(2002-02-14) c

Interview with Jose Bove, "demolisher of McDonald's". Q: What were the main influences on you at that stage? A. There were two strands. One was the Libertarian thinking of the time - Anarcho Syndicalist ideas, in particular: Bakunin, Kropotkin, Proudhon, the anarchists of the Spanish Civil War. There were still a lot of Civil War veterans living in Bordeaux, and we used to have discussions with them... At the trial over dismantling the McDonald's in Millau in June 2000, we had over 100,000 supporters, lots of them young people. Since then, in Nice, Prague, Genoa, there has been a real sense of a different sort of consciousness. It comes from a more global way of thinking about the world, where the old forms of struggle - in the workplace or against the state - no longer carry the same weight. With the movement against a monolithic world-economic system, people can once again see the enemy more clearly... Firstly, all countries should have the right to impose their own tariffs, to protect their own farming and food resources and maintain a balance between town and countryside. People have a fundamental right to produce the food they need in the area where they live. Bad anarchist, no beret.