Thiers statue bombing

Context In the 19th century, anarchism emerged and took shape in Europe before spreading. Anarchists advocated a struggle against all forms of domination perceived as unjust including economic domination brought forth by capitalism. They were particularly opposed to the State, seen as the organization that legitimized a good number of these dominations through its police, army and propaganda. from future alleged anarchist attacks. This analysis is supported by Jean Maitron, Uri Eisenzweig, and Richard Bach Jensen, who also rely on Maitron and Andrieux's testimony. It may be interesting to note that in 1881, while anarchists in Germany had already carried out numerous acts of propaganda by the deed, this was not the case in France. One month after this event, the London Congress was due to be held and validate the strategy of propaganda by the deed. It is perhaps notable that anarchists in France carried out an attack shortly before this gathering. == Analysis ==

Manifesto The manifesto from this attack, which is considered one of the first propaganda by the deed attacks, is analyzed by Eisenzweig as presenting numerous perspectives that foreshadow the advent of the "new violence" characteristic of these emerging forms of terrorism. He also implicitly links it to anarchism, even though the term isn't explicit in the manifesto's text. Eisenzweig writes about the manifesto and the significance of the attack:This paradoxical semantic logic [...] was already at play before the ère des attentats properly speaking. [...] The attack (attentat) on the Thiers statue in 1881 is undoubtedly its very first manifestation and, as such, perhaps the most illuminating, as the shift in meaning from the act itself to the discourse it refers to occurs, as it were, before our eyes. [...] And indeed, even as it attempted to 'explain' the Saint-Germain[-en-Laye] attack, the accompanying text would paradoxically initiate a divorce from the iconoclastic heritage, in the form of a displacement of meaning outside the object, outside the symbol itself. [...] In other words, the strictly physical aspect of the violence was destined to fade here, if not to be annulled in favor of a meaning posited as being elsewhere [...] that is to say, in a reality that still belonged only to a project or a prophecy. == Primary sources ==

• Manifesto of the attack (original version in French) • Translated Manifesto on The Anarchist Library == References ==