I think it was all a conspiracy!
So, I'm gonna post the 20 page piece of crap I wrote last semester for my major paper in my History seminar.
Here 'tis:
On October 17th, 1970, the Chenier Cell of the Front de Liberation du Quebec (FLQ) killed Pierre Laporte, Vice Premier and Minister of Labor in the Quebec provincial government, whom they had kidnapped on October 10th as a means of coercing the Canadian and Quebec governments to agree to some “demands.” The killing of Laporte was a response to the implementation of the War Measures Act by the national government, itself a response to the “Crisis” which began with the Laporte kidnapping and a previous one, that of James Richard Cross, a British trade minister, five days earlier. This paper will offer an explanation of why Laporte was killed. It will argue that it was an irrational act perpetrated by irrational actors, mistaken in their understanding of the “will of the people,” confused as to what they could accomplish by resorting to violence and murder. This paper will compare the actions of the Chenier Cell to other activist groups of the 1960s. This paper will also offer a psychological explanation in support of its conclusion.
The 1960s was a turbulent decade in the United States. Student groups had begun protesting U.S. involvement in Vietnam, fighting a war half way around the world for political reasons rather than as a response to an attack, and some of these groups were becoming militant. The Civil Rights Movement had continued into the 1960s with various groups pursuing a common goal, equal rights for Americans of color, by various means. One of these groups was known as the Black Panther Party, or often just The Black Panthers.
The Black Panther Party
In October of 1966, in Oakland California, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. The Panthers practiced militant self-defense of minority communities against the U.S. government, and fought to establish revolutionary socialism through mass organizing and community based programs. The party was one of the first organizations in U.S. history to militantly struggle for ethnic minority and working class emancipation — a party whose agenda was the revolutionary establishment of real economic, social, and political equality across gender and color lines.
Huey P. Newton
Huey P. Newton (1942-1989) founded the Afro-American Society and was a co-founder of the Black Panther Party, serving as its minister of defense during much of the 1960s. Later he turned to community service for the poor.
Huey P. Newton was born February 17, 1942, in Monroe, Louisiana. The youngest of seven children, Huey was named for former Louisiana governor Huey Pierce Long. The Newton family moved to Oakland, California, in 1945 to take advantage of the job opportunities created by World War II wartime industries. In Oakland the family moved often, and in one house Huey was compelled to sleep in the kitchen.
Huey attended the Oakland public schools where, he claimed, he was made to feel "uncomfortable and ashamed of being black." He responded by constantly and consistently defying authority, which resulted in frequent suspensions. At the age of 14, he was arrested for gun possession and vandalism. In his autobiography, Revolutionary Suicide, Newton wrote, "during those long years in the Oakland public schools, I did not have one teacher who taught me anything relevant to my own life or experience. Not one instructor ever awoke in me a desire to learn more or to question or explore the worlds of literature, science, and history. All they did was try to rob me of the sense of my own uniqueness and worth, and in the process they nearly killed my urge to inquire."
According to Newton, he did not learn to read well until he had finished high school. "I actually learned to read--really read more than just 'dog' and 'cat,' which was about all I could do when I left high school--by listening to records of Vincent Price reading great poetry, and then looking up the poems to see how the words looked."
Newton claimed he studied law to become a better burglar. He was arrested several times for minor offenses while still a teenager and he supported himself in college by burglarizing homes in the Oakland and Berkeley Hills area and running the "short change" game. In 1964, at age 22, he was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon and sentenced to six months in the Alameda County jail. Newton spent most of this sentence in solitary confinement, including the "soul breaker"--extreme solitary confinement.
Bobby Seale and Huey met in the early sixties, during, in Seales’s words, “the Cuban Blockade.”
Cop-haters since childhood, Newton and Seale decided the police must be stopped from harassing Oakland's African-Americans; in other words, to "defend the community against the aggression of the power structure, including the military and the armed might of the police." Newton was familiar with the California penal code and the state's law regarding weapons and was thus able to convince a number of African-Americans of their right to bear arms. Members of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense began patrolling the Oakland police. Guns were the essential ingredient on these patrols. Newton and other Black Panther members observed police procedure, ensured that African-American citizens were not abused, advised African-Americans of their rights, and posted bail for those arrested. In addition to patrolling the police, Newton and Seale were responsible for writing the Black Panther Party Platform and Program, which called for freedom, full employment, decent housing, education, and military exemption for African-Americans. But there was a darker side to the group, described in Former Panther Earl Anthony's book, Spitting in the Winds a party created with the goal to organize America for armed revolution. Moreover, Washington, D.C., intelligence spent many years trying to bring down what they believed to be "the most violence-prone of all the extremist groups."
Huey Newton proved to be as violent as the party he helped to create when he was thrust into the national limelight in October 1967; accused of murdering Oakland police officer John Frey. In September 1968 Newton was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to two to 15 years in prison. In May 1970 the California Appellate Court reversed Newton's conviction and ordered a new trial. After two more trials the State of California dropped its case against Newton, citing technicalities including the judge's failure to relay proper instructions to the jury.
Bobby Seale
Bobby feared his Father, George Seale,
Daddy would be gone two and three days at a time. When he did come home he would shock Betty, John and me. We would be playing loudly, sometimes, not knowing he had entered the house.
“Cut out all that chin music,” he would bellow.
Just that one phrase and you could hear a pin drop.
At other times, one of us might spot Daddy coming. We would run to tell the others. “Ooooh,” we seriously, fearfully, and quietly warned, “here come Daddy.”
When he was in second grade
All the even number addition problems I could do. Somehow, too, I could figure out an even number added with an odd number. But I couldn’t add two odd numbers, even counting on my fingers.
“What’s twelve plus twelve?” my Daddy asked.
“Twenty-four.”
“What’s nine and seven?”
Two odd numbers. I didn’t know. I tried to count. Then I said, guessing it was another odd number, “fifteen.”
“Nope. That ain’t right.”
How was I going to do this? “Nineteen,” I said.
“Now Bobby, you ought to know that. Thelma, where’s that blackboard.
He had me write the figures on the blackboard, with a plus sign. “Now figure out the answer—what’s nine plus seven equal to?” His voice was changing.
I didn’t know. I tried counting on my fingers. He told me not to, sounding angry. I wished he would tell me. I was scared now. Would I get a whipping? “Thirteen?” I whimpered out.
“Bobby, you ought to know what nine plus seven is. Now figure it out. What is it?”
I was scared. I had to pee. I said to my Daddy, “I got to pee, Daddy.”
“You ain’t got to pee. You just trying to get out of it.” Then he took off his belt. Tears rolled down my face as I stood there, fighting with the idea of getting a whipping. I didn’t know. I had said thirteen, fifteen, nineteen—then I said, real slow, “Seventeen?”
Whap, the belt caught me, and I yelled out, “I don’t know Daddy. Please! I don’t know!”
“Yes, you do!” Whap.
”George,” Mama said, “that ain’t no way to teach these chilluns.”
“I’m skinning this cat, Thelma, you hold his tail. Now, what’s nine plus seven?”
I just stood, then whap, whap. I couldn’t think any more for fear of the belt.
“Get back up there.” Whap.
Bobby learned to be tough. Nobody could scare him. In his early twenties Bobby was in the Air Force. He was dishonorably discharged for insubordination. He was incapable of making rational decisions, of weighing future consequences against his impulse to lash out.
One of the cats came in and got me to repair something—I was a sheet metal mechanic—and then he came back again, with another piece which I couldn’t repair because I didn’t have the right kind of extrusions. I tried to fuck around and modify it. He was in such a hurry, he came back in cussing at me.
I said, “Motherfucker don’t be cussing at me. Get your motherfucking ass out of here.” I was mad and pissed off, and I didn’t want anybody messing with me, so he left. Then I got a call on the bitch box and the guy said, “Hey, Seale, what do you mean you’re not going to repair this part for this guy over here.” The cat had gone all the way over to the dispatch office a block away. I said, “I told the motherfucker I couldn’t repair the thing because I couldn’t find the right kind of extrusion. I’m trying to modify the damn thing, and he’s just going to have to wait, and stop rushing me, and not be coming over here cussing me.”
“Who in the hell do you think you’re cussing,” the dispatcher said. “You’ll get court-martialed for this, boy, you know that?”
I said, “Fuck you, sons-of-bitches,” and I just ripped the bitch box out of the wall. Then the phone rang. And I gabbed the hone and just ripped the phone out of the wall.
These were the leaders of the Black Panther Party. How would that group operate?
One of the tactics employed by the Black Panthers was to arm themselves. Open carry of firearms was allowed in California in 1966 and the Panthers took to the streets with their weapons to provide their people security from the police. Bobby Seale describes this scene:
A lot of people were looking. A lot of white people were shocked, just looking at us. I know what they were saying: “Who in the hell are those niggers with these guns? What are they doing?” Anyway, all the brothers got up and I said, “All right brothers, let’s roll.” We started walking and moving. We didn’t walk in military form. We just moved. We were scattered all across the sidewalk. We were not in any rank, but we held our guns straight up because Huey had taught us not to point a gun at anyone—not only was it unsafe, but there was a law against just the pointing of a gun.
This scene occurred as they were on their way to the state capitol to read their manifesto to the Assembly. Once there they entered, their guns held high, and made their way to the Assembly Chamber. Police began to arrive and took away some of the guns, just snatched them out of the hands of the “brothers.” The brothers and the police argued back and forth with the question of was anybody under arrest being discussed and if not they had a right to their guns. Eventually the manifesto was read and the group agreed to leave with their guns. They got into their cars and started to drive back to Oakland when Bobby decided his over-heating car needed some water. He pulled into a service station with the rest of them right behind.
It was very, very hot. It was burning up. I decided to take off my leather jacket, but to take off my jacket I had to get out of the car. As I was opening the door, I looked up and saw a pig at the corner walking south on the sidewalk from his car. He had his gun in his hand. I jumped out. I came on out of the car. I walked straight toward him. I stopped and he stopped. I said, “Now wait a minute.” I said, “Now first thing you have to do is you have to put that gun away. Put it back in that holster. If you want to make an arrest you can make an arrest, but you better put that gun away.” And the next thing I heard was brothers jacking rounds, jacking shells off into the chambers of their guns. When they saw that pig walking up with that gun, they started jacking rounds off. I said, “Put that gun away!” I looked him dead cold in his eyes. He was a scared pig, with his gun out. He took his gun, after hearing all the rounds, and me telling him to put his gun back, he slid his gun back into his holster, and kept his hands off of it. Right on!
This is how the Black Panthers expected to successfully operate: armed confrontation with the police, making the police back down. It did not work. A rational person making a coldly rational set of decisions would not have expected it to work. They were literally expecting the police to surrender their authority and allow them to walk around armed whenever and wherever they wished, making demands, scaring the public, threatening bloodshed at any time. Or they believed that they might somehow outgun the police of the various communities, County Sheriff’s Departments, the State Police, if necessary the National Guard. While one can understand the frustration of a minority group whose members feel that their rights are being trampled, it is difficult to believe they could not understand that they had no chance of “winning” in such a situation.
Recent studies have shed new light on impulsive behavior, especially in young people. Referring to research done by Dr. Jay Giedd:
Giedd and his colleagues found that in an area of the brain called the prefrontal cortex, the brain appeared to be growing again just before puberty. The prefrontal cortex sits just behind the forehead. It is particularly interesting to scientists because it acts as the CEO of the brain, controlling planning, working memory, organization, and modulating mood. As the prefrontal cortex matures, teenagers can reason better, develop more control over impulses and make judgments better. In fact, this part of the brain has been dubbed "the area of sober second thought."
Even though it may seem that having a lot of synapses is a particularly good thing, the brain actually consolidates learning by pruning away synapses and wrapping white matter (myelin) around other connections to stabilize and strengthen them. The period of pruning, in which the brain actually loses gray matter, is as important for brain development as is the period of growth. For instance, even though the brain of a teenager between 13 and 18 is maturing, they are losing 1 percent of their gray matter every year. Giedd hypothesizes that the growth in gray matter followed by the pruning of connections is a particularly important stage of brain development in which what teens do or do not do can affect them for the rest of their lives. He calls this the "use it or lose it principle," and tells FRONTLINE, "If a teen is doing music or sports or academics, those are the cells and connections that will be hardwired. If they're lying on the couch or playing video games or MTV, those are the cells and connections that are going to survive."
And:
In conjunction with the development of the pre-frontal cortex during adolescence, other studies
show that throughout this period adolescents use an alternative part of the brain in their thought
processing: the amygdala. This area of the brain is associated with emotional and gut responses.
Studies by Dr. Deborah Yurgelun-Todd and colleagues at Harvard Medical School using functional MRI scans show that teenagers when interpreting emotional information use this part
of the brain rather than the rational decision making region: the prefrontal cortex. Conversely,
adults in the same experiment relied more heavily on the frontal cortex. In assessing the results
of the tasks set to the two groups, Dr. Yurgelun-Todd found that all of the adult participants
interpreted the emotional information correctly in comparison to under half of the adolescents.
“These results suggest that adolescents are more prone to react with ‘gut instinct’ when they
process emotions but as they mature into early adulthood, they are able to temper their instinctive
‘gut reaction’ response with rational, reasoned responses” . . . ”Adult brains use the frontal lobe
to rationalize or apply brakes to emotional responses. Adolescent brains are just beginning to
develop that ability.”
It is clear therefore, that the normal adolescent brain is far from mature or operating at full adult
capacity. The physiological structure of the adolescent brain is similar therefore to the
manifestation of mental disability within an adult brain.
These are not however the sole developments within the adolescent brain. It has further been
found that cable of nerves (the corpus callosum) that connects the two sides of the brain appears
to grow and change significantly through adolescence. This cable of nerves is involved further
in creativity and problem solving. The lack of a properly formed prefrontal cortex and corpus
callosum indicates an impairment of the rational decision and thought making process instead
placing heavy reliance upon the emotional and gut response area (amygdala).
The ability to regulate emotions is therefore impaired and this can result in quite severe acts with
little regard for the consequences. As Daniel Weinberger concludes, “I doubt that most school
shooters intended to kill, in the adult sense of permanently ending a life and paying the
consequences for the rest of their lives. Such intention would require a mature prefrontal cortex,
which could anticipate the future and rationally appreciate cause and effect. The often reported
lack of apparent remorse illustrates how unreal the reality is to these teenagers. Adolescents
need people or institutions to prevent them from being in a potentially deadly situation where an
immature brain is left to its own devices. If a gun is put in the control of the prefrontal cortex of
a hurt and vengeful 15 year old, and it is pointed at a human target, it will very likely go off.”
This is significant for somebody like Bobby Seale, thirty when he co-founded the Black Panthers, when we combine Dr. Giedd’s “use it or lose it principle,” which says that adolescent influences and behaviors are reinforced whereas other possible paths are lost forever with the findings of Dr. Yurgelun-Todd and Daniel Weinberger. We then can see a man who has never fully developed the ability to reason rationally, to weigh short-term gain against long-term consequences.
Compare the actions of the Black Panthers and Bobby Seale with the actions of the groups led by Dr. Martin Luther King.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. first emerged as a leader of the Civil Rights Movement in late 1955, when he was 26 years old. He was asked to lead the Bus Boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, which began as a reaction to the arrest of Rosa Parks, an African-American woman who had refused to give up her seat on a city bus for a white man (as required by law). King was new to Montgomery, having been born and raised in Atlanta and graduating from Morehouse College before attending Crozer divinity school in Pennsylvania and earning a Ph. D from Boston University. E.D. Nixon selected King for his leadership position because, being new to Montgomery, he had not yet been intimidated by the local (white) authorities.
Growing up King had managed to avoid most of the deprivation that a young black man growing up in the Deep South during the Depression would ordinarily have faced. King’s father, head of the Ebenezer Baptist Church, the wealthiest black congregation in Atlanta, managed to shield young Martin from the effects of poverty or overt racism.
Martin King, Jr. grew up loved and secure; years later James Baldwin wrote that King lacked the self-doubts that burdened most blacks of their generation. “Martin,” he wrote “never went around fighting himself the way the rest of us did.” He grew up with segregation yet he saw his father’s strength in the face of prejudice: Once when he was driving with his father, an Atlanta policeman stopped the car. “All right, boy,” he had said. “Pull over and let me see your license.” “I’m no boy.” Daddy King had said. He pointed at his son. “This is a boy. I’m a man and until you call me one I will not listen to you.”
Martin Junior did not set out to follow in his father’s footsteps and almost chose Law for a career. He finally did choose divinity school but rejected his father’s fundamentalism. At Morehouse he learned that a ministry could be socially relevant and intellectually satisfying. His would be a ministry of and for the people.
Martin always worried about how he presented himself.
In Boston, as at Crozer, King was determined to undo the white stereotypes of blacks. Were blacks supposed to be careless about time? Martin King was the most punctual young man on campus, never late to class. Were blacks supposed to be noisy and loud? King was always sedate and respectful. Were they supposed to be a little flashy about clothes? King dressed as seriously and carefully as anyone on campus—always in a suit—and his clothes were always pressed, his shoes shined.
King’s formative years, then, were spent learning how to impress people with quiet dignity, not how to intimidate or fight them. His developing adolescent brain would have formed around pacifist ideas rather than aggressive ones. He learned to think calmly and rationally rather than to react viscerally, or impulsively. This was reflected in the groups he led.
The Bus Boycott succeeded against steep odds.
The white community had no idea how to deal with the boycott. The city leadership thought it was dealing with the black leadership from the past—poorly educated, readily divided, lacking endurance, and without access to national publicity outlets. When the boycott proved to be remarkably successful on the first day, the mayor of Montgomery, W.A. Gayle, did not sense that something historic was taking place, nor did he move to accommodate the blacks, who were in fact not asking for integrated buses but merely a minimal level of courtesy and a fixed line between the sections. Gayle turned to a friend and said, “Comes the first rainy day and the Negroes will be back on the buses.” Soon it did rain, but the boycott continued. A month after the boycott began, it proved so successful that the bus-line operators were asking for permission to double the price, from ten to twenty cents a ride.
The Montgomery authorities stopped the local black cab drivers from ferrying people to and from work in groups of five and six for ten cents a ride (there was an old city ordinance that said the minimum fare for a ride had to be 45 cents), but money poured in from the outside to buy some fifteen new station wagons.
Inevitably, the city leaders resorted to what had always worked in the past: the use of police power. The city fathers decided that it had to break the back of the carpool, and soon the police started arresting carpool drivers. On January 26, 1956, some eight weeks into the boycott, Martin Luther King, Jr., was arrested for driving 30 miles an hour in a 25-mile-an-hour zone. He was taken to the police station and fingerprinted; at first it appeared that he would be kept overnight, but because the crowd of blacks outside the station kept growing larger and noisier, the police let King go on his own recognizance. Two days later, King’s house was bombed by a white extremist, the first in a series of such incidents at the homes of black leaders and at black churches.
In unity and nonviolence the blacks found new strength, particularly as the nation began to take notice. Things that had for so long terrified them—the idea of being arrested and spending the night in prison, for example—became a badge of honor. Their purpose now was greater than their terror. More, because the nation was watching, the jails were becoming safer. King was, in effect, taking a crash course in the uses of modern media and proving a fast learner. Montgomery was becoming a big story, and the longer it went on, the bigger it became.
The national press corps that had coalesced for the first time at the Emmett Till trial only a few months earlier returned in full strength, and its sympathies were not with Mayor Gayle, who appointed a committee to meet with the black ministers and added a White Citizens’ Council member to it, or with police commissioner Clyde Sellers, who publicly joined the Citizens’ Council in the middle of the struggle, saying, “I wouldn’t trade my Southern birthright for 100 Negro votes.” Rather, the national reporters were impressed with the dignity of Rosa Parks, the seriousness of the young Martin King, and the shrewd charm of Ralph Abernathy.
Ironically, it was the white leaders of Montgomery who first helped to create the singular importance of Martin King. Convinced that ordinary black people were being tricked and manipulated, they needed a villain. If they could weaken, discredit, or scare him, then their problems would be solved, they thought. Gradually, he became the focal point of the boycott. “I have the feeling,” Bayard Rustin, the nation’s most experienced civil rights organizer, told him at the time, “that the Lord has laid his hands on you, and that is a dangerous, dangerous thing.” Still, King had no illusions about his role: “If Martin Luther King had never been born this movement would have taken place,” he said early on. “I just happened to be there. You know there comes a time when time itself is ready for a change. That time has come in Montgomery and I have nothing to do with it.”
For a time the role was almost too much for him. The amount of hate mail was staggering, and it was filled with threats that he had to take seriously. His father pleaded with him to leave Montgomery and return to Atlanta. “It’s better to be a live dog than a dead lion,” Daddy King said. The pressure on King was such that he was getting little sleep, and he was truly afraid. He realized for the first time how sheltered his existence had been, how ill prepared he was to deal with the racial violence that was waiting just beneath the surface in the South. One night, unsure of whether to continue, he thought of all his religious training and he heard the voice of Christ: “Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness. Stand up for justice. Stand up for truth” … the fatigue had turned into hope.
The boycott continued. The white leadership was paralyzed; in late February, it cited an obscure state law prohibiting boycotts and indicted eighty-nine leaders, including twenty-four ministers and all the drivers of the carpools. The real target, however, was King. He happened to be in Nashville lecturing when the indictments were announced. Back in Montgomery, many of the other leaders were giving themselves up in groups to show their defiance. King flew back to Montgomery by way of Atlanta. In Atlanta, his father pleaded with him not to go back. “ They gon’ to kill my boy,” he told the Atlanta police chief. He brought over some of Martin’s oldest friends, including Benjamin Mays, the president of Morehouse, to help talk him out of returning. But Martin Luther King, Jr., was firm now. Not to return, to desert his friends at this point, would be the height of cowardice, he told them. “I have begun the struggle,” he said, “and I can’t turn back. I have reached the point of no return.” At that point his father broke down and began to sob. Benjamin Mays told him he was doing the right thing, and he returned to Montgomery.
On November 13, 1956, almost a year after the boycott had begun, King went to court to defend himself and the carpools against the local authorities who had declared it “a public nuisance.” King was hardly optimistic about the outcome in a Montgomery court, but suddenly, during a recess, an AP reporter handed him a note that included an AP bulletin reporting that the Supreme Court had judged the Montgomery bus-segregation law to be unconstitutional. The blacks had won. King, always aware of the need to include rather than exclude people and the need to be magnanimous in victory, spoke at a mass rally to point out this should not be viewed as a victory of blacks over whites but as a victory for American justice and democracy. On December 21, the city prepared to desegregate its buses. An empty bus pulled up to a corner near Dr. King’s home. Martin Luther King, Jr., boarded it. The white driver smiled at him and said, “I believe you are Reverend King.” “Yes I am,” Martin Luther King, Jr., said. “We are glad to have you with us this morning,” the driver said.
So the battle was won. But the war was hardly over. It was a beginning rather than an end; the boycott became the Movement, with a capital M. The blacks might have alienated the local white leadership, but they had gained the sympathy of the white majority outside the South. In the past the whites in Montgomery had been both judge and jury. Now, as the nation responded to the events there, they became the judged.
Francis Simard
Details of Simard’s early life are sketchy. In his memoir he mentions being a bit deprived as a child
Sometimes it’s hard to put it into words and describe all the details. You can’t always say why and how. But you know you’re different. Every day, you realize that big society, the high life, the beautiful things you see on TV aren’t for you, they don’t belong to you. Your world pays the price for those things instead of enjoying them. The only way you experience them is through doing without. It’s not something you say, it’s something you feel.
You feel there’s something unfair going on, even if they tell you everything’s all right, it’s supposed to be that way. That’s the way life is: some people work, others profit. Some have it all, others have nothing. Each according to his merit. To make you accept that so-called democratic society, they tell you success can be yours if you work and study and play the game by the rules. You can be free if you want to, you just have to buy in and say, “Sure it’s fair.” Just like the lottery: one day it’ll be your turn … if you buy the tickets!
Simard says that he “never felt the need to escape it,” that he “never loved the people on the other side,” or “dreamed of joining them.” But then, in his very next sentence
You start finding out that you’re not so alone after all, other people react like you do, they think it’s unfair, they’re not going to take it. You have to try to change things. And once you decide to act, you’re into politics, it’s just that way. It’s the only way.
But what does politics have to offer? Who are the politicians? The Liberal Party? They’re the guys directing and administering and planning the division of the world that seems so unfair to you. They’re the ones raking it in. The Union Nationale? It’s the same damn thing, the same bunch. The flags might be different colors but they all blow with the same breeze. Then along comes the RIN , they’re working for change.
Simard says that he got involved with RIN for something to do, something to have an effect on his life. He wasn’t a separatist when he joined; he joined them because he felt a need to have some kind of influence over his life and he saw RIN as a way of doing that. He also mentions that he “never felt I had a personal quarrel to settle with an unjust world.” He never would have acted alone. But the fact that there were others who felt as he did led him to think that he could be part of something big and good. He also says that
A society is never the product of one person or a small group of people, even if history is often taught that way. Whole populations, the masses determine history.
He felt, then, that he and his group could influence “the masses.” That if they could get things started the people would follow. Also, “Political involvement was my way of expressing my rejection of society and the will to change.”
As he writes, Simard’s political philosophy emerges. “We’re told that Quebec society,” he writes, “ like all North America, is a free society, a true democracy. But here, freedom means accepting limits, being imposed upon, obeying.” He wants to live in a society in which everybody is equal, there is no class divide, no haves and nave nots, and that also has no limits on freedom, never being imposed upon, never having to obey any rules.
The RIN and the FLQ the fight for Quebec independence was a rejection of all that. We didn’t want to obey, we weren’t the polite type. We were ready to make choices and exercise our freedom. October was our way of minding our own business and running our lives by ourselves, including political and economic life, everything …
He indicates that he identifies with Marxism and refers to democracy as a lie. He considers joining the Parti Quebecois (PQ), a political party working through electoral politics toward Quebec independence, but becomes disillusioned with them when they fail in the 1970 elections due, in his opinion, to internal squabbling. Instead he aligns with the FLQ, even though he “didn’t give a damn about the FLQ for its own sake.” He does say that
When the time came to identify ourselves, we decided on the FLQ. The FLQ became us. We didn’t join a group; we took the name of a movement that had become us. With our history of struggle and political experience, the FLQ seemed to be a logical way of working with others. We identified with the FLQ.
So Francis Simard, Paul Rose, Jacques Rose and Bernard Lortie became the Chenier Cell of the FLQ. From autumn 1968 to autumn 1970 they were their own little group, other people joining and leaving over the two years. Always they needed money to finance their demonstrations, pamphleting, etc. Simard came up with the idea of opening credit accounts in their own names (easy to do) and just never paying any of the money back; sticking it to the man, as it were. Not a well-reasoned approach, but then most of what they did had that look. Eventually they were maxed out and they began to rob banks, justifying the illegality of it by focusing on the “good cause” and the fact that their guns were usually unloaded, so as to be sure not to shoot anyone. Again, not especially rational but amazingly they were successful many times.
The Kidnapping
The Chenier Cell was taken a bit by surprise when the Liberation Cell of the FLQ abducted James Cross. They were together in a car when they heard the FLQ manifesto read over the radio, a “special moment” for them. However, things turned sour rather quickly. The reading of the FLQ manifesto was just one of a list of demands, including the release of 21 “political prisoners.” The Chenier Cell realized that the Canadian government had no intention
Right away we realized the government was rejecting us. There was something about the way the refusal was expressed. As if the government didn’t take the kidnapping of James Cross and the demands of the Liberation Cell seriously. The FLQ demands were called “futile” and “far-fetched.” The manifesto was a collection of nonsense. Of course 40% of Canada’s unemployed were in Quebec, but everybody knew that already. Of course people were living or trying to live in the slums of East End Montreal, across town from the wealth of Westmount, but what could we do about it? Of course you can’t often work in French in Quebec, but we’re living in North America, don’t forget that. Of course there’s social injustice, but the government’s trying to correct it and hat takes time!
Besides, the government had other problems. More important ones because they were caused by more important people. The specialists in the medical profession decided to go on strike. They didn’t want to go along with the health insurance plan unless they got more money. And, as always, when the rich have problems, when important people have a disagreement, they come first. You FLQ assholes with your poor people’s problems, you can wait!
The Chenier Cell decided they would not wait and abducted Pierre Laporte. One kidnapping had not accomplished their goal. Surely two would! Irrational actors acting irrationally. Rather than suddenly caving in, the Prime Minister Trudeau, with the full consent of Quebec Premier Bourassa and Montreal Mayor Drapeau invoked the War Measures Act and rolled the Army into Montreal. The next day, October 17th, Simard, Rose, Rose and Lortie killed their captive.
I don’t know how to express it. This is the first time I’ve tried. We made the decision and we killed him. It wasn’t an accident. It all happened very fast. Don’t ask me how we did it. I don’t know. I just don’t know. I don’t want to remember, I don’t want to think about it. All I can say is that I can’t believe I was there. I can’t believe we did it. I don’t know how we could have.
Not acting rationally, perhaps?
In his “non-fiction novel” In Cold Blood, Truman Capote interviews Perry Edward Smith, a man who, with an accomplice, committed four murders “in cold blood.” Perry eventually told his story to the police, how he and Dick (the accomplice) went to a large farmhouse in Kansas where Dick was sure there would be a safe with ten thousand dollars in it. There was not. After they had the four members of the family tied up in separate rooms and Mr. Clutter, the home owner, had told them that there was no safe, and Dick had been unsuccessful in finding one, they considered just getting out of there. From Perry
I said, “Well Dick, any qualms?” He didn’t answer me. I said, “Leave them alive and this won’t be any small rap. Ten years the very least.” He still didn’t say anything. He was holding the knife. I asked him for it, and he gave it to me and I said, “All right Dick, here goes.” But I didn’t mean it. I meant to call his bluff, make him argue me out of it, make him admit he was a phony and a coward. See, it was something between me and Dick. I knelt down beside Mr. Clutter, and the pain of kneeling (Perry had badly damaged legs, from a motorcycle accident)—I thought of that goddamn silver dollar (he had crawled under a bed earlier to retrieve one). The shame. Disgust. And they’d told me never to come back to Kansas (parole board). But I didn’t realize what I’d done until I heard the sound. Like somebody drowning. Screaming under water. I handed he knife to Dick. I said, “Finish him. You’ll feel better. Dick tried—or pretended to. But the man had the strength of ten men—he was half out of his ropes, his hands were free. Dick panicked. Dick wanted to get the hell out of there. But I wouldn’t let him go. The man would have died anyway, I know that, but I couldn’t leave him like he was. I told Dick to hold the flashlight, focus it. Then I aimed the gun. The room just exploded. Went blue. Just blazed up. Jesus, I’ll never understand why they didn’t hear the noise twenty miles around. I didn’t want to harm the man. I thought he was a very nice gentleman. Soft-spoken. I thought so right up to the moment I cut his throat.
For what it’s worth, Perry Smith was abused by his parents and in a series of foster homes for most of his childhood. At the time that his prefrontal cortex was fully developing he was being shuttled between his father’s lodge in Alaska, his mother’s series of dives in Arizona/New Mexico and juvenile detention. It is doubtful hat he was capable of weighing impulses versus future consequences in an adult manner. Before he was hanged he told an old friend, “They (the Clutters) never hurt me. Like other people. Like people have all my life. Maybe it’s just that the Clutters were the ones who had to pay for it.” Maybe Pierre Laporte too?
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