Breton Revolutionary Army

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The Breton Revolutionary Army (French: Armée Révolutionnaire Bretonne, ARB), is an illegal armed organization that is part of the Breton nationalism movement in the Brittany region of France. This area was united with France in 1524. The region had its own unique culture, including the Breton language, a Brythonic Celtic language related to Cornish and, more distantly, Welsh.

In 1789 the region was barred from having a self-ruling administration and the language was banned. During the occupation of France by Germany in the Second World War a small group of Breton nationalists collaborated, occasionally acting in an anti-partisan capacity. In 1963, the Front de Libération de la Bretagne ("Breton Liberation Front," or FLB), was formed to protest the suppression of Brittany by the French Government. A series of terrorist attacks started in 1974 and the Breton Revolutionary Army was formed to carry out these actions. The group Emgann, which has strong anti-capitalist and pro-independence goals, is sometimes thought to be linked to the ARB.

Targets of the ARB were strictly symbolic and it is believed that over 200 attacks, none of which included casualties, can be related to the organization. Many viewed their goal to rid themselves of the "occupying Jacobin power" as having "retained something of a Quixotic, folkloric nobility" (Time Europe). However, in 2000 a bomb exploded in a McDonald's restaurant in Quevert, killing a waitress. The shift in targets can be related to the Breton Revolutionary Army’s new association with the Basque nationalists of ETA in 1999, as well as their declaration that the government in Paris would only respond to attacks that are more direct. The McDonald's incident also emphasized their new anti-American and alter-globalist positions.

In September 1999, a joint commando force of ETA and ARB raided a factory in Plevin, stealing over eight tonnes of Titadyne dynamite. This fact was used by former Home Secretary of Spain Angel Acebes to mislead as to the the culprits of the March 11, 2004 attacks, by stating in a press release held in the aftermath that the actual explosive material employed was Titadyne (so pointing to an ETA action). This assertion proved to be false.

The goals of the ARB as told to a Basque newspaper follow the idea that,

France is not a dictatorship, but nor is there complete democracy in Brittany. When the French Constitution recognizes the existence of a Breton people, the integrity of our territory, the Breton language, the conditions for a real democratic debate will be reunited. An armed struggle seems to us the only efficient means to obtain these conditions.

The French state continues with a policy of no toleration for the violence. The most recent of trials of members associated with the attack on McDonald's and other related bombings have returned guilty verdicts.