We have taken note of your letter to Jaime [Semprun] of 5 April [1987].[1] Although we have many other things to do, it calls for several rectifications, the most concise possible, from us. We will thus respond to you point by point.
The thank-yous are useless. On the other hand, it is "useful," "opportune" and even simply honorable to not slip away when one has violently attacked someone in the name of the best revolutionary principles, by applying to him opprobrious epithets; and when this statement finds itself seriously and precisely critiqued by someone who claims for himself the same principles and who has acquired by his activities the right to see his opinion taken into consideration on this terrain.
For any sensible individual who has not renounced usage of his good sense in this affair, the letter that Jaime sent to you on 2 March [1987][2] (a letter that we approved -- did you have doubts? -- in its totality) shows in the clearest fashion that he had not "decided to bail out the entirety of Guy Fargette's text." First of all, because there was no need for anyone to "bail out" a text published in an autonomous fashion by an autonomous individual, then because this letter's goal was to make you understand, on all the points concerned, our distinct position with its nuances that appeared so well in issue #10 of the EdN.[3]
After this you want to believe that it was sufficient for you to cut a good figure (but for whom?) in your cop-out by treating as a Masperizer[4] someone who, after being deceived in the attribution of a text, immediately recognized his error and rectified it to all the persons concerned. We know quite well what a Masperizer is and we refuse the new definition that you have given it. We even find it "sincerely deplorable" to see you use the weapon of calumny, which has so ravaged the history of the revolutionary movement, as you know.
Moreover, Jaime's letter was sent to you before this so-called "Masperization" and you can in no way draw from it any argument to justify your refusal to respond to the main issue. Thus the "Fargettization" remains on your side, but here it is again the text by Fargette (in its entirety and its details) that is in question. Thus, you judge it useless to respond to criticism concerning the manner in which you attacked it, because you have already furnished your reasons for attacking it and you "do not believe there is need of following (them) with better ones." We leave to you the genre of assurance of good accounting that procures for you this manner of keeping to the least-good reasons: it will not give you much more than the usage of stereotypical anathemas. The "need" that you must recognize here is not measurable by the requirements of a "public," which furthermore we are not. It is the need for honesty and clarity that each person more or less makes his own: and after that, it is the public that merits it.
Given all that has taken place, we only see that we must make this precise: we are surprised that you have judged it "useful" and "opportune" to say "Dear Jaime" and "cordially" to someone who, according to you, bailed out a Masperizer.
Quite sincerely,[1] See letter from Baudet to Semprun dated 5 April 1987.
[2] See letter from Semprun to Baudet dated 2 March 1987.
[3] The Encyclopedia of Nuisances, founded in 1984 by Jaime Semprun and Christian Sebastiani.
[4] Editions Maspero was a publishing house in the 1960s and 1970s that the situationists condemned for butchering the texts that they published. Guy Fargette "masperized" the appeal to the general population issued after the occupation of the Sorbonne, which was co-authored by Jean-Pierre Baudet and Jean-Francois Martos.
(Published in Jean-Francois Martos, Correspondance avec Guy Debord, Le fin mot de l'Histoire, August 1998. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! June 2007. Footnotes by the translator.)