Donald Nicholson-Smith writes "[The following is a translation of an article by Hervé Kempf that appeared in Le Monde for 25 November 2002 following a number of inaccurate reports on former enragé and situationist René Riesel's sentencing, his refusal to request a presidential pardon and his earlier break with José Bové and the Farmers' Confederation. The article gives a brief history of the affair and outlines Riesel's current positions.--Reuben Keehan]

WHY SHOULD SOLDIERS BOVÉ AND RIESEL BE RESCUED?

The resignation that has greeted the Court of Appeals' confirmation of the sentencing of José Bové and René Riesel to fourteen months in prison testifies to a singular amnesia on the part of French society and its political representation. For, in an astonishing paradox, France is prepared to lock up agitators for actions in Nérac and Montpellier that it has since itself acknowledged to be well founded. In order to understand this, we have to look at the recent past.

At the beginning of 1998, the issue of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) was confused. One after the other the Juppé and Jospin governments made ambiguous decisions: in February 1997, Alain Juppé prohibited the farming of transgenic maize, but authorized its importation; in November, Laurent Jospin prohibited the farming of GM rapeseed and beetroot, but authorized that of maize.

Public opinion was hesitant, numerous opponents made themselves known, consumers showed reluctance in face of products that offered them nothing. Meanwhile the transgenic corn of the Novartis company remained legal and, in Nérac (Lot-et-Garonne), its warehouses contained tonnes of GM seeds ready for commercialization. GM could easily have been imposed on Europe without any real debate ever taking place.

It was at this point that the Farmers' Confederation chose to intervene: on 8 January 1998, led by National Secretary René Riesel and José Bové, one hundred farmers overran the Nérac warehouse, rendering the seeds unusable by dousing them with water. They appeared in court in Agen in February, José Bové declaring, "When was there a debate about GMOs? When were the farmers and consumers consulted? Never."

Bové and Riesel were convicted, but shortly afterwards the government announced a public debate in the form of a "Citizens' Conference". This took place in Parliament in June 1998. The citizens in question expressed many reservations with regard to GM crops, particularly the maize, which contained a gene resistant to antibiotics. And in September 1998, the Council of State suspended the authorized cultivation of the cereal concerned.

The debate continued all winter in France, just as it did in England, in Italy and in Germany, and opinion proved to be hostile toward GM. But tests continued in secret here and there, as at CIRAD in Montpellier, where preparations were made for an experimental crop of transgenic rice to be raised in the Camargue. On 5 June 1999, Riesel and Bové organized the sabotage of CIRAD's experiments.

A couple of weeks later, on 24 June, Europe placed a moratorium on GMOs, France being one of the countries most actively in favor of this decision. It was a decision, moreover, that transcended the left-right divide, for just last October the Raffarin government chose to support the extension of the moratorium, which Europe has renewed.

These events and dates oblige us to conclude that José Bové and René Riesel did openly what France desired secretly. Their acts stimulated several important political decisions. To support these decisions means supporting those acts. Locking their authors up therefore constitutes a political contradiction.

Another aspect of this affair is especially relevant in view of the intellectual coma into which the French left seems to have lapsed. The media has focused on José Bové, completely neglecting René Riesel. Now, Riesel is no simple sidekick. He has left the Farmers' Confederation, and he has criticized José Bové for adopting a media-manipulating strategy that has become even more pronounced since Bové's destruction of a McDonald's restaurant in Millau in August 1999.

THE RUIN OF NATURE

Riesel directs a radical critique at the "citizenists" and ATTAC, with whom Bové has allied himself. According to Riesel, these tendencies merely want to be managers of the techno-commodity system. "ATTAC and the citizenists are neo-Statists who want nothing more than the return of the Welfare State; they want to regulate the system, not to challenge it in any real sense. They have nothing to say about alienation because it doesn't interest them: they are nothing but old leftists, old Stalinists who have updated their theses ever so slightly."

For Riesel social criticism must on the contrary focus on the logic of the technological system. According to him, the dominant phenomenon of the times is "the continuing artificialization of life, at work now for a century", a process in which science and the economy, each supporting the other, have invaded the entire social spectrum. They prevent other types of knowledge and social relations from finding expression, and create a technological system that has become autonomous to the detriment of life and liberty.

This domination leads as much to the ruin of nature as it does to the alienation of human beings. In this perspective, the advent of GMOs heralds a new level of artificialization of the biosphere, just as genetic engineering seeks to manipulate the human genome itself.

Riesel's radicalism is located within a tenuous but lively network centred on the Encyclopédie des Nuisances group (which publishes his writings) and the Society Against Scientistic Obscurantism and Industrial Terrorism [sic: actually "Despotism"--Trans.] The influence of these groups is marginal, but they incisively expose the soft underbelly of leftism and anti-globalism: the incapacity to criticize the technological system and debunk the myth of Progress.

That myth has in fact already been largely dismantled by others, notably Pierre-Henri Taguieff in Du progrès [On Progress] (Paris: Librio, 2001).

For René Riesel, the failure of his erstwhile comrade José Bové, reduced today to seeking a pardon from the President of the Republic, reveals the impasse of an oppositional discourse that must itself be called into question. The left, or more generally all those who care about reforging the legitimacy of politics in disenchanted times, could do worse than lend an ear to this distinctly maverick account of things.

Hervé KEMPF
Le Monde, 25 November 2002

Translation: Reuben Keehan (slightly revised by Dave Barbu)"