BETWEEN MEMORIES AND SABOTAGES
- Federico Grassi
- Mar 7
- 8 min read
Updated: Apr 4
- L'IDIOT DIGITAL.
THIS CONFRONTATION -WITH HISTORY, WITH KNOWLEDGE, AND WITH THE RISK THEY ENTAIL- MARKS THE FIRST CONCEPTUAL DEVELOPMENT
OF L'IDIOT DIGITAL, THE PRODUCT OF A SHARED WRITING AND THINKING PROCESS.
Paris, 1969. The air still vibrates with the muffled screams and dying dreams of May' 68—an aftershock on the verge of transformation or total ruin. Faded pamphlets clutter the streets, half-buried under the ruins of dismantled barricades—remnants of unfinished revolutions.
-I turn to the crowd with a thought: They fought. What about us?-
In the cafés, the final act of a grand illusion plays out: youngsters debate whether to march as one or split into countless ideological factions. In this wreckage of dreams and defiance, as De Gaulle recedes into exile and Maoist thought takes root on the Rive Gauche, a newspaper is born—trouble for everyone: L'Idiot International.
Jean-Edern Hallier—writer, polemic gladiator, and master of verbal warfare—is its creator. More than a newspaper, Hallier wants a loose cannon, an incendiary pamphlet with no loyalty to any flag or ideology. He demands absolute autonomy for his writers—critical intelligence that never kneels before power.L’Idiot is born from the cultural left but sinks its teeth into it, fracturing it and exposing its contradictions. Even the name is a stroke of genius: a nod to Dostoevsky's Idiot, sure, but also a defiant jab at a left drowning in its dogmas. For a short yet electric moment, L'Idiot International shelters the sharpest and most unruly minds in the intellectual scene—a time bomb primed by chaos and contradictions, set to detonate without mercy. Simone de Beauvoir mirrors its path: first a supporter, then a skeptic, and finally an open adversary. By May 1971, worn out by what she sees as senseless brawling, she openly criticizes the magazine for fueling chaos for the sake of chaos, for favoring fights over ideas, and for destruction over any real political alternative. With no allies left, the paper is entirely on its own. By February 1972, crushed by lawsuits and a 150,000-franc debt, it fell apart. L'Idiot fades into oblivion, buried by its own excesses. Then, twelve years later, in 1984, Hallier brings it back to life. This resurrection marks a radical shift from the rebellious voice of the left to a battleground of conflicting ideologies, welcoming writers from both ends of the political spectrum. Its contributors include Alain de Benoist, Frédéric Beigbeder, Michel Houellebecq, and Eduard Limonov, among others. But this ideological heterogeneity leads to disappointing results—their coexistence relied more on provocation than genuine intellectual cross-pollination. Between controversies and mounting debts, L'Idiot finally burned out in 1994, devoured by its iconoclastic fury.
The historical digression closes, and I get ready to wrap up this conference—what conference? Then, through the chaotic crowd in my head, a voice cuts through—a woman's voice. I look up—I'm no longer alone. An audience watches me, real or not. She insists, locking eyes with me. "So this is what you want? To be the heirs of L'Idiot International?" This sudden interruption, sharp as a blade, forces us to face a brutal misunderstanding. And she doesn't stop. She presses harder, leaving us no easy escape. "Or is it Dostoevsky's Idiot you're following? That radical purity—so alien to our time it almost feels obscene." She keeps going, relentless. With graceful brutality, she drags us toward the implosion of our entire editorial vision. "Or is it Sartre's Family Idiot that inspires you? Idiocy as rejection, as inner exile, as a form of indictment. In Sartre's words, Flaubert doesn't redeem or forgive—he spits on mediocrity. He asks questions."
And here we are. In my head, we're all lined up now, like defendants in a courtroom—or like a firing squad about to be executed. I look at Francesco. He looks at me in silence. He waits—and he's right to. I came up with the name; I should be the one to answer. But that would be suicide, a live crash-and-burn. Answering means sinking everything—goodbye followers, goodbye effortless storytelling. I think fast: Bruno! Maybe he'll save us. There he is—our self-proclaimed revolutionary, lost in the ceiling, cigarette in hand, a world away.
The silence thickens. Everyone waits—for my call: answer and wreck everything, or dodge and bury what truly drives us? Then, out of nowhere—a stroke of genius. Jay. By far the dumbest among us, completely unaware of any editorial strategy, clears his throat, stands up, and speaks—it seems he's been waiting for this moment his whole life.
“Great question!" he says with conviction. "You're giving us the chance to tackle something fundamental." He's fired up. He's ready. He's preparing to speak, and we're confident—he's about to destroy our movement. Still, none of us step in: we want to see how far he'll push it—or maybe we suspect he's right.
"We are dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants. That's our starting point. We can't claim a direct lineage or compare ourselves to a greatness that isn't ours. And yet, our name is connected to all the stories you mentioned. But how?" He pauses, letting the silence linger. "We want to break the closed circuit, restore connections, and bring meanings back into circulation. This is the time to challenge the self-referential trap of contemporary culture— to draw on influences without idolizing them. Because for something to be called culture, it has to reach beyond itself. It must emerge from a context rather than float weightlessly in a void." Someone in the audience stands up—quick footsteps toward the exit, jackets hastily pulled on.
Jay keeps going, unaware: "But let's be clear! Rejecting self-referentiality doesn't mean retreating into the past. We reject the sterile nostalgia of those who worship dead civilizations and chase after the golden ages. If it's true that culture draws meaning from its context—including history—it's also true that it can only be called alive if it refuses to be frozen in place, if it denies its own sanctification in the name of what once was." Maybe we should stop him...
And so?"—he gestures frantically, as if trying to snatch the answer from thin air—"Knowledge is only truly alive when it transforms and allows itself to be transformed. When it refuses the altar when it refuses to be remembered and insists on being lived." Jay stops. He really stops. It was as if he had just glimpsed the abyss he was pulling us into and started counting how many bones would break in the fall. But it's too late now. There's only one thing left to do. After a silence that feels like freefall, he starts again. And this time, nothing holds him back. "Back to your original question—do we want to be the heirs of L'Idiot International?" Most of the room has emptied. Just a handful remain in the back, and upfront, a couple still scribble notes. "Yes," the girl says, defiant. "Let's go back to the question.
Jay doesn't hesitate. "Our French namesakes wanted to shatter the cultural landscape. They came together for provocation, nothing else. But"—now he is asking the question—"what's the point of shattering a world already so fragmented? We want to unite, to build bridges, to contaminate ourselves in a process that is both conflictual and creative. So does that make us L'Idiot International's enemies?" The girl smirks like she knows this was coming. As if she is enjoying it. She sits back, runs a hand through her hair, and keeps listening. “Dragging history unchanged into the present turns it into a caricature! Look at the French magazine. What struck us wasn't just its provocation but the tension it sparked—a revolutionary energy inseparable from the circumstances of its time. Paying homage to it couldn't mean simply repeating it. We had to reshape it, transform it, even push it in directions opposite to its origins." Fuck the fascist-communist alliance, I tell myself."
The giants we've chosen— Dostoevskij, de Beauvoir, Limonov, Sartre, Flaubert—leave no room for passive contemplation. Reading them, high on the life they tried to hand down, we feel an uncontrollable urge to act, to live! Between those lines—brilliant as ours may never be—we glimpse something that belongs to us. And just like that, the humility that held us close to them disappears, and we throw ourselves into the future as amplifiers of greatness that towers over us but also flows within us. We throw ourselves into the attempt if just a little—to the tangled web of references surrounding the word Idiot. This is not some obsessive pursuit of novelty. What greater nonsense than the modern obsession with ex novo? Thought itself is a shared good, a continuous work of reinterpretation." Jay leans forward, gripping the room's attention. His vivid blue eyes shine—burning with a raw enthusiasm that leaves him even more vulnerable. "And yet, through this game of echoes and distortions, something occasionally manages to tune into reality in a new way. Has everything already been said? Has everything already been written? Maybe! But that's not the point! We seek something that transcends us. The world today is starving for a strange form of transcendence. I don’t mean Christ or the usual ideologies that erase us!
Francesco is sweating, his face glistening like an ice cream melting in the summer heat. I look at him and realize we share the same fear: maybe Jay is about to launch into one of his usual blasphemous tirades. He'll start tearing apart monotheistic religions, insulting everything and everyone, and turning the tension into a verbal massacre. We both know it could happen. But, thank God, not this time.
For us, the Idiot is the one who still believes the world can change, who tries to reconnect with the threads of a greatness that is solidary. The one who dares to try, to fail, and who sees failure not as a disgrace but as a fragment of life itself. The Idiot appears when lack turns into possibility. It is insufficiency in the face of life itself—that unbridgeable gap that binds us to the flaw we call death. The Idiot feels it in his bones, so he moves, searches, and gets his hands dirty..."
Jay continues: "Not the expert, but the one who sees the great in the small and the small in the great. The one who doesn't confuse salaried work, career, or prestigious titles with the answer to existential problems."
I leap to my feet! I can tolerate the sabotage of our movement, but not the populist, relativist rhetoric Jay falls into when he loses control. I glare at him. "Unbelievable," I say. "You were soaring, every word set in stone... and now you're back at it again with this 'anti-expert' nonsense, the same tired sneer at prestigious titles, the barely concealed relativism!"
Jay stands his ground. He fires back. I push harder. The debate ignites. We turn into the new gladiators of polemics, cutting each other off, pressing forward, voices rising, arguments layering on top of one another. Then the others dive in: Tiberio, Rocco, Martina, and Giorgia. Cobra, Pintus, Lorenzo! One by one, the room transforms into an arena. Expert against amateur, time racing, the weight of Knowledge versus the weight of just trying. Our editorial plan is in ruins. We thought we had a strategy, but it was a farce. And now, as words crash over us, we realize L'Idiot Digital is being born—not as we planned, but as it was meant to be. With an audience reduced to a single woman, in the chaos of a debate that defies every market rule, our idiocy truly begins.
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