It is not only through imitation, which is the same with all
crimes, that the dynamatizing Anarchists are similar to common criminals, but
they are similar in every aspect of their nature; they share the character of
the common criminal to the highest degree. It follows that for the Anarchists
all common crime, all attacks by a ‘proletarian’ against a ‘bourgeois’ are
worthy and saintly anarchist deeds. All active anarchists could easily be
included in the ranks of common thieves and murderers. There is no difference.
In February 1883, the chief prosecutor, M. Fabreguettes,
brought before the assizes of Lyon a group of thirty Anarchists for a breach of
the law on Associations. He declared, ‘Anarchy is theft; you are an association
of criminals.’ He could have added, ‘Anarchy is murder!’
Most of the heroes of this sect, such as Ravachol and
Vaillant, before committing so-called Anarchist crimes, had already been
convicted as common criminals. For example Ortiz, Emile Henry’s supposed
accomplice, had already been arrested for burglary. All of them have been
sought by the police for various thefts, all the usual common types that the
magistrates have to prosecute in order to protect the goods, lives and security
of our citizens.
The first trait that is always found, without exception,
with all common criminals, is pride. In the confines of Nouvelle Calédonie
those convicts and inmates who have been able to study are unanimous in
declaring that a limitless conceit reigned in their spirit, an immense and
puerile boastfulness, a mad love of their own glory.
For those who are not afraid of the guillotine this vanity
follows them even to that supreme moment; they posture until that very moment
when the executioner lays them down on that fatal plank.
Cyvoct, Ravachol, Vaillant, and Emile Henry have been the
living proof. Ravachol believed himself to be a regenerator of society and was
still posing at Montbrison Square under the hand of the executioner; Vaillant
took care to be photographed the day before he was due to commit his attack on
the Chamber of Deputies so as to preserve his precious features for posterity,
and once arrested, his main worry was to know what impact his crime had had; to
render his name famous by a dazzling act, such had been his only, his unique
motive. Vaillant, by throwing his bomb, only imitated at an interval of
twenty-six centuries Herostratus, who set fire to the Temple of Diana at
Ephesus, only that since science has advanced, while Herostratus could only use
a primitive torch, Vaillant could make use of the green powder.
Vaillant wanted to surpass Ravachol. Emile Henry wanted to
surpass Vaillant: he was careful to let it be known, saying that he wanted to
commit a crime even more terrifying than his rival, adding “Vaillant is only a
child; if he had wanted to do things properly he would have put bullets in his
device instead of inoffensive nails.” The English press, which thanks to
England’s rather dubious practice of hospitality, has been able to study the
Anarchists, who do not make the slightest effort to hide themselves from their
hosts, and has made the same observation. The day after the Greenwich explosion
one could read in the Daily Telegraph:
“Everything seems to indicate that Bourdin planned an
exploit that would make him even more famous than Ravachol, Vaillant and Henry.
Otherwise, how can we explain the conduct of a workman who could live happily
in his sphere, from the fruits of his labour? Vanity and the desire for notoriety,
they are what push the Anarchists forward. Contrary to the Nihilists, who obey
orders from on high, the Anarchists gather to drink to the success of their
propaganda. Each one conceives a plan which he tells nobody else, and his
objective is to put the exploits of his predecessors in the shade.”
The Anarchists have criminal antecedents. For example, Emile
Henry, like Ravachol and Vaillant and many others, is of the category that
criminologists call ‘regicides’, those who take on the established powers,
whatever form they may take, whether they be Louis XV or Napoleon III, the
Emperor of Germany or simply Society. Emile Henry is the great-nephew of one
Joseph Henry who on 29th July 1846, at the Tuileries, armed with a
pistol, aimed two pistol shots at King Louis-Philippe and was sentenced to
forced labour in perpetuity.
But with their eyes turned inwards towards their spiritual
conjectures and the fantasies of their imagination, they cannot escape from
their vague and sentimental nature, from their puerile reveries, the like of
which one always finds amongst primitive peoples and amongst criminals, a sentimentality
which is their last link to goodness and which amongst them is the first
awakening of the nobility of the soul. Criminals of all types, above all the
Anarchists, dream of the stars. Around eleven years ago, at a time when anarchist
atrocities were in vogue, Gamalet, a dreadful murderer, went around singing a
banal and childish ditty called ‘Fields of Gold’, which became wildly popular
amongst the filthiest elements of society. Vaillant, he too, composed verse,
where he mixed Anarchy and the stars, and all the newspapers published a poem
by Emile Henry, in which he said, amongst other piffle;
‘I see the angels around me
And the goddess of love
Running to me one by one
Coming to sing my praises
All of them whisper ‘Hope’
But I know their deceit
I feel my sorrow revive
Because they laugh at my misery
I cannot have any hope
Soon I will be silent
But I will always love you
And I will bless my suffering
I will suffer silence
And you will always be my lady
The beautiful ideal of my soul
I will dream of love under the open skies.’
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