As I wrote in the past, terrorism was invented in Paris and began as state terror during the French Revolution. However, from the philosophy that led to the French Revolution also emerged the philosophy that would lead to individual terror in the 19th and 20th centuries: anarchism. In order to understand this phenomenon, it is necessary to return to the books of Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), where it is argued that man is good from his youth and his natural state is freedom. According to this philosophy, the state, as the body, which denies a certain degree of freedom to man for security purposes, is the root of all evil. From this, two schools of thought emerged. The first understands that the state nevertheless has a limited role in the life of the citizen, in everything related to maintaining his security, but that it is undesirable for it to interfere in his life in other areas (the representative of this school of thought in Israel is the neoliberal movement ). The second school sees government, as government, as an enemy that must be eradicated in order to return man to his natural state of absolute freedom. These are the anarchists, and they imposed their curse on late 19th-century Europe in general, and Paris in particular.
The person who invented the word anarchism was the French philosopher Pierre Joseph Prudhon (1809-1865), who stated that private property was theft and opposed almost every state institution (it is interesting to know that he supported the institution of a central bank because it could finance workers' projects). Mikhail Bakunin (1812-1876), a Russian political exile who met with Proudhon, decided to put his philosophy into practice and created "propaganda by deed," which is essentially a "laundered" name for a terrorist act. Bakunin participated in the uprisings of 1848 in Paris and 1849 in Dresden. He was arrested and managed to escape to England, where he began planning a global anarchist revolution. The spirit of the movement was summed up by his young partner Sergei Nechayev (1847-1882) in “The Catechism of a Revolutionary” (1869), a work that was attributed for years to Bakunin himself: “The revolutionary has only one goal – destruction. Between him and society there is a war to the death, constant and unceasing!” Although Bakunin died in 1876, he left behind a legacy that was translated in the following years into a wave of terrorist attacks in Paris during the 1890s.
In 1891, a violent workers' demonstration was held in the Montmartre district of Paris under the black flag of anarchism (exactly the same color as the flag of ISIS). The demonstration led to a wave of arrests by the police. In response, on March 11, 1892, bombs were thrown at the house of the judge who had sentenced the protesters to prison. A few days later, another bomb exploded at the house of the chief prosecutor. The person who planted the bomb was the French anarchist with the German name François Claudius Koenigstein (1859-1891), who adopted the name Ravachol. He was caught by Alphonse Berthon , the inventor of the theory of criminal identification, who developed a method for identifying criminals using facial features and body structure. Despite this, the terror continued and in December 1893, an anarchist named Auguste Vaillant 1861-1894) threw a bomb into the French parliament in an attempt to kill the French prime minister. However, as he did so, someone grabbed his arm and the bomb flew off and hit a pillar. As a result, a shower of nails and plaster fell on the politicians below, causing many injuries, but no deaths. The victims of the Parisian café Terminus two months later were less fortunate, when Emile Henri (1872-1894) threw a bomb there, killing one person and wounding twenty others. During his escape, Emile managed to shoot a policeman to death before being caught by passersby. Both Vannes and Henri were executed, but the feeling of siege in Paris remained.
The peak of anarchist terrorism came in 1894 with the assassination of French President Sadi Carnot (Marie François Sadi Carnot 1837-1894). This time the murderer was an Italian named Sante Caserio (1873-1894), who had been forced to flee his homeland after being caught distributing pamphlets with anarchist content. When he heard that the French President was traveling to Lyon to open the Colonial Exhibition, Caserio realized that this was an excellent opportunity to assassinate him. On June 24, the President was traveling in an open carriage, when suddenly the murderer emerged from the crowd and, shouting “Long live anarchy,” jumped into the carriage and plunged his knife into Sadi Carnot’s stomach. After the act, he tried to escape but was caught by passersby and handed over to the police. In his prison cell, he said, “I am an anarchist and I have just managed to harm a head of state. I did it as I would do to any president, king or emperor, no matter what country he is from.” Although his lawyer claimed that his client was insane, Santa Cesario was executed on August 16.
Like later terrorist attacks, the 19th-century terrorists also had the support of a section of bohemia, who shared their desire to free society from its shackles. The cafes of Montmartre were a fertile ground for anarchism, and the singers who sang there composed many songs praising anarchist terror. Maxime Lisbonne (1839-1905), a former member of the Paris Commune, established an anarchist café- cabaret in Montmartre with bars on the doors and windows, chairs and tables tied to the floor with chains, and waiters dressed as slaves. The place's advertisement said that it was the only café in Paris where there was no chance of a terrorist attack... Another place that was a favorite of anarchists was the Café Le Zut, which was also associated with the anarchist newspaper Le Libertaire. It was Picasso 's favorite place in his early years in Paris.
After the police closed Le Zut, its owner Frédéric Gérard (1860-1938) decided to open a new place that is now known as the Lapin Agile (formerly known as the Cabaret of the Murderers because of the pictures of the murderers that hung on its walls). The new name came from a play on words by the painter André Gill, who painted a rabbit (in French, Lapin) jumping out of a pot of soup above the entrance. Since the cabaret was established, it has become a meeting place for criminals, anarchists and quite a few bohemians, who liked to visit the cabaret, partly because of the cheap food they served there. The place knew not only joy and music but also tragedy, when the owner's son was shot dead at the entrance of the cabaret in 1911 (the murderer was never caught).
Today, there is no longer any anarchist activity at the place, and food is no longer served there (so it is highly recommended to have dinner before arriving). However, despite this, it is one of the most recommended places in Paris for me, thanks to the chanson performances, which take place there almost every evening. In 2014, I visited the place twice and each time I left feeling euphoric. It all starts around 21:00 PM, when the waiter seats you at the tables scattered around the hall, on the walls of which you can find pictures painted by several painters who have visited the place, such as Picasso. In the middle of the hall is an old piano, and as you sit down and try to get used to the atmosphere, someone starts playing on it. At first, you think he is still practicing and the show will start soon, and then a few minutes later, suddenly people sitting one table next to you start singing the songs that are being played on the piano. At that moment it seems as if these are tourists who decided to do a kind of “singing in public”, but you soon realize that the show has actually begun… and so for about 4 magical hours you get to hear more and less famous ansons from a repertoire that ranges from the late 19th to the late 20th century. The place has a selection of singers and each evening only some of them perform, so even if you come to the place several times, you will hear different songs each time. So if you are in Paris, I highly recommend that you do not miss this experience. Since photography is not allowed there, let me bring you the song by Alain Turban, which will convey to you at least a little of the experience of the place:
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