If you were looking for a history of far-left political violence in Europe, you would have done well to sit in at the Paris courthouse last Wednesday. In his closing remarks for the so-called December 8 case, state attorney Benjamin Chambre, of the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Bureau (PNAT), held forth for hours in a sermon on the history of “ultraleft terrorism.”

Making sweeping gestures (and historical correlations), Chambre had no qualms about equating Molotov cocktails thrown at the French embassy in Athens in 2016 with Action Directe gunning down police officers on Avenue Trudaine in 1983. One would have thought that European politics had been rife with urban guerrilla struggle well beyond the end of the 1960s–80s period of political violence known as the Years of Lead.

The seven defendants in this case (arrested on December 8, 2020) committed no such acts of violence. But for the last three weeks they have been standing trial on terrorism-related charges. And while they committed minor infractions like the unlicensed possession of hunting rifles and low-level experiments, they are collectively accused of “association de malfaiteurs terrorists” (AMT), or terrorist conspiracy. Thanks to the shaky logic of France’s anti-terrorist laws — of which the AMT is the cornerstone — all that has to be proven is their intent of preparing acts of violence against the state.