Mathieu Burnel : "L’insurrection est arrivée"

By Ce soir (ou jamais !) - Daily Motion, October 31, 2014

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

The following video features Mathieu Burnel, one of the "ex-accused of Tarnac," on a French talk show discussing the police killing of Remi Fraisse in the Testet ZAD. Following the video is a rough translation into English:

Mathieu Burnel : "L’insurrection est arrivée... by ce-soir-ou-jamais

"…It's hard to know what to say in a conversation revolving around these kinds of questions, we hear politicians asking - 'Is it the good or the bad demonstrators?' 'What is the state of the revolutionary movement?' 'Oh yes, it's the radicals, oh yes, it's the anarchists…'… I'm sorry to tell you, but I really have the impression that you live on another planet, that you understand next to nothing about what's going on with young people.

The situation is pretty clear, in France but it's the same in all liberal democracies: the sphere of classical politics is fundamentally apocalyptic. Apocalyptic why? Because in fact the only thing it can manage to propose is to prevent disaster, to hold back the end. Apocalypse is not the revelation of the end, it the warding off of the end. Classical politics says, neurotically, 'wait, wait with us, we're going to try to limit the crisis, wait with us, we're going to try to make sure everything doesn't collapse right now…" The sphere of classical politics no longer believes in anything, and, it's obvious, that's why no one believes in it any more. And so, in some places, like Notre-Dame-des-Landes, like Testet, there are people who have taken note of this, who recognize the fact that there is nothing left to wait for from classical politics, that, obviously, since 1972, the report of the Club of Rome, we know there's an ecological crisis, that politicians can and will do nothing… and so now there are people who try to take seriously, minimally, the question of resistance, the question of the material conditions for resistance. And these people, they are finding each other at the ZAD, they are finding each other at Testet, they are finding each other in riots, like you were showing images of people rioting, and you want to know, who are these people? These people are your children, your nephews, these people, they're us, actually. This is our generation. Our generation finds more sense in fighting with the police when they throw tear gas at us or beat us. This generation finds more sense in finding new political forms than in believing for a single second that Corinne Lepage (French Ex-minister of Environment other guest on show), the Socialist Party, or who knows what reactionary is going to get us out of here. There is a political experimentation that has opened up, that has begun. And that is what matters, that is what is happening, that is what people are doing today.

It would suffice to look, a little bit, at what's going on in the world. When The Coming Insurrection came out in 2007, the evocation of the 'coming insurrection' in the title made people laugh, 'oh, ha ha, the coming insurrection," but today we can say that insurrection came. We haven't seen three months pass in which some country, somewhere in the world, has not seen its youth --and not only the young-- in the street, defeating the police, and trying to abolish economy. That's what's happening, that is the real movement in the world today.

What's going on is clear. Today people who take seriously the question of their environment and the political question, the police will shoot them in the back. In the face of this situation there are two solutions: either go home and give up, or neutralize and defeat the police. That is the one and only thing that would be worthy of the death of a comrade. And for that, there are two demonstrations tomorrow, one in Toulouse, and one in Nantes, and I invite everyone, everyone who find it absolutely unacceptable that the police can kill young people who fight for their ideas, to join these demonstrations, and to defeat the police using all necessary and appropriate means..."