When I was in grad school 50 years ago (ouch!), taking my classes in totalitarianism and guerrilla warfare (what is now called asymmetrical warfare), one of the shining stars was Regis Debray. Born and raised by “broad-minded” parents, he finished first on the entrance exam for entry into the Ecole Normale Superieure, the key stepping stone to an academic career in the humanities. He went a step beyond, as his writings caught the eye of Che Guevara, was invited to Havana to become a “court favorite”. He received training in guerrilla combat, scouted locations for Guevara, serve four years of a thirty year term in a Bolivarian prison, and fought with the Sandinistas in the late 1970s, all of this when he was in his twenties and early thirties. His writings influenced Marxist theory on warfare and went against the tide of both Maoist and Cuban strategy (his writing on the subject was said to be “unquestionably constitute one of the most brilliant examples of Marxist-Leninist analysis to have appeared in many years”). Had Che listened to Debray, his farcial adventure in Bolivia might have ended very much differently. Later, he was a foreign policy adviser to Francois Mitterrand, the President of France.
Now, at the age of 80, he continues to write, including a book on the religious roots of environmentalism, Muslims in France, an autobiography and more. In the article linked below, we find a mind that has always questioned not only the systems and individuals around him, but his own self. It is a treat to see that he is still alive and kicking. I hope you enjoy the article as much as I. https://www.firstthings.com/article/2021/06/rgis-debray-radical-conservative
