Giorgio Agamben: Terrorism or tragicomedy?

On the morning of November 11, 150 police officers, most of which
belonged to the anti-terrorist brigades, surrounded a village of 350
inhabitants on the Millevaches plateau, before raiding a farm in order
to arrest nine young people (who ran the local grocery store and tried
to revive the cultural life of the village). Four days later, these nine
people were sent before an anti-terrorist judge and "accused of criminal
conspiracy with terrorist intentions." The newspapers reported that the
Ministry of the Interior and the Secretary of State "had congratulated
local and state police for their diligence."

Everything is in order, or so it would appear. But let's try to examine
the facts a little more closely and grasp the reasons and the results of
this "diligence."

First the reasons: the young people under investigation "were tracked by
the police because they belonged to the ultra-left and the anarcho
autonomous milieu." As the entourage of the Ministry of the Interior
specifies, "their discourse is very radical and they have links with
foreign groups." But there is more: certain of the suspects "participate
regularly in political demonstrations," and, for example, "in protests
against the Fichier Edvige (Exploitation Documentaire et Valorisation de
l'Information Générale) and against the intensification of laws
restricting immigration." So political activism (this is the only
possible meaning of linguistic monstrosities such as "anarcho autonomous
milieu") or the active exercise of political freedoms, and employing a
radical discourse are therefore sufficient reasons to call in the
anti-terrorist division of the police (SDAT) and the central
intelligence office of the Interior (DCRI). But anyone possessing a
minimum of political consc ience could not help sharing the concerns of
these young people when faced with the degradations of democracy
entailed by the Fichier Edvige, biometrical technologies and the
hardening of immigration laws.

As for the results, one might expect that investigators found weapons,
explosives and Molotov cocktails on the farm in Millevaches. Far from
it. SDAT officers discovered "documents containing detailed information
on railway transportation, including exact arrival and departure times
of trains." In plain French: an SNCF train schedule. But they also
confiscated "climbing gear." In simple French: a ladder, such as one
might find in any country house.

Now let's turn our attention to the suspects and, above all, to the
presumed head of this terrorist gang, "a 33 year old leader from a
well-off Parisian background, living off an allowance from his parents."
This is Julien Coupat, a young philosopher who (with some friends)
formerly published Tiqqun, a journal whose political analyses – while no
doubt debatable – count among the most intelligent of our time. I knew
Julien Coupat during that period and, from an intellectual point of
view, I continue to hold him in high esteem.

Let's move on and examine the only concrete fact in this whole story.
The suspects' activities are supposedly connected with criminal acts
against the SNCF that on November 8 caused delays of certain TGV trains
on the Paris-Lille line. The devices in question, if we are to believe
the declarations of the police and the SNCF agents themselves, can in no
way cause harm to people: they can, in the worst case, hinder
communications between trains causing delays. In Italy, trains are often
late, but so far no one has dreamed of accusing the national railway of
terrorism. It's a case of minor offences, even if we don't condone them.
On November 13, a police report prudently affirmed that there are
perhaps "perpetrators among those in custody, but it is not possible to
attribute a criminal act to any one of them."

The only possible conclusion to this shadowy affair is that those
engaged in activism against the (in any case debatable) way social and
economic problems are managed today are considered ipso facto as
potential terrorists, when not even one act can justify this accusation.
We must have the courage to say with clarity that today, numerous
European countries (in particular France and Italy), have introduced
laws and police measures that we would previously have judged barbaric
and anti-democratic, and that these are no less extreme than those put
into effect in Italy under fascism. One such measure authorizes the
detention for ninety-six hours of a group of young – perhaps careless –
people, to whom "it is not possible to attribute a criminal act."
Another, equally serious, is the adoption of laws that criminalize
association, the formulations of which are left intentionally vague and
that allow the classification of political acts as having terrorist
"intentions" or "inclinat ions," acts that until now were never in
themselves considered terrorist.

Giorgio Agamben
Libération, November 19, 2008