Vaillant Auguste

"Work, Famine, Pasta, Rice", diversion of 1942 occupied France's motto "Work, Family, Fatherland". France, 2020.

Vaillant Auguste

In Paris, this December 9th, Auguste Vaillant, a worker who wasn’t able to put food on the table for his nine-year-old daughter, throws a bomb into the Chamber of Deputies. Its little nails are not intended to kill, but to “wound this foul society which allows a few to hoard all social riches”. Although Vaillant had killed no one, he is guillotined a few weeks later, at the age of 32. His act triggers the adoption of new general security laws, authorizing preventive arrests and limiting freedom of the press, historically referred to as the “villainous laws”. This was 127 years ago today, in 1893. In France, the Yellow Vests didn’t exist back then, and the term “general security” has become “global security” for the new laws being adopted these days, but for the rest, it hasn’t aged a day.