Thanks for all the news in your long letter.[1]
We will respond more precisely – concerning all that you ask – after a meeting that will take place in three days and that will help us better organize all of the necessary activity for the current American situation.
With respect to the letter attributed to Bertrand,[2] we sent you an "official document" (see below) that can be used whenever you see the need in order to radically sort out this incredible and scandalous history.
Mutspha [Khayati] has recounted the opposition that you have encountered from Bertand in Strasbourg (I think that [Daniel] Joubert has quite correctly confirmed these facts). Naturally, you were right to call such childishness "neo-Garnaultism"[3] in the contect of my "possible" critiques of that badly typed text.
I propose that, in the presence of the American comrades, you demand that they show you Bertrand’s letter, if it really exists. You can also demand this in our name (send us a copy).
There haven’t been any new decisions here since the discussion in which you yourself assisted (and which put off any "membership" in the SI of the people from Strasbourg until after the holidays, and on the condition of not being in Strasbourg at the time.)[4]
If Bertrand has written such a letter against you, he will never he accepted into the SI.
We remember well all that has taken place over the course of the last six months in Strasbourg concerning this vile, stupid hypocrite. We are absolutely resolved to not allow any continuation of the bad habits of Frey-Garnault-Ballivet, even if their "current enemies" (who have the lack of awareness to want to be with us while their [proper] place would instead be with them) swim in the same dirty waters.
If someone has had the impudence to write a letter denouncing you in America, we will draw all the conclusions.
Amicably,Comrade Tony Verlaan has all of our confidence, and in our name can make any useful contacts during his stay in the United States.
Paris, 18 March 1967
For the Situationist International
Guy Debord, Raoul Vaneigem[5]
[1] Translator: Verlaan had just arrived in New York. Born in Holland and fluent in French and English, he had played an important role in the Strasbourg scandal and the subsequent exclusion of the so-called Garnautins.
[2] Translator: Andre Bertrand, illustrator of the Return of the Durutti Column comic strip.
[3] Translator: a revival of the ideology associated with the so-called Garnautins (Jean Garnault, Theo Frey and Herbert Holl), who tried to form a secret tendency within the SI.
[4] Translator: that is to say, on the condition that they moved from Strasbourg to Paris.
[5] Signatures follow the stamp of the Situationist International.
(Published in Guy Debord Correspondance, Vol "0": Septembre 1951 - Juillet 1957: Complete des "lettres retrouvees" et d l'index general des noms cites by Librairie Artheme Fayard, October 2010. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! February 2011. Footnotes by the publisher, except where noted.)