As we told you the other day, we will cite your pamphlet[1] in I.S. #13 by simply saying that, for anyone who recognizes the internal logic of texts and the most obvious qualitative truth in polemics, you have definitely buried the pseudo-Council of Nantes and the former-Chotard in their manure. In my opinion, we can also cite several particularly striking phrases from the theoretical part of the pamphlet.
It seems that we must cite, along with your Post Office Box, the authors of this text. Do you thus want to communicate to us the names, legibly printed, of the "signatories," other than Schu and Juvenal?
Concerning your most recent letter, it is necessary that the Chotardists [followers of Yvon Chotard] no longer have relations with the idiots who make believe that [Rene] Riesel was sent there by the SI three or four months before belonging to it and especially that we wrote it-matters-not-what to the "Council" after our letter of rupture on the Guin[2] affair. Without doubt, rather than publish these fakes, they will content themselves with showing them quickly, from under their overcoats, to the faithful. This is the parish-priest way of brushing up against several alleged relics, in the half-light, a piece of the true cross, the blood of Saint January that flows, etc.
What is the most immediately revealing in all this is the obsessional role of the SI, always present as the occult and harmful subject that, without difficulty and, moreover, without goal, manipulates poor unaware objects. No, it isn't Big Brother SI that has deceived Chotard: we deny in advance all rumors that present loyal Breteau as having been our secret agent. Other psychopaths have shown the role of "Judeo-Marxism" or "the gold of the International" (the first one). But in the more limited case of Nantes, everyone is perfectly up-to-date on the essential fact that -- in several cordial personal meetings and a sufficiently large number of texts -- there has never been anything between the SI and the Nantais, other than an exchange of information accompanied by several fragments of theoretical discussions on three or four subjects, notably syndicalism. The manipulators from Nantes try to hide themselves in the shadow of an imaginary rival. Doubly imaginary, since Chotard knows quite well that we do not want to "federate" around us scattered groups on the national plane, which is desired by his poor C.N.[3] So that if we manipulate, this misfortune only happens in Amsterdam or Tokyo!
Amicably,P.S. In addition to what we wrote in I.S. #12, the only time that the SI ever incited independent people "close" to our positions to do whatever-it-was, was in our circular of 15 May 1968.[4] The moment was good; and they indeed acted in accord with this meaning. But, given the always-supposed autonomy of the Nantes group, we didn't send our circular directly to you, as we did to the others, except with the notation "Copy to Nantes, for information." You then republished this text; I do not know if you still have it in your archives.
[1] History of the Council of Nantes by Bernard Schumacher and Juvenal Quillet (Nantes, June 1970).
[2] Yannick Guin. See letter of 21 June 1969, note 2.
[3] Council of Nantes.
[4] Cf. Correspondance, Vol III, p. 283-286.
(Published in Guy Debord, Correspondance, Volume 4, 1969-1972. Footnotes by Alice Debord. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! July 2005.)