It was the end of the 1970s, those of the enchanted parenthesis, when in the wake of May 68 young people believed in the future of “Peace and Love”. Suddenly, the sky darkens. Red Brigades in Italy, Bande à Baader in Germany, and Direct Action in France: on the far left, the margins tipped into violence, to the point of claiming political assassination as a legitimate means of action.
The French Years of Lead
This era, the designer Sébastien Goethals remembers it for good reason.
“I grew up near Avignon, in a very happy baba-cool atmosphere. One night, all of my parents’ friends met to learn that one of theirs had just been arrested, for having hosted two activists of Direct Action. I was 14 years old, it was the first time I heard about terrorism.”
How can we talk about those years, that turning point? It is by revolving around a character as impenetrable as he is disturbing, and until now little known, that Sébastien Goethals and the journalist and historian Philippe Collin will achieve this. His name is Gabriel Chahine and we discover him as a handsome guy, with long hair and bell-bottom jeans, at the time when, in Toulouse, he approaches Jean-Marc Rouillan for the first time, who will soon become one of the kingpins of ‘Direct action.
Who is Gabriel Chahine?
The 300 pages of this book are not enough to clearly answer the question. Was he really the pro-Palestinian fighter he claims to have been? An admirer of General de Gaulle? A real-fake anti-capitalist activist? A fantastic informer like all the cops in France and Navarre would dream of knowing one?
Collin and Goethals increase the number of interviews in all circles, meeting in particular former police officers. The story progresses at the steady pace of the exploits – thefts, robberies, bomb attacks – of the members of Direct Action, and the hunt carried out by General Intelligence. François Mitterrand succeeds Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, political issues blur the lines, and Chahine continues to swim in troubled waters.
“One thing is unanimous among all those who met Gabriel Chahine: he had the power to scan you from head to toe, and immediately give you what you expected.”
The political thriller has the title The Escamotorpublished by Futuropolis.
