Independent Basque Country of Bizi. So let's take everyone's world back from the book's critique.

Bizi treats Basque as a secondary language:

Bizi preferably communicates in French and treats Euskera as a secondary language. For example, he has published this book first in French and several weeks later in Basque.

The ideology of Bizi makes the Basque people disappear:

This movement speaks of democracy, of the people, of the Basque Country, of the inhabitants of the Basque Country, but not of the Basque people, nor of the Basque people. The subtitle of his book is Euskal Herria soberana, Pays Basque souverain, and not an independent Basque people. It uses the words of Euskal Herria to designate the territory, and Euskal Herria means especially the Basque people. Thus, Bizi speaks of “sovereign territory” and not of a sovereign Basque people.

Bizi collaborates with the institutions of the oligarchic state:

The European political institutions and those of the French and Spanish states do not have a truly democratic track record. Bizi does not denounce, does the opposite, praises European legislation and parliament. This movement wants changes to the French Constitution, without saying that the authorities of the French State make it very difficult to make substantial changes to that unfair Constitution, and that this Constitution is imposed on the people by means of weapons.

In the same vein, when talking about the political institutions of the French and Spanish states in the Basque Country, Bizi talks about “our institutions” and does not criticize the undemocratic trajectory of all of them.

Bizi continues to join the concepts of representative and participatory “democracy”. However, they are misleading concepts because they make people believe that they decide, that the people are sovereign, but they are not sovereign because they are represented.

Ecological life?

Bizi wants to “contribute to the electricity transition”, in particular “the transition to carbon-free means of transport”, but does not make a profound critique of the production of non-nuclear electricity, and leads to the belief that electric transport is carbon free, which is false, the entire production and recycling chain of electric transport is carbonized.

Bizi does not worry the rich and promotes green capitalism:

With Bizi’s proposals, those who have stolen money from workers can sleep peacefully: they will have to pay high taxes, but they will be able to follow their luxurious consumption, their polluting activities and the warming of their pool. With Bizi, the rich can continue to make quiet injustices, they will have to pay the injustice tax and it is already there.

Bizi, to attract altermondialist militants, gives himself an anti-capitalist aspect, but does not propose a real anti-capitalist general alternative; on the contrary, with the trillions and millionaires that demand more taxes is in all harmony.

Bizi non-citizen education:

Bizi says that citizen education must be promoted. For this movement, education wants to give citizens, “to the precarious and excluded the keys to understanding the world and the forms of oppression they suffer.” Erranda otherwise, for Bizi, the precarious and excluded are ignorant, so they need “experts” for their formation. That idea is superb and despicable! It's the ideology of the elite! Many people who disregard Bizi understand the world much better than Bizi and his “experts”! By definition, citizen education is very critical of the role of the expert and appeals to the ability to build keys to better understand the world, to which all people have; to build them we only need the essential material conditions and collective help.

Bizi's activity is reformist:

Bizi begins his book as a movement with a “pragmatic radical vision.” So radical that he wants to “secure a good pool network” in Iparralde! Go to children without drinking water to explain Bizi's radicality! Radicality is going to the roots of problems. Bizi doesn't.

Reformism works preferably in the current legal framework; by definition, it seeks to improve capitalist society through reforms and not to build a real alternative to capitalism. Bizi therefore has a reform strategy. There is a radical aspect to attracting young people more effectively.

We believe that Bizi's project for us to take back the world of all is not feasible, because he doesn't first analyze why the world has escaped us. We are willing to conduct this study with Bizi and anyone interested.

(Full version of this letter, available in)

Goizeder Aranburu and Amets Iturralde

The Independent Basque People of Herribiltza, members of the Independence Commission