# Réponse de Patrick Anderson, auteur de *Rewriting the Troubles. War and Propaganda, Ireland and Algeria*, Belfast, Greenisland Press, 2022, au compte rendu de lecture proposé par Slimane Hargas, publié dans le numéro 48-2 (2023)

Patrick Anderson

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OpenEdition
Journals

## Édition électronique

URL : https://journals.openedition.org/etudesirlandaises/19055

DOI : 10.4000/12nx1

ISSN : 2259-8863

## Éditeur

Presses universitaires de Caen

## Édition imprimée

Date de publication : 6 décembre 2024

Pagination : 166-168

ISBN : 978-2-38185-248-5

ISSN : 0183-973X

## Référence électronique

Patrick Anderson, « Réponse de Patrick Anderson, auteur de *Rewriting the Troubles. War and Propaganda, Ireland and Algeria*, Belfast, Greenisland Press, 2022, au compte rendu de lecture proposé par Slimane Hargas, publié dans le numéro 48-2 (2023) », *Études irlandaises* [En ligne], 49-2 | 2024, mis en ligne le 08 novembre 2024, consulté le 13 avril 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/etudesirlandaises/19055 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/12nx1

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Réponse de Patrick Anderson, auteur de *Rewriting the Troubles. War and Propaganda, Ireland and Algeria*, Belfast, Greenisland Press, 2022, au compte rendu de lecture proposé par Slimane Hargas, publié dans le numéro 48-2 (2023)*

Slimane Hargas misrepresents the aim of my book, its comparative methods, and
he misquotes.

The aim of the study was to “evaluate Chomsky’s proposition that media output
lends itself to a portrait of the world useful to power” (p. 302).

Remarkably, Hargas writes: “Anderson [...] denies [...] widespread French torture, its institutionalised character, and impunity for practitioners”. However, I wrote, “France and Britain pioneered and exported the modern techniques of torture” (p. 131). Further, France “tortured and justified it as a response to ALN [Armée de libération nationale] no-warning bombings [...] [and] to intimidate the wider Muslim community [...] Paris granted full legal authority to the army and tacit verbal approval. This resulted in anogy of brutality in dispersed inter-rogation centres [...]. [The] initial timidity of the Wuillaume Report was replaced with prosecutions, soldiers were punished, fined and imprisoned [...]. No doubt others escaped justice” (p. 84). “Wuillaume did not overtly censure perpetrators, allowing them to continue” (p. 133).

I also wrote: “The army was well versed in these techniques, stretching back to
Indo-China and Morocco [...] paratroopers made earnest use of these techniques”
(p. 132). “Paris had to reconcile brutal interrogations with its self-image of the
Rights of Man. They established a premise of such extreme danger to the republic
that the derogation of non-derogable rights seemed the only recourse. France was
defending Western values against barbarians of the East” (p. 133). French “justi-
fications”, “tradition”, “professed ignorance”, “admission” of torture and torture
as “standard practise in Algiers”, can be found on pages 99, 110, 167, 134, 155 and
even torture as “sport” to humiliate Muslims (p. 153).

Hargas portrays me “striving” to assert that French brutality has been “exagerated” (p. 82). He misquotes. Under the heading: “Army Loyalty”, I compared French and British army loyalty, not brutality: “The story of the mutinous French army is well known but overblown [...] when it came to policy Paris prevailed” (p. 82). I found French methods: “brutal and shameful” (p. 19), “terrible and completely lacking in discrimination” (p. 67), “beneath the veneer of panache they were rapacious brutes, trained to kill” (p. 108), “summary execution had become common enough to coin the euphemism *corvée de bois*” (p. 109), and noted that interrogation meant: “suspects disappeared, bodies washed up on beaches [...] enough to coin the euphemism *crevettes Bigeard*” (p. 132).

<footnote>* Slimane Hargas, «Patrick Anderson, *Rewriting the Troubles. War and Propaganda, Ireland and Algeria*», *Études irlandaises*, n° 48-2, 2023, DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/etudesirlandaises.17664.
Cette réponse est publiée à la demande de Patrick Anderson (N.D.E.).</footnote>
Hargas emphasises that I wrote Algerian insurgents used “barbaric” methods (p. 89), and saw themselves engaged in a “jihad against the infidels” (p. 20). I used the same word describing French brutality: “deux gifles [...] a wide range of more savage treatment” (p. 132). Hargas overlooked this. I drew on insurgents’ own assessments. Zohra Drif’s *Mémoires* maintain: “the ALN were mujahideen [...] fulfilling their religious duty fighting the non-believers” (quoted p. 176), “Muslims had an obligation to fight to liberate their land [...] especially when [occupiers] were non-believers” (p. 221). I explained the Front de libération nationale (FLN) proclamation “was secular and Western in tone, it did not call for a jihad but exploited the common Islamic heritage of Arab and Berber” (p. 68) and further, “The FLN did not publicise the insurrection as a jihad but included the Islamic proviso to broaden its appeal” (p. 173).

Hargas would have me insisting that the Irish Republican Army (IRA) was careful not to target civilians, and contrite when “technical errors” (p. 203) caused casualties. Actually, British officers and counterinsurgency experts wrote the IRA gave “warning of their bombs to avoid casualties” (p. 199). One journalist, an IRA critic, claimed the IRA “were extraordinarily successful in avoiding killing the wrong type of people” (quoted p. 199). But I wrote: “the IRA risked civilian lives, with atrocious and foreseeable consequences. Recklessly endangering civilian lives is a war crime” (p. 319). I summarised IRA bombing atrocities: “These horrendous figures are a glaring censure of an IRA supposedly working to the republican ideal of Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter [...] just one deadly explosion is an obscenity” (p. 203). I also spoke of the “recklessly endangering [of] lives” (p. 199) and of the “callous risking, and taking of civilian lives” (p. 204). Further, republicans know “their apologies offer little comfort to the bereaved” (p. 318). Yet Hargas was impressed of my “republican sympathies”.

**What of the Algerian analogy?** Hargas challenges the study's foundation, which rests on this analogy, deeming it a false equivalence. Ait Ahmed, of the FLN's historic nine, disagrees: “Ireland was the main precedent to Algeria” (quoted p. 46). Hargas already knew this, see his “What Algeria Owes to Ireland's Struggle for Independence”.<fnref n="2" />

Hargas suggests I magnify the role of loyalists to the Organisation de l'armée secrète (OAS). I wrote that “By 1986 [...] loyalists were responsible for 27% of all [Irish] conflict deaths [...] [whereas] OAS killings amounted to 0.56% of Algerian conflict deaths” (p. 57). There is no need for my supposed magnification.

**On the subject of review copies withdrawn following defamation threats.**
The journalist who complained, the late Henry McDonald, was ex-Official IRA. I cannot be held culpable for a university press's fear of prosecution by a former terrorist/insurgent.

<footnote n="2">2. Slimane Hargas, “What Algeria Owes to Ireland’s Struggle for Independence”, *Orient XXI*, July 2022, online: https://orientxxi.info/magazine/what-algeria-owes-to-ireland-s-struggle-for-independence,5750.</footnote>
My book is overwhelmingly concerned with quoting the press. Hargas recognises the book is “well documented” but portrays me as seeking a desired result, achieved by selective, favoured evidence. The book revealed two remarkably similar conflicts were portrayed very differently which aligned with the official British narrative. This was a finding, not a desire. The complete reportage, for the period under study, was held up to the historic record.

Patrick ANDERSON