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Niger, the poorest country in the world, on the brink of war 0:00 Today, we have the honor of welcoming another philosopher well known to our audience, Dominique Pagani. Dominique has lived and worked in sub-Saharan Africa. It's a part of the planet that he knows particularly well. And he has kept up such relationships with his former students there that they allow him to stay informed about the events we're going to talk about today. So it's precisely on the basis of this African current affairs that Dominique Pagani is going to analyze colonialism as a species of imperialism. He's going to try, through the recent history of French-speaking Sahel, to demonstrate how we went from the French colonial empire to Atlanticist globalization.
0:36 Dominique, go ahead. Thank you very much Sylvain. Thanks to everyone. I repeat, despite the fact that we were caught off guard regarding our meeting place, I'm very happy to be back with you. Yes, let me get straight to the subject at hand. Sylvain alluded to the history of French-speaking countries and in particular those of the Sahel.
1:11 That's easily said, 'history.' This thing is happening right now. It's not yet in history. It's in the present. I myself don't know if I'm managing to keep up, things are changing so fast. I don't know about those who follow a bit. For example, I'll say things out of order, but afterward I have a plan. Consider yourselves lucky because I'm known for my digressions and for once I made a plan. Hello. I'll take an example like that, out of order, which is already outside the plan.
1:45 Niger, which is the last country in Africa where I stayed—I'm not talking about the ones where I was on a mission for two or three days, but where I actually stayed a long time, about a dozen years. Niger is considered the poorest country in the world. Well, that doesn't mean much. It's one of the five or six poorest, isn't it? In any case, it's part of what's called, in development aid offices, the LDCs, isn't it?
2:16 The least developed countries. So, among the developing countries, there are the LDCs, isn't there? The bottom of the bottom. Life expectancy is around 40 years in Niger. Let me take this opportunity, being the most anti-ecologist man in Europe, well that's the reputation people give me, it's actually more complicated than that, as the saying goes. But let me take this opportunity to point out that here, we're anxious about fine particles, about things we hear about all the time in the media, etc.
2:51 We're going to die soon. Life expectancy here is around 85 to 90 years. And over there, where there isn't a trace of industry, it's 40. There, I just wanted to point that out. I used to teach in Ivory Coast at one point, and I remember that we were talking about pollution, and one of the students—these were the seniors, in philosophy class, we only have seniors—said to me, 'Sir, if you have too much pollution over there, send us some, because we're dying from not having any industry.'
3:21 You see, we get educated by the students over there. So, out of order, I'm telling you, this is the poorest country in the world. We were on the brink of going to war just a few weeks ago. Are you aware, if you follow things a bit—Macron had stirred things up, it's like with Ukraine, we're not going to fight directly. Well, at the time it wasn't even openly said yet, you see how fast things move. No, we were going to arrange for Africans to police other Africans, isn't that so? War, war against the poorest country in the world.
3:53 We'll see some photos afterward, but if you see what the daily life of a Sahelian woman looks like, we'll see that later, geographically. In Germany, they say a Frenchman is a short man with a mustache who doesn't know his geography well. Try to look at that a bit more closely. Well, whether it's a woman from Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, or Chad going eastward. In all cases, it's a woman who, statistically, isn't the minister's wife, but is the one who gets up at 5am to go fetch water.
4:29 It's far. It's certainly not at home. There, she walks 10 km on foot to find water. Often with a child on her back and one in each arm. And then afterward she walks another 10 km to gather wood to heat the water. Because over there, we're very eco-friendly, I mean. No nuclear. Well, I'm being sarcastic. No gas, no oil, no coal. Not even coal, it's wood that gets used. Well, yes, that's nature.
5:01 In a country with no trees. She goes to fetch water in a country where there's little water, and she goes to fetch wood in a country where there are no trees. And once she's done her 20 km, she starts pounding grain. It's with a big pestle. I get blisters after 5 minutes. I'm a lazy Corsican, but still. And she does that all day long, still with the child on her back. Anyway. So, waging war on countries like that, but that's... Can you imagine? And at the last moment, you see, right at the moment when it failed. I'll come back later to why it failed, the chronology in detail.
5:35 But I just learned the day before yesterday, to show you I'm not joking when I say I try to stay more or less connected to this current news, how fast this is moving and changing. It was the day before yesterday that my former students, who happily learned that I wasn't dead and so formed an alumni association, etc., and who made me honorary president, and who send me tons of videos like this that we practically never see in Europe, where you see 'Macron get out' in the streets of Niamey, of Bamako, Russian flags.
6:11 Anyway, we'll come back to it. I wouldn't vote for Putin if I were in Russia. Today, yes, I would vote for Putin. We'll talk about that. Yes, I need to resist my digressions. But still, the current news is Putin in Africa right now. Seriously. And so, they send me that Nigeria, which was supposed to be—on paper, roughly the most powerful army in West Africa—Nigeria had just given up on sanctions against Niger.
6:50 Not only did they of course give up on invading, much to Macron's dismay, but on top of that they stopped, canceled the sanctions, and restored the electricity, because there were starting to be dozens of deaths in Niger's hospitals because of the power cuts and the sanctions imposed via the ECOWAS countries, the Economic Community of West African States, imposed by...
Colonialism as a species of imperialism; Leopold II's Congo 7:23 So that's what we're going to talk about tonight. Alright, let me get serious now. Tonight's subject is how we should name the cause of all these misfortunes. I heard Sylvain say colonialism... No, he did say that tonight's subject is to show that colonialism is a species... sorry, I'm speaking as a philosopher here. But yes, we do need to use a bit of jargon. It's a species within the genus... imperialism.
7:56 So I say that because there are people who consider themselves sufficiently left-wing when they condemn colonialism. And in particular French colonialism. Françafrique, well, you know that better than I do. And we'll watch a little video clip later of a young Congolese man I recommend to you. I'll give you the references afterward. Congolese from the DRC. Because before, we used to say Congo-Léopoldville or Congo-Brazzaville. That's archaic-colonial. That's the era of the Belgian Congo, Congo-Léopoldville.
8:28 Or Congo-Brazzaville. That was French Congo, mind you. Brazzaville today. No, no, I'm talking about the DRC, the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is one of the largest countries in Africa, almost the largest. Algeria and Sudan slightly exceed it in area. And you'll see that this young Congolese man denounces what is probably the most appalling thing happening in Africa, and probably in the world, in terms of human suffering, to speak precisely.
9:09 We'll get there. The massacres taking place in what we'll call, in a somewhat broader geographical sense than just the DRC, the Great Lakes region of Africa, to include Rwanda and Burundi, though they're not the topic here. Tonight it's West Africa for us. We estimate between 10 and 15 million deaths, in the most optimistic estimates, the number of deaths that occurred, especially in the era when the Belgian Congo was the private property of the King of the Belgians.
9:47 That means it didn't even belong to Belgium and the Belgian people. It was the garden, the backyard, of King Leopold. And since it was an era when there was no synthetic rubber yet—sorry to laugh, it's dreadful—but there was still what's called natural rubber, and he had found a goldmine. Except sometimes he was disappointed by the harvest, with his 'negroes,' the yields, frankly. Yes. Whole villages were massacred, burned down because the harvest didn't reach the expected quota.
What is called a colony? The case of the United States 10:22 Women had their breasts cut off, men were run through. I won't show you photos, I'm not a voyeur, but there are photos of 12-year-old kids with their arms cut off because they hadn't harvested enough rubber for the King of the Belgians, for the treasury. We're talking about that region, and the young Congolese man doesn't denounce colonialism anywhere, nor France, he denounces imperialism. Let me get back to my subject. So I'm going to become a bit philosophical and tiresome again.
10:54 What do we call, isn't it, a colony? The Armenian colony of Marseille exists. Nobody's going to talk about colonialism there. The Corsican colony of Nice. My parents—I went to elementary school in Nice for a while because my parents, who were colonials, I don't know, I was born in Vietnam, thought Nice was fine, there were still palm trees.
11:27 Beyond that, it's the far North, so we settled in Nice. The Italian colony in Brooklyn, New York. What does that mean? People who came to settle, to live there. That's the exact opposite of most Frenchmen, starting with my father, who were civil servants who spent a year in Laos, two years in Cochinchina, four years in Ivory Coast, but never settled.
11:57 Never what the Anglo-Saxons call settlement, you see. In other words, I'm saying that if there's one example of colonialism, it's a country that's never accused of colonialism, but it's the only one that did it to perfection: the United States of America. Because the Puritans of the Mayflower, you know, the first ones who went to settle there, they must have been strange characters because they found the Protestants of Holland still too lax. You see, the founders of the United States, that's interesting.
12:30 I say that because we shouldn't forget that today's world is nevertheless governed by Puritan cultures. Well, it was, until very recently, still largely dominated by extremely Puritan cultures. You mustn't throw bottles into the trash bins meant for plastic. Well, let's not mix up all the issues, but still, you know, all of that comes from there. So, the United States, what is colonialism there?
13:00 It's the replacement of history, first of all, by legend. We arrived, there was a virgin land, of course, since we exterminated those who were there. The rifle in the right hand, the Bible in the left, or the other way around—don't touch the Bible with the left hand—and then, in this country that God gave us. That's the legend. It makes for masterpieces, Westerns and all that, I myself like them, but still, that is colonialism. So, the United States has very frequently denounced French colonialism in Algeria, for example, all while cozying up with the OAS.
13:35 If they could topple de Gaulle, who was anti-Atlanticist, it would have been a double win. You see, it's not simple. I'm saying, when I say I play the philosopher by questioning words, it's still the fundamental Socratic approach. Not 'what is it'—that's Heidegger—but 'what do you call it?' I don't know if that verb even exists. In any case, some people use it. There. So, the colonialism issue has been over for a long while. I know I'm going to disappoint some who are still fighting that battle.
14:05 That's fine, it's a good intention, but since these countries became independent—I refer again to that video whose details I'll give you later, of that young Congolese man who says clearly that those were fake independences in the 60s, that it's happening now—we're back to the very latest current events, it seems to me we're finally witnessing a second wave of independence, and this time a bit less formal than the one that took place when I was 13.
Memories of Togo: political awakening and "federation" 14:41 That's what awakened me to political life. But yes, I was in Togo, I was a colonial, I was a bit fascist-leaning. Because kids are even worse than their parents in that milieu, you understand, they don't have the scruples of wanting to hide their thoughts, of being politically correct, all that. I would go into the kitchen to chat with the houseboy because, frankly, the houseboy was more interesting than my parents' guests. You spend your time doing that, inviting each other, returning invitations. Because the houseboy taught me that if we wanted to hunt buffalo, we had to warn him first because he would warn his brother-in-law to turn into a buffalo so that I could approach the buffalo.
15:16 It's fascinating for a kid, you see. And I said to him—no wait, why did I say 13 years old, I was 11. I told him, 'We brought you roads, hospitals, schools, mainly me.' And they're kind to children, you know. He said to me, while still doing the dishes, he said, 'Ah, I saw the hospital construction site over there, I didn't see any white man working on it.'
15:47 He's right, that idiot, it's not possible. That's what awakened me to political life. It wasn't once, twice, it was often remarks like that. I was uncomfortable, all the same. There. So I owe a lot, and also, I won't continue with this anecdote, but one more anyway. This time I was 12 years old, I was in Togo, and Togo was a former German colony, and then after the 14 War, Germany was deprived of its colonies and they were entrusted to the League of Nations.
16:20 Before the UN, there was the League of Nations, you should know. And the League of Nations entrusted them, some to England, others to France. The great colonial powers. And Togo therefore got its independence because of this special status—Cameroon also had the same status—in '57, well before the wave of independence in the early 60s, well before de Gaulle. And so we were in the midst of independence celebrations, there's an anecdote, I'll tell two but they're very quick.
16:57 There was jubilation in the streets and my father was a bit embarrassed because there was the car and the Togolese dancing in the street like that, and my father gave a timid honk of the horn, and a dancer stopped and said, 'You mustn't honk anymore, we're independent.' That's rather sweet, isn't it. And then, especially, I was with my driver who used to take me, a kid, to school, frankly. And then all of a sudden he stops and greets another driver in the car and says 'federation.'
17:27 I said to him, 'What's that, federation?' I was too young. There were already plans not to stay within the colonial borders, and that they don't tell you, but present-day Mali, for a short period, formed a single country with Senegal, on the initiative of a great Marxist named Modibo Keïta, who was the first head of state of Mali. You see. All those people, they were sent soldiers to stage coups, and when the generals were toppled by the colonels, the colonels by the captains, and the captains by the warrant officers, well, that in the end produces the dictatorships we've had for a long time in those countries.
18:07 I say that because Macron, well the Macronist media, that is to say almost everything we hear, denounce the junta—you hear that, right, in Mali 'the junta has decided,' the junta, the military regime—as if we were great democrats, when we spent our time toppling, isn't that so, the founding fathers of independence and replacing them with soldiers. So you see, I owe a lot to this region, especially since I've always lived off my gift of gab, isn't that so, I've taught, I've been a consultant, in short I sell hot air, I give talks—and the French language was taught to me by teachers who were originally Togolese and Beninese, whose mother tongue wasn't even French, and you'll see that the young Congolese man I mentioned earlier, whom we'll eventually hear, speaks a French that I wish Pujadas would draw inspiration from now and then.
IMF, World Bank, European Union; the Sahel as "shore" 19:17 Or Pascal Praud, well, our news anchors. There, I wanted to make this introduction. What's current isn't colonialism anymore—they're clever now, no, they're independent, sovereignty must be respected—and folks, I'm asking my question again: who is the dominant element exploiting developing countries in general, Africa in particular, and the Sahelian countries especially? Well, I'll tell you, it's not bilateral, it's not England or France, it's the IMF and the World Bank, and the European Union, dare I say it. I never earned as much money as in the years I worked, paid by the European Union, in Niger, thanks to you, because the European Union's budget is your taxes—you want to leave the money, it's European taxpayers' money—I never earned as much money running that famous music center, isn't that so, in the poorest country in the world, for musicians.
20:30 ...of Niger. You see, Niger is where it's marked 'Sahel,' you see, there, there's Mali, Niger, which have roughly the same surface area, almost twice the size of France each, and which are crossed by this ochre band you see there, which is precisely what's called the Sahel. So, a nice metaphor—Sahel is an Arabic word, maybe some of you know, meaning 'shore.' The ocean is the desert, you see up there, darker, all the way to Algeria, almost to the Mediterranean. So the Sahel is the last 'beaches' where you can still—oh, not farm, because it's not watered enough—but at least graze herds. Recall Hegel's early theological text: Abraham grazed his flocks on a boundless land. That's the Sahel. We'll see some photos later that evoke it—it's the land of herders, even before settlement. And this ochre band that runs from Mauritania, that is,
21:41 just above Senegal—sorry, north of Senegal—all the way to the Red Sea, isn't that so, all the way to Ethiopia, to what wasn't so long ago called French Somaliland. There, Djibouti, which is one of the rare places with military bases—that's rare—from almost everyone, even China, that's rare, generally the French who have their base, Americans, NATO, there. Djibouti, like that, it locks the passage, you see, to the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, there's a bit of a crowd at that gate. Well, let's leave aside Rimbaud's country, and it's this region that's going to occupy us. So I started with the other one because it's clearer, if you like, but this one is a bit more concrete because it clearly shows the gradient going from the south, where there's dark green, that is, roughly, imagine an Amazonian setting, it's real jungle there—so there, it's the opposite, the Sahel terribly lacks water—and there, on the contrary, it's spongy, there, that's Abidjan, there. And the further north you go, you see, the paler it gets, and you see again
22:52 this ochre band where it's marked Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad, Sudan. So what's striking, already—let me do a bit of geography because everything is going to follow from this, it's not that I refer more to Montesquieu than to Marx, but that's not contradictory at all, far from it, isn't it—Montesquieu was one of the most serious men among the Enlightenment thinkers, and climate has played a big role in the determinations that will follow. We're not used to seeing this intermittent geography, let me explain, I can scroll through, there, okay, there, you see, there, this is in Mali, you'll notice that the road is dead straight, straight, like in Texas, it's the continental plateau, it's not Corsica, it's not curves every 50 meters. So, and this is the Hombori Mountains, one of the most peaceful places in the world—they deserve credit for being peaceful because they suffer, you know—
Climate according to Montesquieu, and "West," a concealing concept 24:02 I'm not talking about the war, they've been suffering economically for a long time, for generations, and now you can't even go there anymore, now it's villages where people have their throats cut. It's not that the war came, it's not the war that justified sending—that justified sending French troops under François Hollande—that's your era, you know it, isn't that so—and now we've arrived at today's troubles, which is that, well yes, the junta got fed up with seeing that for 10 years the French had been there to protect them from jihadists, except that there are 10 times more deaths 10 years later than at the start. Strange. We've already seen the Americans flatter the bearded ones in Afghanistan to chase out the Soviets, so still, it's complicated. So, do we support the rebel movements? Let me play the philosopher again: who's 'we'? It's not France, it's not—well, it is also France, but it's mainly—
25:12 let me just name it: Atlanticist imperialism. There, that way we know what we're talking about again. I say that because I'm annoyed to keep hearing, including from my friends, comrades, Pan-Africanists, people who rejoice at seeing the movements we'll detail later, these movements which I say represent the true wave of independence you have the good fortune to witness—they say 'the Westerners,' but that's an occulting concept, in philosophy we say that—it means, a computer, that's clear, a cup, a table, those show things—it means that 'the West' is made precisely not to be seen, to hide. What does it mean to be 'in the West'? Does it mean being 'out west,' being lost, off track?
25:53 without thinking that's not it, they're not 'off track,' I'm telling you, Westerners know exactly what they're doing. Good, let's stop playing with words, let's get back to analyzing them. So, are they 'in the west'? West—but where is that? Since when—the earth is round, where is it, wherever you like, it's a clever word, don't you agree? Poland is east of Germany, west of Russia, yes or no? 'In the west,' who wants—you drag, like the Little Prince, you drag your chair over 2-3 meters and then you pass into the west, or the north, as you like. Come on, stop splitting hairs, Pagani, fine, it means the European countries. Oh really?
26:31 I thought it was the United States, the leaders of the West — no, that's not right either, it's getting complicated — well yes, yes, it's the industrialized, developed countries, Japan is the biggest Western country — no, that doesn't work either, you see, it's a concept that shows nothing, that's made precisely so as not to say capitalist, imperialist, Atlanticist. That's why I'm starting with this preamble. So let me come back to my intermittent geography, you see — ah, Pagani is telling stories again — it's not so poor, it's green, it's beautiful, it's eco-friendly — no, no. First of all, what you see as leaves aren't leaves, they're thorns, the trees — but you're going to see, this is because it rained three weeks ago, the dry season which is called "the hivernage" over there — the same spot, the same hills, you recognize them, but seen from the other side there's a marigot there, you saw that — oh well, so he tells us this, there's plenty of water in that country — yes, here's the same spot, you see, after the first month of the dry season, which is going to last just as long as a Siberian winter — that's why I want to start with this geography.
Dry season, thorns, locusts and sandstorms 27:41 Of intermittent geography, you see — you can see there are patches darker than the rest on the ground, that's the bed of the marigots, the bottom of where there was a bit of water — it's staggering, you see, I wasn't joking when I said these were thorny shrubs, there's not much left there. So let's continue — you see, here you can clearly see the thorns up close — once I had a Land Rover tire, it's a Rover, tires punctured by thorns from these things. So then, suddenly, a human figure appears in the landscape — Abraham. Abraham grazed his flocks on a boundless land, you see — let's continue — I kept this one because you find elements of the Bible, so as not to upset anyone: in chronological order, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, three monotheistic and transcendent religions appeared in a geographical postage stamp, which is the desert — that's where we see it.
28:51 The common point — here, the seven plagues of Egypt, you remember, the locusts, the grasshoppers — you see, when the millet has grown, when there's a little something to eat, the locusts descend and by the end of the day there's nothing left to eat. So when you see that firsthand, going to make war on countries like that — there, like that, thanks a lot. Also, you see, when I tell you that Abraham grazes his flocks on a boundless land — except that here the limit is due to visibility caused by the famous sandstorm wind, the khamsin in Arabic, or the simoom, right — it looks like nothing, but in five minutes it's on you, it looks like it's on the horizon, and in five minutes it's on you, and when it's on you at 3pm, I can't see my hand, it's pitch black night — this isn't the temperate zone, it's not the Nivernais, not the Normandy hedgerow country, you're joking.
30:02 Can you imagine, such happiness — anyway, I'm going to get worked up. So here's what one expects when one isn't satisfied — me, I have water in the fridge, I'm a white man, when I go into the bush I have the cooler with bottles of Bordeaux in it, don't worry — but that's a personal "me," it includes me too. I'm still going to tell a really good one — once I go from Niamey to Agadez, Agadez the capital of the sands, the gateway to the desert — and once you've left, say, Tahoua, you'd better already have jerry cans of gasoline and supplies in the car, because there's nothing, nothing for 300 km, it's the void to the left, to the right, magnificent — it's the void, that doesn't mean there's no one — as soon as you stop, you sometimes have to stop to put wet t-shirts around your face, because even if the car has air conditioning, it's terrible — little heads pop out from the rocks, they're kids, shepherds, little shepherd boys, little shepherd girls, we don't send children to school so they can watch the herds, you see, especially the girls, and they wave little plastic jerry cans.
31:12 Of 5 liters, because they see it's a 4x4, so there's a white man or a minister if it's a national, hoping to get a bit of water. And then, finally, the sky starts to cloud over, the rainy season is about to begin, you see — I can hear you thinking, I'm sure some of you are saying you'd see yourselves quite well in this hut — it's not a hut, guess what it is — a silo, yes, bravo, granaries exactly, you see, raised up because the little bit of food stored inside has to be fought over with rats, rodents, you see — it's overwhelming, it's magnificent, and you see it's still boundless. I could spend a whole afternoon on a festival of the different forms of granaries — there are ones in rammed earth, there are ones in straw like this one, and finally the good news is that this soil is going to stop being concrete, cement, so you can't
The horizontal mosque, the sacred and the opium of the people 32:22 Cultivate it — and it's going to start being a bit moistened. That's where we change the scenery, because until now it was that, and that — does anyone guess what this is, a tank? No, because it's blocked there, you see, in the middle it's not — well, it's not blocked, there's no hole — actually yes, there is a hole, but a side one, you see — you have no idea — it's a mosque. You saw the little hole on the left, that's where you leave your sandals before going in, because there has to be a sacred space distinct from the profane space, right — and there's no imam there to police them, to say "you didn't do one of your five prayers" — no, no, that's it. I've seen horsemen dismount in the middle of the desert, plant their lance in the ground, leave the horse alone, and say their prayers — so no one is watching them, that's faith, that's not, well —
33:34 I was about to say something bad about others, but how do you expect them to build a vertical mosque with what material, out there, with what labor force? So it's horizontal — but even in horizontality, they insist on distinguishing the sacred from the profane, we're not animals. I told you about those children who come out of the rocks, you know, and thirsty, ask us for a bit of water, and when you give them some — we had it stored in the car — when you give them some, they don't drink greedily, they throw a little water on the ground for the gods — that means: okay, you might be white, you might have money, but I'm not an animal either, a silent struggle for recognition, magnificent, you see, it's of that order. This kind of mosque — what am I referring to?
34:26 To the fact that — if you know a bit, though you're all heathens now, you no longer go to catechism — you know the text of Genesis or the Pentateuch, when Moses sees God — to put it plainly, they're in communion, Moses speaks with God, unlike his brother-in-law Aaron who speaks with men and who says to Moses: listen, you talk with God, that's fine, frankly I couldn't do it, but you don't know how to talk to men, you don't know how to do politics, you don't know how to do PR — leave it to me. That's what's nice about Moses and Aaron — it's the title of a magnificent opera by Schoenberg — but back to Moses. What are the first words, the very first words God says to Moses, before even the Ten Commandments, before saying "I am who I am"? He says: take off your sandals, you are on holy ground. Yes — and why do I insist on placing this mosque here, it's because far from there, to the south, where it's well watered, in Côte d'Ivoire, where the Sahelian labor force emigrates as soon as the dry season comes, to go serve with their arms and legs
35:37 In the coffee and cocoa plantations that make the fortune of the countries a bit further south — in the capital, Abidjan, Manhattan, there are skyscrapers, careful, it's different from over there — the building caretakers, there are caretakers everywhere, the building caretakers go pick cardboard out of the trash, it serves as a mat to doze on at the entrance of a 30-story tower, they say their prayers on it — there has to be a sacred space that's a bit different from what Hegel calls the prose of the world. So we don't care whether one believes in God or not, that's not the issue, it's about seeing the depth of Marx when he says that religion is the opium of the people — because some say what a reduction, frankly, but have you ever tried to get someone off heroin? I have — I used to hang around jazz musicians who were quite hooked at the time, believe me, it's practically impossible.
36:49 I met — what's his name — the beat generation writer, the wealthy family kid, the Burroughs machines, William Burroughs — maybe some of you know Bill Burroughs — I met him in Tangier at the time, because we were all — jazz brought us together, I was 17, I was a groupie, and these were famous people around me, and we'd have discussions, and in the morning I say to Bill, I say, that was interesting what you said yesterday, and he says, oh really, what was I thinking about yesterday while we were talking? That you'd turn around so I could steal your wallet to buy a fix, he says. There, the brain is only good for that — never take heroin, you see, because you become like that. When Marx says religion is opium, the people's opium — heroin is made with opium — it means religion is fiendishly powerful, it's anything but reductive. It means if you want to remove religion, you'd better find a substantial substitute — the classless society, I say that just to say it —
37:59 You could find something else, but still, it's very strong — especially since in this admirable text Marx says, you know, it's a famous text, religion is the consolation of man in misery and unhappiness. So that's why I talk about it, it's not a question of belief, it's about seeing what this produces materially — it's matter, but not natural matter, it's historical matter in Marx, cultural in Lévi-Strauss — culture, nature, spiritual in Hegel — you see, it draws the same sets, all of that. A hammer is no less material than a mango hanging from a tree, but hammers don't hang from trees. So I wanted, you see, to show where we're starting from. So, we've seen the sky cloud over, the first rains, we can finally start working the soil, you see, and we move from nomadism to a settled life — historically I'm taking big strides here — I actually — it's not me who took this photo, I'm incapable, I'm very bad
Sedentism, the water chore and the origin of languages according to Rousseau 39:09 At visuals, I'm more of an ear person — but I grabbed this off the internet, and originally I wanted to pay tribute, on the anniversary of his death, to Michel Clouscard, whose Testament and the Path of Praxis — you see, I had proposed this series as "the Sahelian paths of praxis," you see. Here we're already moving from nomadism to a settled life, you see, there's a vague field behind, there's some food crops — and again here, it's noticeable — when you're in the forest, for instance, it's very hard to realize you're in a field, you think you're still in the forest, and then you notice there's a vegetable here, you see, it doesn't have the neatness it might have in a market hall. So I continue — ah, of course, the water chore, the women don't go to school because it's far from the village already —
40:19 You see, there's an admirable text by Rousseau — when I posted this photo, I had posted an excerpt, perhaps his best book, well, that's subjective, Rousseau's Essay on the Origin of Languages. Rousseau takes the opposite stance from the Anglo-Saxons who try to explain everything by biological utilitarianism — today it's cognitive science and all that — he said no, no, at the origin of languages there are also the wells. He says the wells, because that's a bit far from the village, there are no matrons to watch over the young girls, so there are boys, young men, who bring the herds to drink, the girls are there — and I'm trying to find the text, I don't have it in front of me, but he shows that language comes from the passions much more than from drives. It's very powerful — you mustn't confuse it with animal communication, which is very sophisticated, we've talked about it —
41:29 Dolphins, bees, you know, the bee that does its figure-eight dance to indicate to the hive the direction where it found food, the distance, and even the quantity — that's impressive, but it's about food. Whereas if you go to a boarding school cafeteria, as soon as the dishes are brought out, you don't hear many words, you hear the noise of forks and things, the young people devour it, and when the stomach starts to fill up — that's the opposite of the animal. So, who is it in history — this morning we're discussing when there's no longer immediate utility, when there's something else — and you know, because we'd had drinks first, we're perverse, us humans, we delay satisfying instinct through all sorts of obstacles, drinks first, then at the table — my German ex-wife, I'm getting anecdotal — with whom I remained on very good terms, she told me: I arrived as an au pair in Paris, it's appalling, I didn't know what a French meal was. In Germany at 6pm there's a machine that slices bread, there you go, with slices
42:40 Of spreadable sausage — I'm Germanophile, I don't look it, but it's not for the cuisine, which is better than in England — and I arrive there, I don't even understand the code, there's starter, first course — because she was an au pair with a family, an engineer-researcher at Suchard — I manage to say researcher at Suchard — she told me, I gained 10 kilos, 10 kilos in a month as an au pair, because the kids were sick of getting the samples, not even sold commercially yet, but they're good, and I gained 10 kilos, can you imagine — then there's dessert, coffee, the after-dinner drink, it never ends, you see. Well, there you had the young men and young women — admirable text by Rousseau, Essay on the Origin of Languages, right. Yes, the cow is thin, you noticed — that's about the average build of these cattle, they yield on average between 2 and 4 liters a day, far from the 38 liters
43:51 Of Holland — I'm staying on the water problem, you noticed. Because there the young girls were at the well, whereas here it's the void — there, it's really the void — these are Bellas. The Bellas are, how to put it, former slaves who were freed — I'm talking about ethnic groups, that was before this generation we see here — but well, you can't lose everything, the masters left them in the harshest parts of the country, right. And these women, you see everything they pile up in containers to get to the river or the marigot to bring back as much as possible, you see, with donkeys, children, horses — horses are for men, and camels, we say camels, they're dromedaries, that's for men — here it's donkeys. But what strikes me is the number of containers, you see, to bring back a maximum, because it's tiring anyway — but what strikes me even more, my anti-ecologist side —
45:02 Is the plastic bucket — they're crazy about it, no, but put yourself in their shoes — I've already picnicked in the bush with a few other French people passing through, plus an African colleague too, from the music training centers, and we had empty Evian bottles at the end, and the little villages drink — because there are always figures who show up, you think it's the void, and they'd ask us for the empty bottles, you see, because it's light, it doesn't crack, the water stays in it, listen, long live plastic! There, I'm being scandalous, I know, but I stand by it. So you understand why the water chore isn't over — look, you see the trees there, those are mango trees — if there are mango trees, it means there's a settlement, a small village, it's planted; otherwise, you see, on the ground there, that's sand, that's the Sahel — and look, on this sterility, the fertility —
46:12 Of women — the millet ears, they've just been harvested, you see, the food crop, the children — someone should build a statue to the African woman, as a song in Côte d'Ivoire says, "the African woman" — it's not worth it, but the work they put in, which is never quantified, is absolutely fabulous. And often I see young girls — when I say young girls, 12 years old — going to market with their mother, who says she's going to sell slightly sweetened water bottles, with a little brother in each hand — they're already economic operators at 12, you see, they're already little adults. So, I won't dwell too much — here are still other kinds of granaries, isn't it beautiful?
The AES, jihadists and the war that never happened 47:17 You'll notice the soil isn't plowed, because there's maybe 2-3 cm of arable topsoil, so it's raked at the surface, barely disturbed, you see, to plant. Now this — I can't — this is my former students sending me messages like this, meaning Nigeria has resumed supplying electricity to Niger. There, I'm going to show you all these countries to bring you back to current events — to say we nearly went to war against these populations. So, I'm going to get a bit more political — well, we've already been right in the thick of politics, especially for Marxists — but in current events, in the most immediate news, the big event I'm trying to follow, it's moving so fast, is the AES — some of you know about it, ah thanks Ambroise, others perhaps — the AES, the Alliance of Sahel States. I told you earlier, it looks like I'm taking detours, but I'm actually always saying the same thing —
48:28 I said that originally, the first head of state of independent Mali, the great Modibo Keïta, had decided, and had gotten his Senegalese counterpart to agree, to form a federation — hence my driver, when he crossed a federation and I asked what it was, said "you're too small, Senegal" — well, it's happening again, second chance. You've seen these large countries, these vast areas — Mali, Burkina, a bit smaller, and Niger — to stick with these three, which are making headlines everywhere, there have been military coups, with the junta that has just trampled on democracy — these three are in the process of merging to create the Alliance of Sahel States. We're likely heading toward what will be the largest African political territory, and of course with economic harmonization. So let's take these three countries for now, I've given you documents that can illustrate
49:38 What's happening in each of these three countries — Mali, from west to east, Mali, Burkina, Niger. But if we look a bit closer, the one that's stirred up the most trouble is the last one, Niger, the one that carried out its most recent coup. You saw that back-and-forth from our ambassador — breaking off diplomatic relations, but we don't want our ambassador to leave — that's unprecedented, you know. We wanted to impose our ambassador — thankfully he wasn't abandoned, there's political awareness, I'm well placed to know that instructions were given: above all, don't go besiege the French embassy, stay calm, that's exactly what they're waiting for, these Macrons, for someone to touch the French so it justifies military intervention. And this is where I get to the essential point: this military presence that's been there for over 10 years in Mali — and you hear every day, again three days ago there was another kidnapping of schoolgirls in northern Nigeria by jihadists, right, jihadists who have 4x4s with machine guns, you saw the photos we've seen —
50:48 These aren't people who can buy a 4x4 with machine guns, yes or no? Where does the money come from? It doesn't come from there — look, there's no money there. Yes, yes, I'm a conspiracy theorist, let's be clear, all the more clear because now there are only two political theories left, that simplifies things, I'm a bit lazy, I'm Corsican, that's on record, I'm in Corsica, they don't like that — well, I'm in a free country, so there are only two political theories left: there's the official theory, I won't detail it because meanwhile you know it well, and as soon as you stray a millimeter from it, you're a conspiracy theorist. That's roughly it, it simplifies things, frankly, compared to before — before there were the anarchists, the whatnots, the Jacobins, it's better this way. And the official theory — as soon as you depart from it and say different things, you're seen as conspiring. Yes, since we're on this chapter of conspiracy, I told you earlier that Nigeria is a truly exceptional country
51:58 In this whole region, because these are underpopulated regions, you can see that clearly — it's not Asia, it's not the Red River delta in Hanoi where I was born, or the Yangtze, it's not 3,000 inhabitants planting rice on one square kilometer, hence the extraordinary organization of those societies, you understand why it works economically, the Asian model — one bucket, and by the end of the day you've built a small dam — whereas here, you see on the horizon a man on his dromedary, you'd say he'll never manage alone, you see, it's an underpopulated region compared to ours. Exception: Nigeria, 180 million inhabitants and one ton of oil per inhabitant — careful, there's plenty to be had. Yes, there are Nigerian businesswomen who take their husband's private plane, the Cessna, the Dassault, to go shopping in San Francisco and come back — that's how it is, that's not — that's not the Sahel. And yet this country
53:12 Which is one of the potentially richest, and which is permanently ravaged — we're talking about Boko Haram, mysterious jihadists, we never know who pays for their equipment, nor — it has a long southern border with — because here we're talking about Niger, right — and I told you we'd get the explanation now, I'm delivering on it: why the war didn't happen. Because the current head of state of Nigeria, you know where he comes from? He comes from California — no, I'm serious, actually he was a heroin trafficker, he got caught by the FBI, and the FBI told him: you're looking at about 120 years in prison. He must have made a face anyway, or — we can make you a deal, we'll get you elected president of Nigeria. But I'm not joking, we talk about conspiracy, but reality outstrips fiction, I'm well below it, people think I'm exaggerating but no, I'm well below it — I don't have time to tell you about the current president —
54:24 He's the one who was in charge, who wanted to go to war, and why didn't it happen — no, I'm not losing my thread — because in Nigeria's constitution, the Senate must approve entering a war. It's not like Macron, who first decides to send troops and then afterward asks Parliament "would you mind ratifying this" — you have to do it beforehand, that's unconstitutional, by the way. So, I'll say the marabouts, to use regional language, the big merchants of northern Nigeria — big merchants, they do a bit more business, right, than those of Niger a bit further north, who are very Muslim, very devout, etc. They said: we're not going to go to war, the only little business we have is our trade with Niger, you're not going to make war on them. So the elders of the Senate refused entry into war, you see, it depends. So there is —
Western decline, crisis and the danger of war 55:34 We shouldn't say — the Westerners are collecting more and more defeats, it's a debacle in Ukraine — I'm not joking, it's atrocious for all sides in Ukraine — well, the sides at war, I mean, because there are parties doing quite well out of it, since we have to supply them with all the shells they demand — soon there'll be some who'll actually benefit from it. But you see the connection — proxy war on one side, but the Westerners are in a debacle almost everywhere — I'm not trying to reassure you — the danger of war is all the greater when there's decline, when there's decline and no other resources, you know what that's like, it's the child who breaks all his toys, or it's the team that knows it's going to lose and wrecks the match — no, no —
56:44 I'm very worried, to tell you the truth. I started my first public talks — because I have a big handicap, I don't write, I chat, I don't write — we have a boss in philosophy who left not a single written line, that's my cover, I claim descent from Socrates, sounds good, but actually it's a handicap, it's a flaw, there you go. And besides, I'm influenced — I was formed in the continent of orality, I have a few covers like that. Not writing, I used to lament, I had angst, I hadn't yet made videos in front of young people, I'd tell them: I'm going to die soon, I'll leave nothing to my son, I'm ruined, I have one little 120-page book on gays, nothing else — they told me: but yes, yes, yes, now you can speak, it exists, it's called the internet, you see, that's how it started, that's how. Now, the title of my first lecture series — no, no, I'm not losing my thread — it was Between Crisis and War: Philosophy
57:55 Question mark — and that was in 2014, you see, already — no, no, I'm not playing prophet, I mean I'm incapable of prophesying anything, that would be somewhat anti-philosophical, besides, understanding the present is already difficult enough. So I mean, but on the other hand, it was already in the air, that's what I mean. I'll be turning 85 next year, I've never seen as much danger of war as right now, I tell you as if it were subjective, but you can well imagine, especially now that we barely talk about anything else. But we mustn't forget the economic crisis — I mean now the most recent one, dating from 2008, from the so-called subprime crisis — you always have to find anglicisms, well, to put it quickly — the crisis Marx predicted, which made all the great contemporary economists laugh, that he'd drawn on — Marx, he was completely wrong, he foresaw a crisis, and everyone said we've never been better off — and then, bam, all of a sudden —
59:05 In 2008 — and before that there was the crisis of the 1930s, you see. So, go on, the crisis most comparable to the one we're living through now, in its scale and in the failure of industry, of overproduction — well, anyway, the crisis of the 1930s ended with 50 million deaths, you see. Every time, capital does a reset — that's how you say it, no, in computing, a reset — by carrying out carnage, carnage on a planetary scale. Yes, so, that doesn't sound very reassuring, what I'm saying, but my main concern is still that — it's not that when I say the West is in decline, that doesn't mean it's over, we'll polish it off in one bite — it's complicated, it's quite complicated. There, before I hand over the floor, I'd still like to get into some particulars — I've spoken about the Sahel in general, so very quickly, it all started with Mali, the most immediate priority — it's the first one to tell the French: get out, we're fed up, I mean our brothers are getting their throats cut
Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger: three histories 1:00:15 In the villages, you've been there for 12 years, it's really strange. Then there was Burkina Faso, whose leader, the junta leader Ibrahim Traoré, is probably the most popular man in Africa right now, in sub-Saharan Africa anyway, especially French-speaking Africa — the idol of the youth in particular, but not only them — and it's also Sankara's country. Sankara, whose memoirs I nearly published, can you imagine — I was paid by Hachette, I was bringing them an extraordinary scoop, that was it, I was in the final stage, I'd done several missions, I'd had discussions with Sankara, and then, last mission, I was going to fetch the final proof, as publishers say, that's the final stage — and there I learn he'd been gunned down, right, by our services, through Ivorian services as intermediaries, it's always the same, I mean through Ukrainian — well anyway, you understand — down to the last Burkinabé. So here we are —
1:01:25 So there's Burkina — since I'm going into detail, I'll come back to Mali. Mali is, after all, the territory of one of the greatest empires in African history, the empire of Soundiata Keïta, who plays roughly the role — I don't know — of both Achilles and Napoleon in local stories. In the evening, when night falls — there's a very quick twilight in those countries, and you pass fairly quickly from day to night — you immediately hear the percussion in the popular neighborhoods, and — it's not sound systems, it's live — it's griots, you know, the griot who is the musician, the poet, the historian, the genealogist, the one who says: "and here is Solomon, son of David, son of Suleiman Ben Daoud" — well, there's an equivalent: "here is Traoré, son of Sidibé, son of Touré," etc. Well, the griot does all that.
1:02:35 And there, today, at the very moment I'm speaking to you, what are they singing about? Still the exploits of Soundiata Keïta, 15th century, who had so much gold — we talk about the poorest countries in the world, we mentioned LDCs earlier, the least developed countries — well, at the time, when his caravan arrived in Cairo, when he made the pilgrimage to Mecca, in Cairo he made gold prices crash, there was so much gold in his caravan. That was Mali, before there was the gold of Peru, before there was Latin America, right — practically all the gold of the Middle Ages, you see, came from Mali. It's incredible when you think about it — and yet nothing is said about these countries, you'd think — and even now there's a large gold-bearing region at the tripoint border of Mali, Burkina, and Niger — what a beautiful region. And so, I wanted to point out that it's the one with the greatest historical heritage — I'm thinking of the Djenné mosque, one of the most beautiful examples of the Sudanese style, the heritage — I was forgetting Timbuktu, where there are manuscripts —
1:03:46 It was one of the holy cities of Islam, right, there are manuscripts I nearly got involved with, when they saw the reputation I'd made for myself with management — I manage myself very badly, but I manage the people who employ me well, generally in their opinion — and from the music center in Niger, I'd been offered the chance to work on the restoration of the Timbuktu manuscripts in Mali and of Chinguetti — then there were coups, that was a long time ago. And there's all that in Mali. Moving on to Burkina — it's the least touristy of the three, I find it magnificent, but I mean, there's nothing spectacular, a nice wildlife reserve in the south, but it's one of the greatest trade union traditions in all of Africa — not just French-speaking Africa, all of sub-Saharan Africa, you see how politically correct I am, I don't say "Black Africa" — in my head I do say Black Africa, because I'm like the Africans themselves, they don't say "Euro-Caucasians," they say "the whites," they're not stupid, well, they're not the ones who caused 3 million deaths in Vietnam, but anyway, no, we're being politically correct —
1:04:57 Burkina — and this is perhaps what contributes most to emigration from home, or to immigration if you're in the southern countries I was talking about earlier — to the point that an Ivorian was frank enough to tell me one day: we talk about the "Ivorian miracle," but the Ivorian miracle is Burkinabè hands, supervised by French technical assistance, there's no Ivorian in it at all — well, that was the Ivorian talking, if we take 10%, he said, Burkina is that — it's an exceptionally high population density for the Sahel region, which we've seen was underpopulated. So as soon as the first weeks of the dry season come, they go down 500-600 km to the south, Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire, to rent out their arms and legs and work as farm laborers, mainly for Africans, and then as house boys, cooks, for whites — sorry, Euro-Caucasians. And then Niger —
1:06:07 So Niger — it's the last country I resided in, perhaps a bit more mysterious, because with it we reach the end of West Africa, we reach Lake Chad to the east, and there Central Africa begins. That means wherever you're coming from, Lake Chad is the end of the world — terrible things are happening there right now, population massacres, well — and Niger, which is perhaps the least fundamentalist — because, well, I'm Mediterranean, I'm Corsican, we're ten times more puritanical — closer to Islamism in the sense of the imagery, with girls well guarded — Black Africa isn't the same Islam, girls and boys go to school together, well, I'll stop there, it's much more relaxed. But Niger starts to be a bit stricter, but above all that's where the Ténéré is, you've heard of it, it's perhaps the most desert-like part of the Sahara, where there's the famous Erg of Bilma and its dunes — except it's above all the last country to have changed sides, and where we, the French, draw
1:07:17 Our electricity from, for half a century, a bit less over the last 5-6 years, we've diversified a bit, but the uranium mine at Arlit, in northern Niger, in the middle of the desert, is at the heart of France's nuclear power supply. Yet 84% of Nigeriens don't have electricity at home — go figure the error, oh no, but you can't sustain that, you see. We know the Americans are fighting Russia and China, wherever it happens to be — we've seen how they pushed Ukraine into war 30 years ago already, and increasingly the Congolese no longer count, but the subsoil of their beautiful country counts in the bank and counts in industry. The current multipolar order bears a striking resemblance to the Cold War, at least the Cold War period, that is, characterized by two great blocs forming — you don't see Russia there — you see, he doesn't talk about France, he doesn't talk about colonization, he's talking about American imperialism, he knows what he's dealing with.
The video of the young Congolese man: imperialism and colony 1:08:27 But here it's a different scale than in the Sahel, here we're talking about the DRC, the Democratic Republic of Congo, whose former dictator, imposed on the population by us, Mobutu, who alone had, I believe, a fifth of the assets of UBS, the Union Bank of Switzerland — so it's one of the potentially richest countries in the world, but the populations are among the poorest in the world, that's how it is. Below the ground and above the ground — below the ground there's everything you could want, gold, manganese, diamonds, coltan, you know, for mobile phones — and above the ground, plant a broomstick and a month later there's a banana grove, it's a hyperbole, but still, I mean, it's a bit of that order — it's not the Sahel — he's talking about that, there's a resemblance there already: each nation finds itself confronted with the choice of its ally in this context. So the Democratic Republic of Congo, which shows interest toward the BRICS, poses a problem — it's difficult for Congo to formalize such an orientation without triggering — he'd just said a new orientation — who knows, who says the president who looks poorly, dazed —
1:09:37 Who was, given the stakes, completely overseen by the said and aforementioned Westerners, whom I maintain are the Atlanticist imperialists — I'm fine with saying Westerners if you like, but if you put that as Atlanticist imperialists, it starts to diverge a bit from the "Westerners," because he notices that with the Chinese — the Chinese leave equipment behind, which didn't happen in 81 years of colonization — equipment, not just taking raw materials. And here, parallel to his point, I've often heard it said — I'm not going to do communist propaganda, but why not, when I was a militant in the PC a long time ago, when it still existed — people would tell me: the biggest colonial country is the USSR, there are all these countries, then anyway the satellite countries — I don't know if that was understood, you know, East Germany, Poland, Hungary — these are colonies, I come back to the concept, well yes, there's no getting around it, for me a colony isn't whites among Blacks —
1:10:47 Or among Polynesians, no, no, it's: I take your raw materials and sell you finished products, that's the seriousness of colonialism. You go to Abidjan, there's traffic, terrible jams — those aren't cars manufactured in Côte d'Ivoire, they're Peugeots, Volkswagens, Mercedes for the ministers, even, as you can see, from the level of deputy director on up, it's the black Mercedes — well, wait, there's a winner and a loser, I sell you my cocoa, you can imagine at what price per kilo, per ton, like that, and then I buy Mercedes, that's how it is. Whereas the Soviet Union supplied oil to the German Democratic Republic, for instance, the Deutsche Demokratische Republik — I spent wonderful vacations there, dare I say it — and so, someone stole a country from me, that's rare in life, after all — someone steals your house, your car, your wife, but a country — I still sometimes dream about it, I dream that I'm arriving at the wall, I've gone through, I'm going to dream — well no, but it's serious — and in exchange —
1:11:58 The GDR gave — well, gave, sold — to the Soviets the most sophisticated telescopes from the Zeiss company, because the Zeiss you know for cameras, Zeiss Ikon optics, that's the brother who emigrated to the West, and the parent company was, and still is, in Jena, making glass with Lusatian sand, in Jena — well, I mustn't get carried away, because I'm talking about Weimar and Jena, I want to talk about music and philosophy. So, let's get back on track — you saw the quality of his French compared to Pujadas, yes, go on — Rwanda, for its part, as a crucial ally of the Westerners, could conceivably seek to extend its territory west of the Ruzizi, and informally this expansion already seems to have taken place through the action of the M23, while international opinion is preoccupied with events in Palestine and Ukraine — it's not at all interested in the possibility of an invasion war whose objective is to neutralize a country that wants to adopt —
1:13:08 A multipolar posture — let's push the analysis a bit further: this persistent instability seems to be built into the global plan that is slowly steering us toward a world war whose name has not yet been spoken. For now the instability will spread out from the East, as happened in 1998 during Rwanda's attempt to reconquer the Congo, two years after Laurent-Désiré Kabila came to power. Note that this tendency is general and global: the zones not yet exploited and insufficiently controlled are increasingly coveted. Since the early 2020s this can be observed in regions like the Arctic, the Essequibo, the heart of the Congo, and, for France, the Scattered Islands. That's it, that's fine — this is just to tell you that Madame de Staël used to say 'light comes to us from the north'; light comes to us from the south, that's clear, and I don't know why this young man inspires me with quotations — but as Herodotus said more than 2500 years ago, 'Africa will always astonish.' No, but seriously, have you seen — the only ones who took the Israeli executive to court...
Putin, Munich, and pacifism to be dialecticized 1:14:20 I'm not talking about the Jews who are demonstrating against him as I speak, but the Israeli executive — even its most fervent supporters in our media end up saying, 'yes, it's a far-right government,' just like that — you see what it takes for them to admit it — well, it was South Africa that took this government to the International Court of Justice. It took a Black African country to save our honor. That's why I wanted to show this video. Some of you — I already answered a bit with the history of colonialism business — no, I'm very pleased with the question. First let me be precise: someone hears a fifth of what I just said and the media call me a Putinophile, even for less than that. Now be careful, there are going to be a lot of 'ifs' in what I'm about to say. If I were a resident of Russia, if I were a Russian citizen...
1:15:30 ...and if Russia weren't surrounded by nuclear missiles — because you're aware there are Chinese and Russian armies on the border of Canada and the United States strangling them, right? No, but listen, I mean, we're currently talking about the danger of 'if Putin wins in Ukraine, we're done for, he'll show up in Brittany.' No, that's what people say — I'm not joking, well, that's what's being said, it's serious, isn't it. And some people say, 'Pagani, not only are you a Putinophile, you're a Munich-appeaser too' — here we go again, 'you're acting like those who didn't want to stop Hitler.' I say the opposite: those who made Munich, Chamberlain, Daladier, were already rabid anticommunists who preferred to strike a deal with Hitler hoping he'd turn against the Soviet Union — which he hastened to do, did he or didn't he? To the point that the Soviet leadership understood that this was the moment, once and for all, to make — not an aggression, even less a treaty of friendship, sorry...
1:16:40 Not an alliance, even less a treaty of friendship, but a non-aggression pact: 'if you want to make war, my friend, start with the others, but not with me.' But at the outset, what did Chamberlain say on returning to London after Munich? 'Mister Hitler is a gentleman.' Well of course — not like Putin, not some 'moujik,' he's a gentleman. Better Hitler than the Popular Front — and it's those very people who call us Munich-appeasers now. All right, I'll tell you a great secret: am I a warmonger or a pacifist? Ah, there you go, you're speaking like a Marxist so you must be rather a pacifist — well, I was born in Vietnam, and I'm quite glad the Vietnamese didn't content themselves with being pacifists. I'm not praising war here — I'm saying you can be both at once. I'm saying — it's another philosopher — let me give you an example. In the 1930s there were the French communists...
1:17:50 ...the left, part of it — mainly the communists — who said, 'we must help the poor Republicans, they're being massacred by the fascists, by Franco,' etc. Right, and the rest of the left didn't move, Léon Blum either — peace is precious, that was the pacifist tendency, wasn't it — those who did not intervene in Spain. But the very same people intervened in Finland against the 'Popovs' — you see, the same ones. So you can be pacifist at once toward Spain — 'we mustn't, we must let Franco settle accounts with the communists' — and yet intervene in Finland. So beware of these words — 'pacifist' means nothing if you don't dialecticize it, if you don't give the context. Nothing is better than peace, but I mean, not under just any conditions. There's a magnificent passage in Plato's Gorgias where Socrates says how one can go to war when forced, when the Persians were at the gates of Athens...
1:19:00 One can go to war while wishing for peace — that's it, that's a rather fundamental way of answering your question. That said, I don't at all exclude — I'm not Putin, he's a fellow who spends his time putting Lenin and the communist period on trial — it's Lenin who — well it's the opposite of the accusation that the Bolsheviks were colonialists, no, on the contrary, Lenin's mistake, according to Putin, was to grant independence to Ukraine, Belarus, etc. — that's his line. But I will always defend Russia's policy under Putin against NATO. I make choices, I mean, I take responsibility: 3 million dead in Korea — you weren't born yet — 3 million dead in Vietnam, Iraq despite the UN not authorizing it, the permanent bloodbath in Latin America — the record no doubt being El Salvador or Guatemala, one of the two holds the record for deaths per capita...
Russia against NATO, development aid and China 1:20:11 I believe it's 400,000 dead — commandos, what are they called, the death squads, thank you. You see, we learned how you gouge out guerrillas' eyes with little spoons — we learned that at the American university in Maryland, in counter-guerrilla warfare training. So I recall all this to say that if I were a Russian citizen, if Russia weren't surrounded by missiles, it's not at all obvious that I would vote for Putin — you understood clearly that I would not vote for Putin. That's it. But this is inaudible in the current uproar — either we wage war on him or we're Putinophile, there's nothing in between. So, did I partly answer your question? Partly. But Russian presence in Africa, because that's the point — yes, let's be precise, I said that the people of Niger, from whom we draw our electricity...
1:21:21 ...to power our nuclear plants, from whom we draw our uranium, I mean for about half a century, 85%, a bit less, 83%, don't have electricity at home. The Soviet Union — Russia, I mean — has just signed a contract to build a nuclear plant in Burkina Faso, and the discussion is underway to do the same in Niger — something we should have done 60 years ago as part of what we had the nerve to call 'development aid.' Do you know a single country in the world that has ever helped another become its competitor? No — but that's what development aid means in concrete terms. You saw what happened to Mali — it gets isolated economically. 'We're going to turn you into Japan.' But Japan developed — careful — not thanks to the World Bank, not thanks to French or English cooperation, but thanks to the emperors. Not bad, you brought up the Japanese emperors — well, I mean, in the Meiji era, for those who know a bit of their history, at the end of that life they said, 'right, now we must make up for lost time, we'll order German engineers and so on, and we'll turn Japan into a modern country.' That's something...
1:22:32 ...sovereign — can you imagine? We squabble among French, English and Germans to sell our cars, our nuclear plants, and you want us to help Nigeria, with its nearly 200 million people, a ton of oil per capita, to come and join the dance? No, but as they say in Abidjan, 'whoever thinks that is crazy' — it's just not possible, this whole story. So let me start by answering that. That said, there certainly are ambitions, but what does 'imperial' mean — these are media words. I'm not saying that because I'm Corsican and I'm rehabilitating Napoleon, I mean — that's why at the start of the session I said, be careful, the fight against colonialism is a way of obscuring the anti-imperialist struggle, which currently seems to me the priority. I'd add also an Atlanticist imperialism, because I can extend — I forgot your first name, Laurent — the memory of what Vienne-Savonnet, of Laurent [?], and apply it to China too — how often do we hear, 'China, have you seen what it's doing in Africa'...
1:23:42 ...it's terrible. It's fine when it's the people who have been exploiting Africa for 80 years, but when China gets involved, it's scandalous. Wait — China leaves equipment behind, and China doesn't say, 'tell me, aren't you a bit anti-democratic over there.' When the Bastille was stormed, there wasn't a political commissar standing behind every demonstrator saying 'aren't you a bit like the yellow vests, aren't you a bit right-wing.' The great moments in history are when different factions come together against the same adversary — you see, I'm giving a political answer for now. Now, I don't know if I understood the heart of your question — is the anti-imperialist struggle today not the successor to what the anti-colonial struggle was during the CNR period? Is that it?
1:24:30 Unlike back then, when that question was set aside so that the CNR could happen — is it not more complicated today? Yes, you mean it was swept under the rug at that time, when Thorez said 'for once we have the chance to take part in power alongside De Gaulle,' that's it. What a nightmare for Atlanticism that was — De Gaulle on the right and the communists on the left, in both cases anti-Atlanticists, a nightmare. It mustn't happen again. There's Villepin who vaguely tries — as soon as they're out of power they become much more incisive, have you noticed, as soon as they're in opposition. Well, I still prefer Gaullist-style right, if you like — I've always voted against, so I can say it — that at the time the Vichyist right, that is to say Mitterrand, yes — you can't hide anything from me — but you can't imagine how pleased you make me, but if you get me started on that we'll need ten lectures. This ecologist discourse is abject...
Against the ecologist discourse of natural balance 1:25:40 Careful, I do care about my environment — if it were just about me, that would be anecdotal, who cares — but I mean it's important, there are real problems, environmental ones, mind you, not 'natural' ones — I don't care about nature, rocks don't die, they're already dead, how could they die? No, never think about simple things — 'protect the planet' — the planet will still be here when we're all dead, in billions of years. Humanity, yes, there is a danger, yes, but there are still balances — you said the key word — that must be respected. There is no balance in nature: 150 times the Earth has been covered in ice, or on the contrary, at other times covered in desert — was it more or less balanced? Those aren't scientific words, that's a politico-moral term, 'balance.' It isn't balanced, this fellow, you see — except on Roberval's scale, where at least we have reference points. I'm very glad of your intervention, because let me tell you — if you go and tell the Malian woman you saw earlier, who walks her 10 km...
1:26:52 I won't go into my whole routine — walking 10 km to fetch water, then 10 km to fetch wood to heat the water, and pounding grain all day long, and who'd better not have only daughters but a son from time to time, otherwise she risks being sent back to her village — it's terrible, the fate of the African woman. If I come and tell her she's lucky to live in natural balance, without electricity, she'll slap me, and she'd be right. You see, that discourse is abject. So I am for protecting the environment, but I turn it around and say, no, I see nothing natural about it, I mean — that's it. So someone will say, 'yes but wait, she was stuck between four walls, go to the countryside' — but the countryside, I mean, what about a Romanesque chapel in a wheat field — if someone says 'let's build a McDonald's parking lot there instead,' no, I'll go with the ecologists and sign the petition against it — I'm not stupid — but not to protect nature, to protect the field, which is anything but nature, which represents enormous labor — you have to break rocks, you have to plow — and the chapel, don't even mention it, there are the stones, there's intelligence in it. Well, the field too...
1:28:02 ...there's intelligence in it too, that's it. So I'm very glad about what you just said, because now I notice that the only budgets that were 'developing' when I left the region were either for environmental protection — that is, mainly, for what doesn't develop, development aid consists precisely in what doesn't develop — or for family planning, once the fear became that Black people were having too many children, you see. So I'm very, very glad of your intervention. That's why, when I say I'm the most anti-ecologist man in Europe, I mean I'm anti-ecologist, not anti-ecology. That said, a science of everything, to me, is a science of nothing — because I mean, ecology is the environment, but within the environment, I don't know, there are specialists, glaciologists, or climatologists, or geologists — but the general 'environment specialist,' that guy is pulling our leg. Even Auguste Comte said the philosopher is a specialist in generality, but still — no, no, I'm very glad of your intervention because indeed it's becoming an argument...
1:29:12 ...to prevent development — and I don't just mean in the so-called developing countries. Look at MEDEF [the French employers' federation], it rejoices when that other clown, the ferocious warmonger — what's his name, Jadot — no, the current head of French political ecology, when he talks about 'degrowth' — well, MEDEF is delighted, they wanted to put another 400,000 employees out of work anyway, he talks about degrowth, they're made for each other, you see — that's why I appreciate your intervention. That said, I don't lie down under cars and breathe in exhaust fumes with delight, and I'll finish my routine on balances — of course there is a balance, we mustn't upset the conditions of our environment, whether air, water, or earth. Of course I'm thinking of pesticides — it mustn't come at the expense of human health. But then it's no longer 'nature' we need to worry about — we end up admitting it's in relation to man, of course, because there are...
1:30:22 ...shrimp in the underwater abysses, particularly in the Indian Ocean and near the edge of the Pacific, that wriggle in ecstasy at 400 degrees around underwater volcanic vents — so a temperature absolutely lethal for man can be excellent for shrimp, especially since they reach the size of lobsters, it suits them so well. So 'natural balance' means nothing unless you specify that this balance is relative to what is vital as a priority and to what favors the growth of humanity. Of course — sorry, I sound like I'm stating the obvious, but people say the opposite so often, that there are 'balances of nature,' especially when nature is personified again, as is fashionable in the neo-pagan, neo-Nietzschean religions — Nietzsche is still better than the Nietzscheans, poor boys — Nietzsche, I call him the great 'Nigo'...
1:31:32 I have a great deal — I have great affection for him — but then the Foucaults, the Deleuzes — anyway, I'll get worked up, but there's a neo-paganism at work such that whenever there's a disaster people say 'nature is taking revenge' — I say to myself, that's animism, isn't it, Gaia, yes, much more dangerous than [the storm]. Well, thank you very much for your intervention, I'm being talkative because you're provoking me. No, but against NATO I agree, because it wasn't the Soviet Union that caused 3 million deaths in Vietnam, that invaded Iraq despite the UN not authorizing it, etc. — I mean pointing the finger at an imperialism where it's not territory that Russia is lacking, still — but well, there's plenty — yes, yes, if Russia — if the Soviet Union disappeared, and if that happened...
The fall of the USSR and a renewal coming from the South 1:32:42 ...through the Yeltsin period — the only head of state in the contemporary world — I'm generalizing here, the contemporary world, I'd even say since the French Revolution, to count broadly — the only head of state who had tanks fire on a parliament to kill 160 deputies was the darling of the West, Yeltsin, the one whose gold cards were found in Nice or Monte Carlo. So if the Soviet Union fell like that, it's also because of internal reasons, in my opinion — this is a rather pessimistic thing I'm about to say, I hope I'm wrong, but in my opinion the Soviet Union never fully, fully recovered from the atrocity of the suffering it endured during the Great Patriotic War. You know it's the best who go off to fight — the political commissars — what's left after Hitler's horde caused 25 million deaths in the Soviet Union, and after the purges...
1:33:52 ...and the [purge] lines — what's left is the ones who dodged, people somewhat — what's called the periods of stagnation, you see. That's it, I hope I'm wrong, but somehow I'm glad that a renewal is coming from the South, and if Putin's Russia can help with that, I don't want to stand against it. Thank you very much, in any case, for being patient, thank you — I forgot — thank you to Café Marxiste, thank you to the PRCF, thank you to the volunteers without whom I would be nothing much, thank you.
