Albert Camus during the French resistance | “The …

The young French writer, born in Algeria, established in a manifesto the four columns of good journalism: lucidity, disobedience, irony and stubbornness. In 1943 Albert Camus, a libertarian spirit contrary to all dogmatisms, he was appointed editor-in-chief of Combat, the newspaper of the French Resistance against Nazism, which came into being in December 1941 and went from an initial circulation of 1,000 to 250,000 two years later. The author of The foreigner (1942) was unwilling to stand on the sidelines or avoid compromise. The night of truth (Debate), one of the books of the year, brings together in one volume all the texts for which Camus wrote Combat between March 1944 and June 1947, with the addition of several articles published in 1948 and 1949.

The writings published in the book – 138 editorials and 27 articles, the vast majority unpublished in Spanish – are the testimony of a journalist “aware of his responsibilities both during the occupation and after it, when it was necessary to rethink daily life and at the same time shape the future of France and of Europe”. The French writer offers a body text for the debate of ideas, which includes topics such as his determination to introduce morality into politics and his reaction to deportations, liberation, justice with collaborators, the return of prisoners in the post-war period, colonial injustices. (in particular the Algerian problem) and the situation of the press. The journalist, “historian of the moment” for Camus, faced with the elusive nature of the truth, “must ethically engage in objectivity and prudence”, underlines the political scientist Manuel Arias Maldonado in the prologue of the book, entitled “The moralist in combat “.

“Camus seems to be addressing us, who are talking about post-truth and fake news, when he warns that, in the field of journalism, it is better not to replace the facts with your own wishes – the prologue raises -. His intuitions about the neutrality of democratic institutions and the media are correct: while the state cannot teach in schools “ truths not recognized by all ”, the press can only fulfill its role if it refuses to embrace particular ideologies and provide an arena for dialogue across the political spectrum. Thus, the first half of the century had made its lessons clear; today, they seem forgotten ”.

The author of Fish (1947) was born on November 7, 1913 in Mondovi (Algeria), in a family of French settlers black feet (literally “black feet”). Her mother, Catalina Elena Sintes, was an illiterate woman born in Algeria to a family from Menorca (Spain), who taught her the future Nobel Prize in Literature Spanish and Catalan. His father, Lucien Camus, worked in a wine estate and died during World War I, before his son was a year old. The orphan boy, who lived in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Algiers, was able to start his studies and have contact with books thanks to a scholarship received by the children of war victims. Nietzsche’s philosophy was part of his formative readings. He graduated in Philosophy and Letters with a thesis on the relationship between classical Greek thought and Christianity based on the writings of Plotinus and Saint Augustine.

“During his work as a journalist in Algiers, he denounced the situation of Arabs, deprived of French nationality and subjected to different degrees of colonial exploitation; It was obvious that the universalist discourse that France had deployed since 1789 was denied by its imperialist practice in Algeria or Indochina – Arias Maldonado recalls in the foreword to The night of truth-. For Camus, who publishes in Combat a long series of articles on the Algerian situation after the brutal repression by the colonial government of the revolts in Sétif and Guelma in the spring of 1945, French democracy could not be declared complete if it did not extend to all Algerians. (…) Camus urges the French to decide between democratic assimilationism or peaceful decolonization; a dilemma between which alternatives he didn’t simply decide on either. ”

His position on Algeria became more complex when he condemned the National Liberation Front (FLN) to resort to armed struggle and attacks to defend “a just cause” using “unjust methods”. Then he said his famous phrase: “At the moment, they are putting bombs on the Algiers trams. My mom might be on one of those streetcars. If justice is that, I choose my mother “. Of what interest these journalistic texts Combat more than 75 years after its publication? “The twentieth century is moving away from our sight. However, this continues to fascinate us: both the democratic struggle against Nazi totalitarianism and the brutal communist experience have an emotional and symbolic force that is hardly comparable – argues Arias Maldonado-. In addition, it is a question of universal human conflicts called to reproduce in different forms; that is why we always look at ourselves in the mirror of this century ”.