"Our borders were as sacred as our bodies, which were like sanctuaries. Each member of the community would have been ready to sacrifice themselves to protect one of us.
One day, we know, we will be attacked by the State. Our enemies will come for us, even in our paradise, to besiege us and drag us back into their world. They will force us to return to their midst, to submit to the society that robbed us of our power.
From birth, they enslaved us. Through their technological artifacts and billions of commodities, they confiscated our sovereignty over our consciousness and our lives. They sold the time of our minds—time meant for daydreaming and mental wanderings—to advertisers and propagandists from the leisure industry. They dulled us, over-adapted us, depoliticized us, dehumanized us, uprooted us, and stripped us of our nature.
They turned us into malfunctioning machines, driven by impulses, programmed to buy, scroll, vote, and obey their ever-more imperious and despotic commands. They stole our homeland, our land, tore out our roots, and destroyed our markers, our religions, our traditions, plunging them into the icy waters of capitalism and globalization.
They chipped us, recorded us, administered us, tracked and hunted us like animals, ensuring we could never hide or escape. They extended control over our lives to the point of robbing us of our identity, our legitimacy, and our dignity as human beings. They turned us into surplus men, dispensable beings, ready to be digitized, cloned, replaced, and sacrificed.
And they will not let us evade their power. We have claimed a piece of land wrested from their domination. This village is now ours. They will not take it back from us. And they will not take us back either.
They will not recapture us to reintegrate us into their world. Never will we allow ourselves to be reintegrated into the society that made us hateful, miserable, and insane. But we know that sooner or later, they will try. And to preserve our freedom, we are ready to pay the price.
Every day, alongside my blood brothers, I train diligently in shooting. When we’re not firing at stationary targets, we aim at small wild animals we surprise in the wilderness. Watching a creature die under our bullets is psychological preparation for seeing a man die.
I’ve killed several pests by the pond with my rifle. I watched them expire without hate or regret, holding their gaze as they closed their eyes.
I now know I could kill a cop. My most skilled brothers focus on cybersecurity and digital defense strategies. In the tower, we have the means to hack the social security system or shut down all the nuclear power plants in this country. The surveillance system designed by our best engineers can anticipate any of their attacks.
But defense is above all a matter of men. And every organized society needs soldiers. I am now one of them, and I accept my mission with humility and honor.
When the time comes to defend our village, I will be ready to fire on the police. I don’t know if, among their ranks, they believe strongly enough in the virtues of their society to accept sacrificing themselves in combat against us, but as for me, one thing is certain. I have never been at peace, integrated, or happy in their world.
In my community, I have found my happiness and my place. I will defend it at all costs, even at the price of my life.
I am ready to die for my community."
Excerpt from my novel UNE JEUNESSE D'EUROPE (A Youth of Europe), 692 pages, published by Éditions de la Reine Rouge.
For more information and orders: https://www.amazon.fr/Une-Jeunesse-dEurope-Nicolas-Bault/dp/2958352757
Image: "Dear Wendy" by Thomas Vinterberg, 2005.
