In 1966 at the University of
Strasbourg in
France, 5 students were "bored with classes and disgusted by the pettiness of left-wing youth-group politics"
*.
They decided to run for election to the student union on the stated platform of destroying it. The student body was so apathetic that they actually won.
When they did, over the summer they contacted the Situationist International for advice. The SI told them how to cause trouble: create a critique of your situation and society, and distribute it. Part of this critique was a polemic called On the Poverty of Student Life, a ruthless literary attack on society's institutions and treatment of students. Another part of this critique was a comic strip
called The Return of the Durutti Column, named after the column of anarchist troops led by
Buenaventura Durruti - note that the author of the comic, André Bertrand, spelled the Catalan revolutionary's name wrong.
The comic, pasted up all over campus, was collaged from photos and other comics and art, a perfect act of detournement. It told the tale of the beginning of the student group in epic style, full of villainous professors and bureaucrats and famous leftists, spouting insults and slogans from the SI and the Lettrist International.
These events in Strasbourg led to the incredible student rebellions in Paris, May 1968.