Complicity is Complicity, No Matter what You Say
On December 4, 2013, the New York Times reported the death of General Paul Aussaresses, one of the top military men in Algeria during the years of the Algerian national liberation struggle. Aussaresses was an unabashed colonialist whose politics were quite rightist in nature. One of his primary roles in the French war in Algeria was to interrogate anti-colonial fighters. Of course, this involved torture. Unlike many torturers before and since Aussaresses’ time in Algeria, the general never seemed ashamed of the torture he ordered. In fact, he spoke about it in interviews and eventually
