ‘This is my plantation and you are my slaves,’” he said. “To change that we have to start somewhere and maybe if we change the name we can start to change the culture.”

    https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/07/29/will-the-reckoning-over-racist-names-include-these-prisons

    #prisons #USA #Etats-Unis #toponymie #toponymie_politique #esclavage #Thomas_Goree #Goree #James_Ferguson #William_Hobby #John_Calhoun

  • Thomas Sankara : un long combat pour la vérité
    https://afriquexxi.info/article4965.html

    Pendant des années, une poignée d’activistes et d’avocats s’est démenée pour que les assassins de Thomas Sankara et de ses douze camarades, tués le 15 octobre 1987 à Ouagadougou, soient un jour jugés. (…) Le verdict de ce procès historique a été rendu le mercredi 6 avril 2022. Les trois principaux accusés, Blaise Compaoré (en exil en Côte d’Ivoire), Hyacinthe Kafando (qui s’est volatilisé fin 2015) et Gilbert Diendéré (qui purge déjà une peine de prison pour une tentative de coup d’État en 2015), ont été condamnés à la prison à perpétuité. Source : Dans la presse

  • Despite its beautiful Ori games, Moon Studios is called an ’oppressive’ place to work | VentureBeat
    https://venturebeat.com/2022/03/18/despite-its-beautiful-ori-games-moon-studio-is-called-an-oppressive-pla

    Gaming fans know Moon Studios for its amazing Ori games with beautiful art and emotional stories. But a number of current and former employees consider the Ori studio an oppressive place to work. That is according to GamesBeat’s interviews with Moon developers.

    Franciska Csongrady sur Twitter :
    https://twitter.com/TigrMoth/status/1505276733771112449

    I worked at Moon Studios for two years. I was the only woman on the story team. I struggle to find the words to express what a soul-destroying experience it was to work with the heads of the studio, Thomas and Gennadiy.

    The whole studio is built on the lie that Quality justifies everything. Verbal abuse. Crunch. Public humiliation. But it just wears you down, and burns you out. Burnt out people do not produce quality.

    Anything good that you had made before they had killed your creative spark was used to lure new, unwitting devs in, to fill the places of the friends you watched leave, one by one.

    Please, don’t be fooled. Don’t perpetuate the problem by working for places like Moon. We have to stop the defeatist mentality that this is just what the industry is like. There are better places out there. You deserve better.

    #jeu_vidéo #jeux_vidéo #moon_studios #jeu_vidéo_ori #culture_toxique #ressources_humaines #encadrement #turnover #jeu_vidéo_blind_forest #jeu_vidéo_ori_and_the_will_of_the_wisps #thomas_mahler #gennadiy_korol #oppression #activision_blizzard #riot_games #ubisoft #ea #electronic_arts #microsoft #succès #violence_verbale #micromanagement #crunch #glassdoor #cd_projekt_red #jeu_vidéo_cyberpunk_2077 #sean_murray #hello_games #jeu_vidéo_no_man_s_sky #salaires #rémunération #primes #royalties #crédits #santé_mentale #santé_psychique #stress_post_traumatique #viol

  • #Poutine, l’#Ukraine et après ?
    #Le_Dessous_des_cartes - Spécial Ukraine | #ARTE

    L’invasion de l’Ukraine par la #Russie – Histoire et conséquences. Émission spéciale du Dessous des cartes. Cartes à l’appui, Émilie Aubry revient sur l’histoire de la relation Russie-Ukraine. Avec deux experts - #Thomas_Gomart, directeur de l’IFRI et #Anna_Colin-Lebedev, spécialiste des sociétés post-soviétiques-, elle analyse les conséquences géostratégiques de la guerre et l’évolution de l’identité européenne des Ukrainiens.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGsnhOixB2s

    https://www.arte.tv/fr/videos/RC-014036/le-dessous-des-cartes

    • L’Ukraine : de l’indépendance à la guerre - Alexandra Goujon
      http://www.lecavalierbleu.com/livre/lukraine-de-lindependance-a-guerre

      Depuis une dizaine d’années, l’Ukraine apparaît régulièrement sur le devant de la scène internationale, que ce soit pour ses mouvements protestataires, ou à propos de l’annexion de la Crimée par la Russie et du conflit à l’est du pays, semblant constituer le théâtre d’une nouvelle guerre froide qui cristallise les tensions entre la Russie et les nations occidentales.
      Les événements récents sont aussi l’occasion de mesurer combien notre connaissance de ce pays est lacunaire, se limitant souvent aux clichés d’une Ukraine berceau de la Russie, terre des cosaques, grenier à blé de l’URSS et d’une suite de gouvernants entachés par une corruption massive.
      Partant de ces idées reçues, Alexandra Goujon dresse un portrait précis et documenté de cette Ukraine, terre de contrastes.

      Alexandra Goujon est politiste, maître de conférences à l’Université de Bourgogne et enseignante à Sciences Po Paris. Elle est membre du Centre de recherche et d’étude en droit et en science politique (Credespo)

    • Suivi des débats au Sénat sur « les menaces que les théories du wokisme font peser sur l’Université, l’enseignement supérieur et les libertés académiques ».

      –-> thread de Emilien Houard-Vial :
      https://twitter.com/ehouardvial/status/1488507053027082241

      Introduction par Max Brisson (LR), ancien prof et ancien IGEN, sur l’antirépublicanisme du wokisme
      Je ne suis pas trop sûr, mais je crois qu’il vient de condamner l’organisation « dans une université publique » "d’un colloque sur la déconstruction" (donc celui de la Sorbonne ?) qui déstabiliserait l’unité de la République ...
      Pas de maîtrise des concepts et des faits visiblement ...
      Le sondage Ifop a été cité pour montrer que personne ne sait ce qu’est le wokisme, que c’est hyper-minoritaire, et que c’est pour ça qu’il faut s’y opposer fermement (?!).
      C’est Sarah El Haïry qui répond, pas Frédérique Vidal. Elle abonde, tout en étant hyper-abstraite. Brisson répond en parlant de la « repentance » sur l’Algérie.
      Esther Benbassa est la première oratrice (NI) à s’exprimer. Elle critique l’aspect vague du « wokisme », mais aussi les « dérives » de certains militants (j’ai l’impression qu’on est parti pour discuter des campus américains pendant la plupart de la séance).
      L’orateur PS n’est pas chill. Il condamne des écrans de fumée pour cacher les vrais problèmes (comme les discriminations et « systèmes de domination »), et affirme que la droite s’est toujours fichue des universités.
      Il continue sur le fait que cela ne repose pas sur une étude méthodique des faits et fait la part belle aux rumeurs et propos de comptoir. Il veut combattre l’ingérence de la politique dans la recherche, en citant Vidal et Wauquiez. El Haïry n’est pas contente.
      Il explique que ce sont les idées du PR qui menacent avant tout l’université, la culture du rebranding et du ranking, la hausse des frais d’inscriptions, qui elles viennent des USA + baisse du taux d’encadrement, du nombre de doctorants, hausse de la précarité et pauvreté.
      Il a l’air de connaître son sujet, parle des crédits qui vont à l’ANR plutôt qu’aux labos, de l’apprentissage du doute à l’université.
      La secrétaire d’Etat critique l’absence de nuances, dit que le gvt n’a pas à rougir sur la précarité mais veut centrer le débat sur le wokisme.
      L’orateur LREM n’a pas grand-chose à dire mais fait de l’humour sur le wok avec des métaphores grâce au dictionnaire qu’il a dû ouvrir ce matin.
      Il n’a vraiment rien dit, si ce n’est qu’il faudrait définir les choses, mais SEH salue quand même la nuance de son propos. Tous s’accordent à dire qu’il ne faut pas qu’il y ait de pensée dominante à l’université (encore une fois, ce n’est pas la bonne ministre).
      L’orateur Agir & Co n’a pas non plus grand-chose à dire si ce n’est que le mouvement aurait dû se qualifier « awaken » et pas « woke ». Il mentionne l’épisode des Suppliantes, mais ça sera le seul fait concret mis sur la table.
      La pdte de séance Laurence Rossignol est au bout de sa vie, elle rappelle à la secrétaire d’Etat qu’elle n’est pas obligée de répondre, mais cette dernière le fait quand même, en rappelant que Vidal et Riester étaient aller voir les Suppliantes finalement jouée en avril dernier.
      Pour l’orateur LR il ne fait aucun doute que ça existe, une « majorité d’enseignants » s’en inquiéterait. Les étudiants ne pourraient plus dire sereinement que le voile est un symbole d’oppression. Certains universitaires « obnubilés par leur égo » mèneraient une nouvelle offensive.
      L’Etat devrait apporter des garanties contre « l’égalitarisme » comme seul horizon de production scientifique (??). Après il ne fait pas d’effort pour articuler (ce n’est pas le seul), donc dur dur de comprendre.
      Je pense que SEH a écrit un nombre de réponses (générées automatiquement par une IA) égal au nombre de questions des orateurs et tire au sort à chaque fois laquelle elle va lire.
      L’élu écolo n’est pas chill non plus, parle du wokisme comme unifiant toutes les paniques de la droite réactionnaire. Il aurait voulu qu’on parle plutôt des attentats fomentés par l’extrême droite + tacle les paroles de comptoir du colloque de la Sorbonne.
      Il profite de la tribune pour rappeler les mêmes choses que l’orateur PS, dit que droite et gouvernement (voire même ED) se serrent les coudes sur cette affaire.
      SEH défend le colloque en Sorbonne et le « débat à la française » (je ne sais pas ce que c’est).
      En vrai je ne pense même pas qu’elle soit vraiment concernée par le wokisme, elle y va juste parce que c’est la ligne du gvt.
      (l’orateur écolo rappelle qu’il n’y avait pas de pluralisme dans le colloque)
      L’orateur communiste va les défoncer je pense, c’est Pierre Ouzoulias.
      Alors apparemment quand on porte un nœud papillon à poids et une veste en feutre couleur lilas on n’a pas le droit de monter au-dessus de 50db.
      Ce n’était pas le plus spectaculaire, mais sur le fond il a tout plié, il connaît le dossier rien à dire.
      L’orateur UDI dit que c’est ironique que les tenants de la décolonisation aient été colonisés par une pensée américaine. Il faut défendre la liberté académique, sauf si c’est pour empêcher des travaux qui pourraient mener à l’avenir à la brider.
      Apparemment les SHS se politisent depuis 60 ans. Point Noël et Commission Européenne atteint.
      Le problème c’est qu’on ne peut plus défendre l’histoire de France sans se faire traiter d’esclavagiste (réf aux bienfaits de la colonisation amha).
      SEH rappelle qu’il faut non seulement lutter contre la censure, mais aussi contre l’auto-censure (en gros les chercheurs n’ont pas le droit de s’interdire certains mots).
      Gaston de Monnerville a présidé le Sénat donc la France n’est pas systémiquement raciste.
      L’orateur du PRG vient de dire que le wokisme avait « l’odeur de la révolte des descendants d’esclaves » tout en l’usurpant ...
      Les universités accueilleraient les adolescents rebelles un peu attardés (pas ses mots).
      Avec le wokisme, Obama serait un blanc à peau noire (??) et les homosexuels des hétéros vivant avec des gens du même sexe (???).
      Correction, le type représente le groupe RDSE mais vient du Parti Radical (tout en ayant la méfiance envers les potentielles dérives humaines de la droite)
      SEH le remercie de son plaidoyer pour l’autocritique, lui répond qu’en effet la société a besoin d’autorité.
      La 2e oratrice LR se base sur le rapport de Pierre Valentin. Tout va bien dans ce cas.
      Fustige l’américanisation du pays, les USA ayant connu leur dernier lynchage en 1981 « alors que des députés de couleurs » siégeaient en France (aux USA aussi). Finalement la France n’est pas raciste, donc il ne faut pas faire comme aux USA.
      Les Africains ont répondu comme un seul homme à l’appel de la France libre (ils n’ont pas franchement toujours eu le choix).
      « Oui des inégalités ont existé » mais arrêtons de se flageller.
      Jean Hingray pour les centristes : « On se croirait revenu aux temps des cathares ».
      SEH est de moins en moins motivée pour répondre.
      Maintenant c’est Gérard Longuet donc ça ne devrait pas être triste.
      Longuet salue le sacrifice de « nos Sénégalais » durant les guerres mondiales.
      (toujours avec sa doudoune sous sa veste)
      Point mâle-hétérosexuel-blanc atteint.
      (pourquoi il fait ça, il doit déjà faire 25° dans la salle)
      Il déplore le fait que des enfants bien nés soient rejetés des grandes écoles à cause de la discrimination positive.
      (Rossignol a un très long coupe-papier dans la main, elle me fait un peu peur)
      SEH salue l’initiative du grp LR. Il ne faut pas laisser l’autocensure s’installer, mais en même temps elle ne veut interdire que les propos déjà illégaux, donc on ne sait pas trop ce qu’il en ressortira.
      (à mon sens on n’est pas loin de l’impasse du débat sur « l’islam radical »)
      Point « 10 petits nègres » indirectement atteint.
      Stéphane Piednoir pour LR conclut en disant qu’il faut arrêter de parler de « wokisme » et dire les vrais termes : « l’intersectionnalité ».
      Il s’inquiète de voir des chercheurs défendre une « idéologique qui n’accepte pas la contradiction » (je crois qu’il parle de l’intersectionnalité).
      Biphobie, transphobie, psychophobie, etc. sont juste des mots disqualifiants.
      Rossignol a sonné sa petite cloche, donc il est l’heure de la conclusion :
      Le débat est confus, entre wokisme sur lequel le législateur peut peu de choses, et les libertés académiques, sur lequel il y a ajd peu à dire.
      Tout était vague, l’accusation reposait sur les trois mêmes anecdotes et sources portées par les anti-wokes médiatiques ou intellos.
      L’axe PCF-EELV-PS n’était pas content du débat, moins pour ce qui pouvait en sortir que pour la perte de temps que ça constituait.
      Conclusion personnelle : j’ai passé trop de temps à suivre ces conneries alors que j’ai du travail pour ne pas en tirer un article sur l’appropriation d’une controverse publique par les organisations et institutions politiques. #unjourpeutêtre

    • Intervention de #Thomas_Dossus :

      « Certains de ma famille politique pensait naïvement qu’il s’agissait d’un épouvantail que l’on agite pour parler d’un mouvement de jeunes gens éveillés qui interrogent l’histoire et les déterminismes, remettent en question les dominations de nos sociétés, se questionnent de nos grands hommes, demandent un égal traitement des humains quels qu’ils soient ou s’intéressent, par exemple, à la manière dont le langage produit des normes.
      Mais pour vous, on l’a bien compris, ce sont des extrémistes que vous estimez même plus dangereux que l’extrême droite. Cette extrême droite bien réelle pourtant aujourd’hui, qui menace de mort des personnalités politiques, qui produit des tribunes appelant à la guerre civile, qui a fomenté 10 attentats déjoués depuis 2017. Ce danger-là, visiblement, ne mérite pas de débat dans notre assemblée. Sur ce point je me réjouis de constater que vous êtes sur la même ligne que le gouvernement. Au rendez-vous quand au moment-même où toutes nos écoles étaient dans la tourmente de la valse des protocoles sanitaires, notre ministre Blanquer a posé un acte fort : ouvrir un colloque sur le wokisme. Priorité aussi pour la ministre de la Recherche, ça a été dit au moment où les étudiants souffraient des mois de confinement, de distanciel, de précarité galopante, Madame Vidal a su justement nommer le mal et commander une enquête au CNRS sur l’islamo-gauchisme qui gangrènerait nos universités. Si vous voulez parler sérieusement des menaces qui pèsent sur l’université et les libertés académiques, alors la liste est longue et le prétendu wokisme n’y figure évidemment pas. La paupérisation de la recherche, notamment en sciences humaines et sociales, la précarisation des jeunes chercheurs, des milliers d’étudiants dont on permet pas l’inscription en master, plus d’un jeune sur dix sous le seuil de pauvreté, des universités et des CROUS dans un état calamiteux, des files d’attente d’étudiants devant les psychologues et les guichets d’aide alimentaire et la volonté d’influence des grosses sociétés polluantes dans les écoles et universités. Mais je constate que vous avez parfois un rapport assez hermétique avec le réel.
      Ainsi, à trois mois de la présidentielle, nous avons droit à un autre débat au ras des pâquerettes, approximatif, stigmatisant et foncièrement inutile. Lorsque la recherche universitaire va à l’encontre de votre projet politique, un projet devenu ici impossible à distinguer de celui de l’extrême droite, alors oui, vous faites peser des menaces bien plus graves sur les libertés académiques que les quelques outrances militantes. On le voit clairement aujourd’hui. La volonté d’annuler, d’interdire, de régenter la penser provient en vérité de votre camp. L’ordre et la morale, c’est ça votre objectif, tout le reste, les moyens alloués à l’université, le soutien à la recherche, la lutte contre la précarité étudiante, tout cela n’est qu’accessoire et nous en avons une preuve éclatante aujourd’hui, je vous remercie. »

      https://twitter.com/ecologistesenat/status/1488547900607115265