Regarding the uprising in Iran, another schism is becoming apparent within the movements in the West. A schism that escalates into verbal confrontation within an extremely feverish, oppressive, and competitive environment.

Written by Thanasis Kosmopoulos / RisingUtopia– Athens Greece

Translated by Tasos Sagris / Void Network

If at least those of us who express opinions from the ramparts of the movement could manage to free our thinking from the feverish compression of these times and from the competitive-narcissistic culture that has permeated us—perhaps without our even realizing it—we could produce results through fruitful disagreements.

The schism lies in how we view the situation. Some prioritize the significance of the uprising in Iran as an expression of liberation from theocratic power, with poverty and oppression as the main causes, while those “on the other side” prioritize the geopolitical dimension, interpreting the uprising as instigated by American-Zionist imperialism in order to undermine the theocratic regime and restore the Pahlavi dictatorship.

The fact that each side focuses only on one extreme (the uprising from below), while the other focuses on something entirely different (the uprising as planned subversion), taking positions at the most extreme poles, shows how much competitive logic and self-promotion through disagreement has infiltrated the movements—even among people who are organized and know how to discuss things when they meet in person. So like imprisoned mice, we tear each other apart, each one entrenched in their own narcissism.

Setting aside, however, the “psychodynamic” fields of the outlet where this text is being written, we must take a position on the events in Iran at this time. And the position states that a mass social uprising is a reality where things are suddenly disrupted, and for the umpteenth time, in the relationship between society and power. This mass-scale uprising with hundreds of dead and wounded cannot be happening out of nowhere through manipulation by an external actor. The Americans are experts at dictatorships, at abductions, and at coup practices for changing regimes that didn’t suit them, even in mini-uprisings like Maidan, which was nothing more than the surface pretext for state overthrows that had already been prepared on the Ukrainian political stage long before.

Here it’s not the same as Ukraine. No foreign power can “stage” a mass social uprising in Iran with this altar of blood. Much less transform it so that a society of 92 million consents to the change from 47 years of theocratic power to the dictatorship of any Pahlavis. In Iran today, anti-American sentiments are far more prevalent than anti-regime ones. The US knows that even with a more easily successful military coup, Iranians would hardly accept American hegemony. The possibility of failure of an instigated practice is very serious.

There is a burden that moves Iranian society to risk their lives in the streets of Iranian cities. And as always, one of the main causes and triggers of major uprisings is the sudden decrease in income and the absence of freedom. Then no one can downgrade a mass social uprising because it is spontaneous. It is not instigated.

Some commentators, highlighting the consequences of the chronic embargo on the difficult position of the poor strata, again attribute responsibility for the social uprising to the West and its sanctions, as indirect “manipulation” toward uprising. Yes, this argument also has a basis, but the embargo doesn’t mean that the state doesn’t have the ability to find a way to fix this problem. After all, Iran has very close relations with China, participating in the Shanghai alliance.

So here there is an issue: from which perspective do we see things, and from which perspective are things actually happening.

Anyone who wants to maintain an anarchist/libertarian political identity must analyze an uprising from the perspective of the insurgents.

Freedom, the human being, the community, society—these are priorities, values, ethics, a way of seeing things. Even if geopolitics weighs more heavily on events as in Ukraine, we as libertarian anarchists must see the sufferings of societies affected by this war FIRST! The possibility of intervention by the social actor FIRST! This is the imperative of our worldview. This is what made us be with the Palestinians FIRST! We are with the Palestinians and not with their flags. This is what makes us be with the insurgent Iranians FIRST! And not with the flags of the state they are subjects of. This is our perspective. The ethics of our values above whatever geopolitical correlations.

Conversely, in the case where we view this uprising from a geopolitical perspective, it is inevitable that this downgrades the insurgents, perceives them as manipulated pawns, insults people who are giving even their blood in the struggle against the state’s forces of repression. With this logic, no uprising can fail to be instigated, since all uprisings occur under active geopolitical conditions. And the social uprising for the police asssination of 15 years old student Alexis Grigoropoulos in Greece 2008 was considered by some to be instigated by Russia while by others by Turkey. I don’t think this is the way that corresponds to the perspective of all of us who are participants in the cause of social Anarchism. I believe that by focusing on geopolitics, we have internalized a managerial conception of movements that belongs to the dominant logics of “mass management,” as well as to the detached games of the geopolitical chessboard of power relations.

Explaining the stance of many comrades on social media, I believe that during the previous period with the genocide in Gaza, some of us, beyond the historical dimension of the Nakba, belatedly discovered the geopolitical dimension of things. The tragedy of the genocide not only brought American-Zionist aggression into the frame of our political critique but also quite rightly targeted it as an axis of evil—a now established conception that is confirmed by “the Trump reality” every day.

Consequently, Gaza opened a new chapter in our political understanding, a dimension that the older ones among us had taken into account anyway, but which the younger ones didn’t have, since the social movements barely dealt with geopolitics. This new ‘discovery’ was received as a revelation, when in reality not only is this far from true, but the opposite may occur: this newly acquired analytical tool we’re so eager to showcase can actually blind us even more through our over-idealization of it. This happens because many of us treat what we previously ignored as a ‘revelation,’ when it’s actually something very old and quite leftist in origin. Because an analysis that puts societies on the margins, devaluing them as absolutely controlled and manipulated, that if it doesn’t identify them with states considers them levers of geopolitical interests, is nothing but a leftist analysis derived from the spirit of Stalinism, and later during the Cold War era.

Let’s stop “reinventing the wheel” by idealizing “our new tool” because of our previous ignorance. This way of perceiving things is wrong. Let’s do some introspection to see all those “patterns” that function permanently in our understanding, and let’s rid ourselves of them, if we want to become dangerous to the State. It’s a problem when geopolitics takes precedence over the societies. The superpowers, the regional powers, the states and their moves quite logically come to the center of our perspective through the deeper desire to see the genocidal punished, with the consequence, however, that we downgrade the subject that interests us, namely that of emancipatory uprising or the corresponding social revolution.

I would say then, recognizing that in the historical time of an uprising, the geopolitical dimension also takes place—it’s quite unlikely that Mossad units are not in the field—we must focus on what is primary, which is nothing other than solidarity with a society that is rising up for a better life and for its freedom. This in itself has value. This is axiologically our libertarian way of seeing reality, without ignoring the economic, geopolitical, religious, cultural, or historical dimension of issues. Giving honor and respect to the culture of the people of the East, divesting from our critical stance any colonial Western privileges.

In conclusion, being primarily interested in the stakes of “moving” societies does not preclude taking a position on geopolitical stakes but also on every other dimension of issues. First and foremost, we are interested in the people who are rising up and the success of their struggle for a better life; secondarily, we are interested in geopolitical conflicts, which we judge primarily based on what’s good for societies, which in reality creates that anti-colonial, anti-imperialist value code.

Yes, today American-Zionism is the matrix and source of state terrorism, neo-fascism, and wars. It is a source of oppression and misery and subjugation of many societies around the world. We will not divest ourselves of our value code by supporting its opponents and raising flags of oppressive regimes on our otherwise anarchist social media profile. Our stance cannot be determined by geopolitical dynamics, nor by the hatred we have for opponents. The opponent of my opponent cannot be my friend.

Our value system has at its center social revolution for freedom, common ownership, equality, horizontality. That is, social emancipation, which like a polar star forms an axial direction in a straight line. Imperialism, colonialism, nation-states are forms of oppression and exploitation. They can even coexist. We too can stand against them, being critical without betraying our principles.

In this way we must meet with the struggles of Iranians as well as all those who rise up against the state/capital system.

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Written by Thanasis Kosmopoulos / RisingUtopia– Athens Greece

The post On the Uprising in Iran and the Schism Within the Movements in the West appeared first on Void Network.

No crystal ball could have predicted that three years later, the example they set would lead to the wholesale arson of Nepal’s government buildings, its parliament, and supreme court. Nepal’s Gen Z hurricane-force uprising makes Sri Lanka’s Aragalaya (The Struggle) appear tranquil, even moderate, although at the time the Rajapaksa family were so frightened by protesters that both prime minister Mahinda and his brother, president Gotabaya, went into hiding, the former on an isolated naval base, the latter on a naval vessel.

The term ‘economic crisis’ does not do justice to the indignities Sri Lankans suffered in 2022. Daily blackouts, fuel shortages, high unemployment and debilitating inflation–to say nothing of food shortages–plagued the nation at the same time as the elite enjoyed multiple luxury estates, staffed by servants even when their bosses were away for days at a time. Is it any wonder that young people screamed ‘Go Home Rajapaksas!’ and ‘Go Home Gota!’ As the movement built its momentum, their refrain became ‘Victory to the Struggle!’ (Aragalayata Jaya Wewa), showing how a revolt against perceived injustices was transformed into a revolutionary desire for a new reality.

Little did it matter that two decades previously, scarcely half the country had electricity, that schools, jobs, and basic healthcare had been largely unavailable. The growing gap between young people’s expectations in 2022 collided with the deadly misery crafted by elite politicians until an explosion was the only rational solution. Silent candlelight vigils overnight turned into hundreds of people swarming the president’s house on March 31, 2022. What had been a peaceful, spontaneous protest was then attacked by police firing tear gas and water cannons. The next morning, the president released a statement declaring that ‘extremist’ elements were trying to import the ‘Arab Spring’ to Colombo. The government declared a ‘state of emergency’ and mobilized the military and police to defy constitutional protections of free speech and assembly. Pro-Rajapaksa forces attacked young protesters, leading to a chain reaction of retaliations, a spiral of violence that engulfed even the homes and offices of the rich and powerful. Fishers, cricketers, carpenters and contingents of women all joined students in the protests. Even a nightly curfew and brief social media blackout failed to stop the movement.

Occupation of the Galle Face Green provided protesters with a 24/7 base of operations. The government countered with a mobile phone signal jammer, hoping to isolate resistance, but people refused to back down until the president resigned. Similar to Occupy Wall Street camps, the occupation of Galle Face swelled in both services it provided and supporters who rallied to the cause. Celebrities arrived to serenade the beleaguered demonstrators. By the end of the month, more than 1,000 unions staged a one-day support strike. Led by university students, people surrounded parliament and demanded resignation of all members as well as for the Rajapaksa clan to return their stolen money. “This is our country, not your ATM!’ was one of many placards.

On May 9, Mahinda Rajapaksa organized his supporters to massively assault the Galle Face Green. As police watched, more than one hundred people were beaten so badly they required hospitalization. The attackers’ brutality immediately turned the country against ‘state sponsored terrorism.’ That very same day, Mahinda was compelled to resign as prime minister. Riots against Rajapaksa loyalists proliferated. Many of the buses that carried the mob to attack Galle Face were torched. Politicians who supported Rajapaksa’s attack were beaten on the streets, and more than a few of their homes were torched. Insurgents’ violence was well targeted. They burnt to the ground the home of Sanath Nishantha, the man who had led the attack on Galle Face. The Rajapaksa museum was torched, a statue of the brothers’ father was destroyed, and two family homes were destroyed. A family-owned hotel was burnt along with a Lamborghini, a Hummer, a Cadillac and Ferrari parked there. When it was thought that Mahinda was hiding at the Trincomalee naval base, people surrounded it and demanded that he be arrested. To stop the escalating retaliations, president Gotabaya Rajapaksa ordered the military to take charge of the streets with ‘shoot on sight’ orders and authorization to detain people for 24-hours.

Two months of ongoing protests and repression culminated on July 9. After protesters began to surround his house, president Gota fled on an Air Force jet to the Maldives, later to Singapore. People swarmed the president’s residence and made it into an open house for days. Security forces enjoyed taking selfies along with thousands of citizens who came to marvel at the luxurious home. The presidential secretariat, the prime minister’s official residence as well as his private home were all occupied. Two weeks of uncertainty ended on July 13 when thousands of soldiers and police stormed Galle Face in a pre-dawn raid to close the camp. The occupied buildings were next.

Although ‘order’ had been restored by the military, protesters won their main demand, removal of the president, who fled along with more than dozen other clan members. By November, lines for gas and fuel all but disappeared, inflation cooled, and citizens enjoyed the satisfaction of having broken the Rajapaksas’ grip on power. Today, the nation continues to struggle with the legacy of Rajapaksa pillaging of state coffers.

No knew it at the time, but by massively confronting its corrupt and power-hungry elite and forcing them from power, Sri Lanka’s heroic populace set an example that would be followed within years. The recent synchronization of revolts in Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Nepal reveals a phenomenon I named the ‘Eros effect’ to understand the global proliferation of revolutionary movements in 1968. Since then, other instances of simultaneous protests are evident in the global disarmament movement of the early 1980s, the Arab Spring and the Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011, the alterglobalization insurgencies from the Zapatistas to Seattle, and most importantly, although less well-known, the chain reaction of Asian uprisings in the Philippines (1986), South Korea (1987), Burma (1988), Tibet, Taiwan, and China (1989), Nepal and Bangladesh (1990) and Thailand (1992).

The example set in 2022 by The Struggle in Sri Lanka prefigured subsequent uprisings in Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Nepal. They all contained surprisingly similar characteristics. None involved centralized leadership nor involved traditional political parties. All had students at their centers. Each erupted suddenly, without governments’ having a clue about the turmoil ahead. Each targeted leading politicians’ homes and offices. All targeted ostensibly ‘democratic’ regimes that failed to offer any avenue for popular participation other than street protests. Their spontaneous emergence and the success of anti-corruption uprisings have put entrenched elites everywhere on notice. ‘Behave well or you may be next!’

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* George Katsiaficas is the author Asia’s Unknown Uprisings. He is a retired professor from Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston. His web site is www.eroseffect.com

The post Sri Lankan Youth: Look What You’ve Started!- George Katsiafikas appeared first on Void Network.

In January of this year, while eco-justice activists were redecorating the Mona Lisa at the Louvre to protest climate change, French farmers besieged several French cities in protest against a range of policies threatening the material foundations of their way of life. In response to recent increases in agricultural costs due to the war in Ukraine and a drop in prices due to free trade policies implemented by the EU, tractors blocked the A6, a major highway leading into Paris, and in the south, farmers dumped manure and other agricultural waste on the front steps of city hall in Toulouse. The protests followed several months of protest at the end of 2023, and were echoed a month later by further protests in February of 2024.

The following article from Lundimatin seeks to provide some historical and existential context for the revolt, and to challenge some of the reflexes and assumptions of the left’s response. The article is of interest to us for two reasons. First, it helps explain the material basis of resistance to the mega-basins by organizations like Soulevement du Terre as well as the larger division between urban and rural workers in France. Second, it provides an excellent example of the kind of gap between contemporary leftist political categories and reflexes and the experience of rural workers that continues to provide an opening to the right wing, both in France and elsewhere. We take it to be the responsibility of partisans everywhere to find ways to close this gap and hope this article will make some contribution to that effort.

Charlatan Revolutionary Group

published in lundimatin#413, January 30, 2024

In recent days, we’ve seen prefectures covered in manure and set on fire, mutual insurance companies set ablaze, “foreign” trucks turned over by tractors and their food distributed to Restos du Cœur or burned on the asphalt. There are calls to surround Paris, others to rename the Élysée “Le Lisier” and a government particularly concerned not to add fuel to the fire. A ready-made media narrative, coordinated by both politicians and FNSEA representatives, has led us to view this movement solely from their point of view, i.e., their interests: agribusiness is allegedly engaged in a tug-of-war with the State to recoup a little cash and exert pressure against ecological regulations that are squeezing their margins. All this in a brown, reactionary and conservative atmosphere. Good. The Groupe Révolutionnaire Charlatan has sent us this text, which aims to approach the question by way of a completely different axiom: trying to understand revolt from its historical and ethical coordinates.

Lenin against the Muzhiks

“We have learned how to overthrow the bourgeoisie, how to suppress them, and we are proud of the fact. But we have not yet learned how to regulate our relations with the millions of middle peasants, how to win their confidence, and we must frankly admit it.”

– Lenin, speech to the ^8th Congress of the CPSU

In public school history curricula we’re given all the great stages of “progress”–the Industrial Revolution, the rural exodus, the Republic–as a single uninterrupted series of pliant modifications, useful amenities, and welcome improvements to the lifestyles of backwards populations, thanks of course to the philanthropic efforts of an intrepid urban elite trained in the school of economic rationality. It’s this vision–not too far off from the one behind the colonial project–that we have in mind today when we talk about the peasant world.

The reality of primitive accumulation, the forced displacement of populations, and the obliteration of the rural world–the land, the languages and the peasant way of life all included–is still seen in many left-wing circles as a positive and necessary stage that, with all the promise of mechanization, is supposed to bring about an egalitarian society, free to decide on its modes and methods of production; in short, industry as a necessary step in the socialization of our means of existence.

After killing their boyars and dividing up their lands equally, the muzhiks registered thousands of grievances with the Petrograd Soviet and voted for the socialist-revolutionaries in droves, unaware, however, that with the ideological confusion that was Bolshevik modernization, a tsarless Moscow was still scheming against them. All they needed was 100,000 tractors to get the peasants out of the way of the only real historical struggle, that between the proletariat and bourgeoisie. The rest of society, their ways of life, their revolutions, were much less important; and a decade later they could be put to death by the thousands, at least those of them branded “kulaks”—anyone with the misfortune of owning two cows, an unconscionable sign of allegiance to the petty-bourgeoisie.

Of course this loaded history has no parallel with the contemporary situation in France, where the peasantry has all but disappeared. But it is indicative of how deep the left’s blind spots can cut, and of the plethora of social groups that still coexist in complete ignorance of one another. We firmly believe that a “revolutionary,” if such a thing exists, is whomever brings about revolution, regardless of his or her background or beliefs; anyone who, when society reaches the point of no return, takes a resolute stand for a new world.

It therefore seems useful to give a brief overview of the rural world in modern France, in order to better evaluate its current political situation. Revolutionary theory does not make abstract proclamations from on high, with the overarching goals of an outmoded theoretical system; it descends into the masses, tries to make sense of the clandestine promises of emancipation and the repressed desires for an egalitarian world that dwell in the heart of each individual—and, putting this secret discourse into a system, giving it a vocabulary, it extends the means to speak the language of revolution to everyone.

The peasant world since the second world war

“The man sitting in the iron seat did not look like a man; gloved, goggled, rubber dust mask over nose and mouth, he was part of the monster, a robot in the seat.”

“The driver sat in his iron seat and he was proud of the straight lines he did not will, proud of the tractor he did not own or love, proud of the power he could not control.”

– John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, 1939

In so far as it is possible to describe the peasant as the land’s most literal inhabitant–living off the earth and giving direct expression to the social and cultural singularity of his region through his customs, dialect and way of life–it should be made clear from the outset that this is not how the right sees them. This peasant–who is no longer with us–lived in their own civilization, with its own languages, traditions, ingrained particularities, as well as its own symbolic and religious systems. This dense web of particularisms was an obstacle to the projects of the State–the tax inspector and the soldier alike. How could they make their way in a world that spoke its own language, where the land was farmed as the people saw fit, and whose inhabitants may or not have given themselves family names–that could change from one village to the next?

The eradication of this incongruous race was therefore an integral part of the modernization effort, nullifying its particularities, mapping its lands, turning the father into the de facto representative of the group, and conscripting its sons to die in wars. But the earth has a thick skin, and it wasn’t until after the Second World War that this unification effort reached its final phase.

The material and social foundations of this very particular world were swept away during the Marshall Plan era by a series of structural modifications and intensive mechanization: hedgerows were cut down, ditches filled in, and gigantic plots marked out to be plowed by tractors driven by a new generation of farmers trained by Jesuits and Dominican modernizers in agricultural technical schools. The state invested billions in this project. In 1954 there were 230,000 tractors in France; by 1963, 950,000. The consequence of this acceleration was the definitive decapitation of a large part of the farming population, unable to expand and mechanize, and thus unable to compete.

A competitive labor market, productivity gains, crushing competition from small businesses, all of which ensured solid growth and consumption as a means of redistribution: nothing too harmful, as any liberal economics textbook will tell you.

But what became of the man on his iron machine? With all the family farms gone, all his neighbors became agricultural laborers or fled to the city, and he was left to feed the monster: to stay competitive in a capitalist economy, you have to keep moving. More land, more fertilizer, more machines. There are few subjects the various ideologies of modernization agree more on: working the land is a kind of bondage, a thankless task that weighs on the individual, confining him to his plot of land and the shadows of the pre-enlightened world. As it turned out, the technical and economic needs of the luminous modern world were leading the planet to its doom, and in the meantime creating a class of wage-earning consumers with a dull, repetitive existence, probably not that different from that of the workers of yesteryear–the kind of same dependence, only with gadgets and processed food. The modern farmer found his own new form of bondage in agro-industrial techniques.

This new technological dependence has three faces: dependence on the enormous debt amassed from the purchase of machinery and land; dependence on the agro-industrial networks that manage all stages of production and control all regulatory bodies; and dependence finally on the machine itself and its dynamics. After all, if your neighbor can buy a bigger tractor, buy smaller farmers off their land and fertilize to excess, how could you possibly beat his prices? With competitive markets and private property, farmers became each other’s executioners, just like the rest of society.

This logic only intensified with France’s entry into the European Union and the Common Market. Although the early days of agro-industry had a certain kind of success in France–i.e. increased competition–this situation came to a standstill in the 1980s, when the European market was flooded with cheaper products from other countries, while the creation of the WTO and the signing of several treaties ratified the end of customs protections.

Article 135 of the Treaty of Lisbon straightforwardly prohibits social harmonization, making it impossible for member countries to demand Europe-wide standards for labor rights. That would hardly be in the spirit of competition!

Modernization can therefore be summed up as a mixture of interdependent elements: land consolidation, a reduction in the number of farmers, an increase in the number of industrial farms, the dominance of monoculture, dependence on machines, inputs and chemistry.

All of this contributed to the current situation: from 2,500,000 farms in 1955, only 400,000 remain today, and the new European standards will cut large swathes out of that number too. The decline is first and foremost that of peasant farming, swept away in the progress of a system that has conquered French soil, and which feeds the misfortune and destitution of thousands of farmers everyday.

Agribusiness and the FNSEA

As with the cops, the same people we see in the media capitalizing on the number of suicides in the profession are often the same who instigated the working conditions and modes of sociability that caused them; a reactionary union like the Alliance Police Nationale–just like the FNSEA, in fact, defender of corporations and large-scale cereal production in the north of France–is only really there to boost careers, keep the dirty laundry in house, and maintain a lobby on behalf of the institution’s least scrupulous members. The FNSEA is particularly mafia-like in this respect.

But the transformation of agriculture into an institutional and corporatist structure is at least as complicated as the tidal wave-like upheaval of the mental and physical universe of those caught up in its gears. The left’s feverish eagerness to round things up into its own categories reveals a profound inability to grasp the social dynamics of certain sectors, and the prevalence of ideas and relationships to the State that differ from their own.

What does this eagerness tell us? That its contemptuous (and contemptible) ignorance of the agricultural world, with all its fractures and contradictions, keep it from attaining any real grasp on current events that doesn’t fall back on the truncated categories of a moralistic, urban leftism.

Let’s be clear: the FNSEA is still a powerful force, with many high hopes behind it and with its hand still on a number of levers. But when it comes to revolution, and all the more so in an age that’s lost all sight of class politics, union membership and electoral politics don’t tell us much about the real, concrete political dispositions of different groups. A number of past struggles have already revealed the inability of the Left’s intellectual software to comprehend the desires, sensitivities and pain of those belonging to certain social categories. This has long been the case, for example, with the suburban youth.

For city dwellers ignorant of the agricultural world’s many “faces,” it’s difficult to differentiate between the small-plot farmer, the large landowner and the “peasant” businessman. The figure of Arnaud Rousseau makes this flagrantly clear whenever he tires of running the same corporations behind the agro-industrial system, and goes on television to defend the interests of farmers, only to end up demanding measures to protect the economic model he himself profits from.

This powerful agri-business is the necessary consequence of the economies of scale required by land consolidation: by establishing gigantic monocultures to avoid paying for a larger variety of expensive machinery, we no longer have the resilience of a polyculture and end up with only two or three types of products to send to market. The only outlet for our production is the food industry. Scale up this pattern and here we are, irrevocably dependent on the logistics and chemical sectors, seed and livestock suppliers, slaughterhouses and so on. Over-specialization necessarily leads to dependence on industry at several levels; and as the FNSEA dominates the chambers of agriculture, it falls into a mafia-like arrangement between all the industrial sectors involved, from suppliers to supermarkets, to extract maximum profit from the farmer.

The farmer, on the other hand, is now an entrepreneur-worker saddled with debt–200,000 euros on average. A paradoxical double-bind: proletarian arms on capitalist shoulders, bound to technology and global commerce at the same time as a world experienced as rural and remote. Proletarianized in Marx’s sense because dispossessed of the means of production, in Wallerstein’s sense because blocked off from any possibility of buying and selling locally, and in Debord’s sense because deprived of a way of life. The disintegration of local communities reached the countryside and created, as in the rest of modern society, a decline in direct solidarities, the rise of consumer individualism, careerism and the middle-class, with the knowledge to boot of a fleeting population, only aggravating the sense of social isolation.

It is essential to understand the collapse of this world and the moral shock and the resulting sense of abandonment, if we are to fully comprehend what the farmers are asking for. The Gilets Jaunes stood at the periphery of the middle classes: people who had been promised the same lifestyle as upper-class consumers, particularly those living in cities, and who bitterly saw these hopes swept away by the economic slump. Farmers come from that same world, but with very different working conditions: after all, if it’s possible to set a human being to the cadences of a salaried routine–cities, with their traffic, commercial districts and giant dormitories are there for just that–it’s difficult to impose the same rhythm on the land. Even when industrialized to death, agriculture remains dependent on a host of natural and biological parameters that are difficult to adapt to the needs of the Market and Government–even if many engineers see it differently in their sick dreams.

Part of the left is trying to make up for this by replaying the old figure of the “model” working-class proletarian. There are thus good workers and bad bosses; the good, unionized “rank and file” ready for revolt, and the ever-scheming reformist “leadership.” And then there’s the inevitably reviled National Rally vote, but that’s for the wealthy elites to take care of, because, as we all know, good conscience always comes at a price.

On the institutional left, masters in the art of recuperation, it’s on the theme of Euroscepticism that the problem lies. With criticism of the European Union having been largely abandoned to the sovereigntist right, and part of the far right too, the institutional left is forced to limit its arguments to the demand for food security and better agricultural wages. The European Union pays subsidies to 8 out of 10 farmers–400,000 out of 500,000. The progressive plan relies on the Chambers of Agriculture, the national agency for agricultural management created a hundred years ago. In short, the aim is to make something of a reserve force for the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy, subsidizing the few farmers that remain with redistributive policies implemented at the national level, and all this against a backdrop of a downward trend in the number of European farmers.

From the Gilets Jaunes to the Garbage Riots

Our aim in this text is to demonstrate that it’s no surprise that the minority factions of the ultra-left are systematically ultra-confused in the face of an event like this, incapable of grasping its meaning and scope; and that certain basic facts need to be reviewed if that faction that calls itself revolutionary is to live up to its own task. We won’t even mention the helpless gesticulations coming from the parliamentary left, who’ll try anything to seem like the defender of a people who no longer recognizes it. Their constant state of alarmism with regards to the far right is nothing more than the desperate discourse of electoralism, still trying to sell us the prophecy of a defiant electoral victory as the only way to save ourselves from the threat they pose. As far as we’re concerned, the real obstacle to mounting a counterattack is precisely the disempowerment of the citizen that comes from the vote itself.

What’s happening on the road blockades escapes both this electoral logic and the usual workings of social dialogue and its intermediaries–despite their being undermined by Macronian politics. François Purseigle is missing the point whenever he mentions the sociological differences between farmers and the Gilets Jaunes. Whether or not the former are closer to the upper sociopolitical categories or the lower is of no interest to us: what does matter is that yet another sector of the population is starting to refuse the institutional monopoly on politics.

The comparison with the Gilets Jaunes can only go so far: the revolt in winter 2018 was not a redundant occurrence, destined to be repeated, but the start of a whole new sequence in French politics. It shows a cruel lack of imagination to identify and compare events without recognizing the evolution taking place from one to the next. Nothing repeats itself; trends emerge, evolve and modify themselves. This is the only context in which comparison is really of any use, otherwise it does little more than feed a defeatist fetishism like that which took hold of the Champs-Élysées recently–which is not to be totally discarded, but it doesn’t represent the best use of our time and energy. The strength of the Gilets Jaunes movement lies in its capacity for constant renewal, its ability to pop up anywhere. Need we remind you?

The only repetitions in this case are the failure to confine the unrest to the union mold, to sort those causing the trouble into a few predefined factions, and to harness the movement with a few recognized spokespersons and watchwords. Just like the early days of the Gilets Jaunes, the movement is becoming autonomous, starting from a trigger point and broadening in a haphazard way towards a general feeling of exasperation. This vague but powerful sentiment is a very important indicator: it reveals the system’s inability to reproduce itself, a contradiction that has reached a point of unsustainability. We know that part of the population can no longer live as it used to; but what’s even more radical is that it can no longer imagine living as it used to–quite a shocking shift to come to terms with.

To go back to the events of 2023, we said in a text from the time that the shift we were seeing in strategies and in the widespread feeling of upheaval was struggling to produce a shift in minds and discourse.^[1] What made the Gilets Jaunes so powerful–the shared feeling of having to start from scratch in order to succeed, the revolt that was unleashed as soon as a desire to regain control of our lives was born, the constant inventiveness, the revival of old, outdated forms of struggle–the Garbage riots failed to capture. Everyone recognized something new in the events that took place at the Place de la Concorde, instinctively understanding the new possibilities looming in the shared feeling of frustration with our passivity; a huge swathe of what hitherto had been impossible ceased to be so. It was the opposite of a crisis, the opposite of a stalemate: it was momentum. Hence the chaotically scattered marches, the new slogans, the unexpected convergences, the enormous sense of motivation.

What drained this momentum was the impossibility of translating it into everyday language, into the way we talk to each other about the situation.

This new situation existed only in embryo, in the collective unconscious. The repressive routine of union marches and the politicking of central government officials, who moved the dates around, blocked the coordination of strikes and riots, and prevented the prolonging of strikes. It was only by accident that any of these tactics were undermined in the first place. All this was overcome only by accident. What was missing was an awareness of the opposition between two irreconcilable positions, that everything should change and that nothing should change; neither of which were clearly articulated on either side. Had there been a serious attempt to translate this new situation into words and action, its explosive potential would have tripled.

But the atavistic mental software of the left was still stuck 30 years in the past, repeating the same banalities, rehashing the same repertoire. Without critically rethinking the role of the unions, the usefulness of their practices and the relevance of their slogans, we fell back into apathy less than three weeks after the start of this magnificent sequence of events. There’s a lot of collective responsibility for this; unable to pull their heads out of their asses, the “revolutionary” faction continued to repeat its slogans over and over again, drooling over the riot videos and tolerating the presence of members of parliament who only sought to calm the protest in order to better exploit it. No one with any sense of these shortcomings even tried to bring them to our attention.

What this tells us about the current situation

“But especially: the exposition of a revolutionary perspective must still consist of describing and explaining what takes place day after day, and is never satisfied with the ridiculous, abstract proclamation of general goals.”

– Guy Debord, Letter to Afonso Moteiro

We must not underestimate the farmers’ capacity for struggle; they have always been apt to mobilize in spectacular fashion. Blockades with tractors, manuring town halls, releasing pigs on the freeway: nothing is totally new here, only the tempo of the mobilization. The FNSEA is being torn apart, the movement’s going on the offensive; what we’re seeing ever since the Gilets Jaunes movement, and increasingly so, is that the people know how they should talk to the state.

A certain pattern from the Gilet Jaunes playbook might seem familiar: mobilization on a scale that seems trivial to a left that is totally disconnected from this fringe of the population; slogans that demand a better quality of life on the broadest of scales, which make the rest of the population vibrate in unison; partial convergence; and a critical distance from the unions. Other sectors then begin to feel they have something in common to express; as in many recent movements, we quickly see the rest of the population feel concerned by the struggle of a single sector, as soon as it frees itself from the usual institutional and media framing. It’s this automatic shift towards something collective, this informal feeling of a collective struggle to be waged, that revolutionaries need to work on; it’s where they ought to put their pens.

What’s happening now is an attempt by politicians of all stripes to fit the protest into their own categories, and a temporary silence from the watchdogs of the State and the FNSEA, who are carefully waiting for the situation to evolve in a direction more likely to lead to decay. They’re stalling, not sleeping: as with the post-Concorde riots, their stupor will only last until they figure out how to seize on the slightest moment of weakness to roll out their rhetoric of a return to order and send in the troops to ensure it.

In the face of all this, we might fear that the revolutionaries will stick to their old habits, lining up empty ideological formulas without trying to understand how to take advantage of the situation. Despite some positive developments since 2018, we remain incapable of changing our modus operandi and even our way of understanding society and its uprisings.

Yet it is precisely the task of revolutionary activists to reflect on the current situation, to anticipate it, to give it a language, to understand its invisible motivations and its grandiose possibilities. As a press release from Action Antifasciste Paris-Banlieue rightly put it, militant enquiry is a primary means of action within everyone’s reach: communicating, investigating, gathering testimonies, delivering observations. This facilitates both overall understanding and communication with the different factions engaged in the struggle.

Against Convergence

This is neither a call for support nor an injunction to rise up. The agricultural world expects nothing from us, and we expect nothing in return.

What the Left describes as the convergence of struggles refers to an artificial coming together of distinct movements, collectives and social groups; artificial because rather than abandoning the kinds of categorical separations produced by the system, the proposed convergence simply lines them up alongside one another, ultimately reinforcing the fundamental divisions. The convergence of struggles relies on the existence of a centralized organization responsible for carrying out a programmatic synthesis of the specific interests of the separate categories: students, wage earners, farmers, agricultural workers, artisans, civil servants, etc. The old Leninist way of doing things is safe and sound: the party owns the working class, formulates its interests and dictates its conduct–the party is everything.

We have little interest in the pious hopes of convergence and the politics of recuperation they struggle to conceal. Nothing will ever emerge from a left so stuck in its ways, be they institutional or extra-parliamentary. We have no illusion of influencing the political sensibilities of anyone on the ground, no matter how many surveys are carried out. But still we refuse to remain passive spectators of the growing grievances and the prospect of the mobilization being surpassed by other sectors of the population–truck drivers and construction workers in particular. If we can’t be the movement itself, we need to be there to understand the nature and scale of what’s happening.

The Charlatan Revolutionary Group

January 2024

SOURCE:

https://territories.substack.com/p/the-left-progress-and-the-peasant

The post The Left, Progress, and the Peasant- French Farmer’s Revolt 2024 appeared first on Void Network.

We should start by looking back at the abrupt end of the movement against the “reform.”¹ After a series of demonstrations called by the unions, after a growing number of strikes which did not succeed in spreading or increasing their duration, the perspectives for struggle were increasingly reduced. Fatigue and lassitude finally took over, along with a feeling of powerlessness to change the balance of power favoring a government supported by capitalist forces and well-off sectors of society. The strikes, though involving active and determined workers, never generalized to a level capable of blocking the functioning of society. Repeated demonstrations, the energy and creativity of the demonstrators, the use of blockades and sabotage, the formation of networks of struggle collectives, the links forged between students and workers, and the sympathy of the majority of the working class—all these were not enough to sustain the dynamic and make it possible to pass to a more offensive level of struggle. Although very popular, the active movement remained the effort of a minority. The successive demonstrations only revealed to the eyes of the participants the impasse which the union forces sought increasingly to hide with triumphalist speeches, an irritating demagoguery. The movement was finally exhausted, and the activism of minorities could do nothing about it.

The clear end of the movement did not efface the collective consciousness with a profound and massive rejection of the neoliberal line of present-day capitalism and its more and more authoritarian modes of governing. This rejection did not succeed in finding its way to become a decisive force of opposition. The rejection it expressed is therefore still there, so the defeat was not experienced as the defeat of the collective and its subversive energy. The general feeling is summed up by a phrase given different emphases and nuances: “We have lost but they haven’t won. The fight will start again, sooner or later.”

This disgust with the political class and its propagandists, with the increasing repression of all forms of opposition, with general unhappiness, social impoverishment, and growing class inequality provided a context for the explosion of revolt against police violence among young people in working-class neighborhoods. This is racist violence that is a daily experience in the neighborhoods that are parking places for young people—poor and for the most part excluded from the world of work and social life in general—who, though of immigrant origin, are often “French” for one or two generations. Police violence and its racist dimension have a long history in France, with roots deep in the class conflicts marking the origin of industrial capitalism in France and the repression of successive groups of immigrants who have long composed the working class. To that must be added the consequences of a badly digested colonial heritage and the nationalist rebellions of the postwar period. More recently, police repression has returned to the forefront of social life with the movement of the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests), of whom more than 3,000 were wounded and mutilated by the police. Now it is extending to all forms of opposition to the social order, including struggles against the destruction of the environment. These have been systematically criminalized and confronted by the police. This was notably the case recently at Sainte-Soline, in the center-west of France, where 30,000 people, mobilized to block an agricultural-industrial project of privatizing water resources, came up against militarized police forces that produced dozens of wounded and left two young people in critical condition.

It is hard to analyze an event like the banlieue youth revolt, characterized by spontaneity and improvisation. Clearly, the spontaneity is the fruit of a pre-existing situation, and the unpredictable was obviously to be predicted. But this revolt took unexpected forms and it is difficult to see its links with earlier struggles. Karl Marx once suggested there are social revolts that are like earthquakes—it is pointless to try to predict them, and even more to dissect them or to set them in pre-established schemas and political projects constructed in advance. Nonetheless, if one is an enemy of the existing order, one cannot dissociate these events from the current crisis of society and one is inevitably led to solidarity with them, even if that solidarity is purely abstract and impossible to make concrete, even if these revolts do not open a perspective on radical social change. Perhaps they are signs of something different on the horizon. Only the future will tell and provide perspective. Meanwhile, some facts can help us understand the circumstances of the explosion.

The recent revolt of young people in working-class neighborhoods has surpassed the similar revolts of 2005² in intensity and breadth. While at that time, the rebellion went on for three weeks, this time it lasted only a few days, but involved more of the country; it reached many little provincial cities traditionally considered “calm” and not only the big urban centers. The revolt was not confined to neighborhoods outside the city proper, the suburbs, but expanded into the urban centers. As a Communist city official in the Paris region observed, “Symbolically speaking, this went far beyond what happened in 2005.”³ Indeed, the explosion of anger and rage focused above all on “symbols of the state” and in particular on the so-called forces of order, the police and the gendarmerie (military police), viewed in any case by the young of these neighborhoods as the heart of the state’s repressive control. Contrary to what the government and its propagandists want people to think, schools and civic institutions (libraries, cultural enters) were not the most commonly attacked locations—even though for many kids these places are centers of power, places that they assimilate to others where they are rejected, devalued, excluded. Among the 2,500 public buildings set on fire or damaged in more than 500 urban areas there was a high number of police stations and gendarme posts, compared to a small number of schools (168). Gun stores were pillaged here and there by people who took hunting rifles and other weapons, a new fact testifying to the increased level of violence in clashes with the authorities. Another novelty: a hundred mayor’s offices were attacked, along with elected politicians, occasionally in their private residences.

Institutions of repression and control are replacing the collapsing institutions of the welfare state. This evolution has been visible for years: the increase of repression is the counterpart to the willful and continuous dismantling of the welfare state. The realization of this fact was central to the revolt of the Gilets Jaunes and more recently to the movement against the pension “reform.” To quote Marx once again, the forms of political power tend to correspond to the forms of the capitalist exploitation of labor. The latter are increasingly violent, characterized by the precarity, fragility, and harshness of working conditions and low wages. The forces of repression are hated in the poor neighborhoods, where young people are abandoned to “uberized” jobs. They are, so to speak, a world of proletarians outside of the classical proletariat. The police, on the other hand, are always supported by the bourgeois classes (naturally), by shopkeepers, and also by workers who are afraid of losing the little they still have and who are attached to a “balanced” past, mythologized and longed for, which will not return.

The modern French state (and in this it is setting an example for Europe) is increasingly based on institutions dealing in open violence. The police have become a state within the state. Even worse, recent developments suggest that the branches of the police charged with repression on the streets somehow lost their connection with the top of the institution, with the hierarchy of command. Instead, they are very much under the control of the police unions whose links with the extreme right are by now well known. This development is producing unease even among the ruling elite, the leading liberal press, and the judiciary. The same development can be seen in other sectors of the state: for instance, everyone knows (even if it is not openly said) that the Minister of the Interior, in charge of the police, cannot be nominated without the agreement of the police unions. Similarly the Minister of Agriculture and Ecological Transition is “chosen” by the main agricultural-industrial firms, as the energy minister is “chosen” by the bosses of the nuclear industry. One could say that we are progressing towards transparency about the real nature of democracy.

There is also the question of social immiseration. The explosions of revolt brought with them a lot of looting—much more than in 2005. In many places, after the kids had broken shop windows and stolen some candies it was their mothers and grandmothers who came to stock up on noodles, sugar, flour, oil, and canned food—something that tells us a lot about the period we are entering in our supposedly affluent society. These revolts were also, in part, hunger riots.

The young people who ran free in the streets were for the majority very young, between twelve and seventeen, younger than in 2005. There were over 3,000 arrests, with more than 1,300 youths processed through expedited trials, and more than 700 individuals sentenced to serious prison terms, 8 months on average.⁴ Thus the imprisoned surplus population continues to grow. A few big-city suburbs and neighborhoods saw a momentary mix of kids in revolt and those who have been drawn for years to clashes with the police in demonstrations, the so-called black bloc. But for the most part these remained two worlds separated by ideology. I’ve heard of the reply (real or made up) of a young rebel to a black bloc member: “You get yourselves arrested because you are engaged in politics, we do it because we are young!” On the other hand, given the form of the revolt, its spontaneity and suddenness, and the places in which it broke out (streets and blocks), workers generally expressed no solidarity. Here and there the intervention of teachers or local civic or cultural workers made it possible to discuss things, to “reason with” the young people’s rage. Discussions of the event certainly took place in workplaces and among families at home, but without any particular impact. One wonders to what extend the “family” institution still exists within the world of proletarians which is decomposing or imploding. We know that the number of single-parent families continues to increase, especially those headed by single mothers, for the most part unable to pay attention to the children thanks to the struggle for daily survival: long hours of work and transportation, debilitating fatigue. Macron’s speech demanding that families “control your children,” visibly had no relation to reality.

However, in the neighborhoods where the revolts broke out, people openly expressed a clear understanding of the situation and a critique of the police. The sense that the government lies, that the police are out of control and defend the interests of the well-off, is generally shared. People reject state violence, which is seen as violence against the working classes—even if at the same time people demand more from the state. A contradiction which reveals the present level of social consciousness, far from understanding that the repressive state is the only state possible in the present period of capitalism.

Groups thinking of themselves as “radical” saw these revolts as the basis of a “revolutionary” situation, which should be developed and “politicized.” Given the circumstances, in particular the repressive force of the modern state, to incite fourteen-year-olds to pursue this path of confrontation, ignoring their weaknesses, seems irresponsible. Much wiser were the words of a woman from a neighborhood association who, because she didn’t feel like having any arguments to calm the young people down, simply advised them: “Take care, don’t put yourself in danger.” Because they really are in danger, before and during the revolt. It is already a lot to take seriously the reasons for their anger.

Practically all the discourse of the old left, in contrast, demonstrates incomprehension of the events, a denial of the condition of this abandoned youth who “is angry at everyone, at the whole world,” as someone said. It is true that rage against the world does not necessarily lead to the idea that another world is possible. And there is a big difference from the social movement that preceded it, where this idea was present even if it could not be realized. The fact is that a social explosion without results or immediate perspectives is disturbing. Thus the renowned thinker Edgar Morin (one of the last nonconformist left intellectuals) who wrote about the events without touching on the material conditions—the daily violence—that provoked them invoked jihadism to suggest a nihilist quality. It’s an easy and perverse move to make, since the great majority of the young people involved are of immigrant origin: “Unlike the jihadists motivated by hatred for unbelievers, we see here the opposite of faith, a sort of nihilism. Beyond rage at the death of Nahel M. it seems that the intoxication of smashing everything and setting fires was lived as a dark festival by those who carried it out.”⁵ The threatening image of the (twelve to seventeen-year-old !?) “barbarian” thus discreetly replaced the figure of the “jihadist,” a discursive development that deserves some discussion. In any case, Morin concluded that “the events can be read in two different ways: as revealing the deep evil that is eating way at our society, or as an attack of adolescent madness, collective and transitory.” The “profound evil of our society” seems the correct reading to me.

To conclude, with a few notes on the attitude of political and union forces: Here things are at the moment somewhat confused. The near totality of political forces in France defend the liberal principles of capitalism. Only the new party France Insoumise takes a position against this orientation, with the weak support of several marginal Socialists (the majority have signed on to Macron’s neoliberal project) and the Greens, themselves divided between “realists” and “radicals.” In contrast, the decaying Communist Party, currently run by a neo-Stalinist clan, patriotic and productivist, holds demagogic ideas about “order” and the police, regarded as “order workers.” The political class as a whole is engaged in a ferocious struggle to put France Insoumise , now the principal enemy of the liberal consensus, beyond the pale. For the time being, this party has been behaving in a rather dignified way within bourgeois politics: it has defended the young arrestees and demanded a “democratic reconstruction” (?) of the police. That it asked angry young people not to destroy social goods (schools, social centers, libraries, health centers, public transportation) without mentioning the attacks on the police and their buildings has been very badly taken by other political organizations. This might explain, in part thanks to electoralist demagoguery, why they are far from power. What would they do if they were in the government? There is also the fact that this new party is composed of people coming from civil society, militants involved in the recent struggles, neighborhood activists. It is a party motivated by the strong feeling of social conflict that has been at work in France for years. However, even given young people’s disgust for politics, it is likely that this attitude will be rewarded in the next elections. The unions have also been prudent in their reactions. The biggest ones (CFDT, CGT) and the more combative one (SUD) did not condemn the youth; they timidly tried to establish links with their revolt and the general social situation.

A bit of sociological information gives us something to think about: comparing the locations of these revolts with those of demonstrations against the pension “reform” shows an overlap, particularly in the small provincial cities. We can at the very least conclude that the atmosphere of social revolt currently deep-rooted in French society has reached the young people excluded from it. Their need to fight against social injustice, against injustice in general, is an idea whose time has come. Like the recognition that the government lies and that we can’t expect it to improve the situation of the weakest members of society. We should not forget that the recent struggles of the Gilets Jaunes and their insurrectionary spirit remain alive. Everything is there: everything is present, in the memory of the moment.

We have to see what comes next, for better and for worse. The general situation will not be stabilized, austerity will increasingly affect the working classes, the exclusion of the young will continue and even be more severe. The forms of political representation will continue to discredit themselves, parliamentary democracy will take more authoritarian forms. Other events, movements, struggles will come. History goes on.

__________

Written by Charles Reeve

Source: Brooklyn Rail

1. See Charles Reeve, “Letter from Paris”, https://brooklynrail.org/2023/04/field-notes/Letter-From-Paris-1
2. In 2005 revolts in French banlieues broke out on October 27 in response to the deaths of two adolescents, electrocuted within a power installation while attempting to escape a police patrol.
3. The mayor of Grigny, L’Humanité, June 30, 2023.
4. Figures from the Ministry of the Interior, July 5, 2023.
5. Edgar Morin, “La crise française doit être située dans la complexité d’une polycrise mondiale,” Le Monde, July 29 2023.

The post France: A Movement Ends, An Explosion of Rage appeared first on Void Network.

Last Tuesday evening, Mahsa (Zina) Amini, a 22-year-old ethnic Kurd from the western city of Saqez in the Kurdistan province, was detained outside a metro station in Tehran by Iran’s notorious morality police.

Mahsa Amini was travelling with her family from Iran’s western province of Kurdistan to the capital, Tehran, to visit relatives when she was reportedly arrested for failing to meet the country’s strict rules on women’s dress, ie, not wearing the hijab and her trousers “correctly” and was brutally beaten in a police van, according to witnesses.

The news comes weeks after Iran’s hardline president, Ebrahim Raisi, called for stricter enforcement of the country’s mandatory dress code, which has required all women to wear the hijab head-covering.

According to Hrana, an Iranian human rights organisation, Amini’s family were told during her arrest that she would be released after a “re-education session”. But Amini was in a coma her family said, adding that they were told by hospital staff that she was brain dead.

She was accused of improperly wearing her hijab in a country which strictly enforces the compulsory covering of women’s hair and bodies. According to witnesses, she was beaten while inside a police van that took her to a detention center. Amini died on Friday in the hospital after spending three days in a coma. 

Police in Tehran immediately denied responsibility for her murder and said she suffered “sudden heart failure” while waiting with other women at the facility to be “educated.” Amini’s arrest and death rapidly set off protests across the country, initially starting outside the hospital where she died and spreading to other provinces. Throughout social media, she has already become a symbol for the struggle against the compulsory hijab and police across the world. 

While Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi called Amini’s family to express his condolences, he’s mostly dealt with the crisis — one of the biggest of his first year in office so far — by brutally repressing the Iranians who have taken to the streets. The repression has particularly targeted the Kurdish regions that have gone on general strike in protest against the killing of Mahsa. At least 10 major cities have been shut down since Monday despite intense police repression. 

Hundreds of brave Kurdish women protesting the mandatory hijab took off their scarves during Amini’s funeral and waved it in the air while chanting slogans in Kurdish and Farsi: “Death to the dictator!”; “Killing for the scarf, how long will it be?”; and “Woman, Life, Freedom.” Security forces later shot some of the protesters and attacked many with tear gas, injuring at least 30. 

Elsewhere in Iran, security forces have cut off internet access and attacked and arrested protestors, beating people indiscriminately in the streets and targeting activists in the women’s movement. Like in previous struggles, the student movement has been at the forefront of organizing mobilizations, with major protests breaking out in campuses across the country despite the presence of repressive forces and potentially severe consequences for students.

In a joint statement, fourteen student organizations from schools including Amirkabir University, Tarbiat Modares University, and Allameh Tabataba’i University called for a “dissolution of the Guidance Patrol and Morality Police as one of the most important institutions of repression post-revolution” in Iran. 

The protests have not only led to a deeper questioning of the police, but also a deeper questioning of the regime among broader sectors of society. At protests, demonstrators are using anti-regime slogans such as “Death to Khamenei!” referring to regime supreme leader Ali Khamenei. Other slogans included “Death to the dictator!” and “No fear! We’re all together!” Importantly, some protesters are condemning the brutal authoritarian rule of both the U.S.-backed Shah’s regime, which lasted from 1941 until the 1979 revolution, and the current Islamic regime against the monarchist perspective of some Iranians who advocate for a return to Iran’s monarchy through the son of the late Shah. 

The Iranian diaspora, which is estimated to include at least six million Iranians around the world, has also been active in organizing protests against Amini’s atrocious murders, particularly in Europe, Toronto, and New York. 

Iran’s Deepening Fault Lines 

Mahsa Amini’s shocking murder and resulting social unrest are creating a difficult political backdrop for Raisi who is set to speak at the UN general assembly in New York on Wednesday. 

Beyond quelling the popular discontent, Raisi faces an erosion of legitimacy of Iran’s regime which has strong theocratic features. This political crisis is also marked by a widening of the rift between the two wings that have come to dominate Iranian politics: the “reformists” and the more conservative “hardliners.” Thus far, pro-reform figures like former President Mohammad Khatami have questioned the regime’s response to Amini’s death. Former lawmaker Ali Motahari also wrote that he feared that the incident could portray the Iranian government internationally as an entity like the Taliban in Afghanistan. 

Other reformists have gone further to release statements against mandatory hijab and the morality police. Reformist lawmaker Parvaneh Salahshouri, the leader of the Women’s Faction in Parliament, wrote against the compulsory hijab in 2018 and, as recently as August 2, 21 prominent reformists had also denounced mandatory hijab laws. 

Recent reports on the frail and ailing health of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have also opened up questions about political uncertainty and even deeper factional divisions, as Khamenei’s death would open up a power struggle over his successor. 

The deepening crisis of the Iranian regime cannot be seen outside of the dissolution of the Iranian nuclear deal, which had provided temporary relief from some sanctions — a strategic aim of both wings of the regime. The imposition of Trump’s “maximum pressure” sanctions, which Biden is continuing, have plunged the country into an unprecedented economic crisis, primarily affecting the workers and poorest sectors of Iranian society, who expressed their rage at the economic situation during two important waves of class struggle in 2018 and 2019. 

Since then, the regime has responded to the unstable situation by expressing its more bonapartist features and relying heavily on its repressive apparatus to crackdown on any discontent. In addition to the increased repression, last year’s presidential elections underscored the undemocratic aspects of the Iranian “republic” in which the 12-person Guardian Council responsible for approving candidates for elections essentially blocked the nomination of anyone who can possibly challenge Raisi as a way to effectively secure the election of the hardliner.

These tendencies toward bonapartism are undoubtedly linked to the growing political influence of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a powerful security force and internal police which by some measures controls two thirds of Iran’s GDP and is increasingly competing with the clergy for power. Their historic role can be traced back to helping to consolidate the Islamic regime during the Iranian counterrevolution and the functioning of the IRGC expanded greatly in the political crisis set off by the aftermath of the 2009 elections which they played an important role in suppressing. 

In recent months, the increased persecution of prominent political activists in Iran, especially women like Leila Hosseinzadeh and Sepideh Rashno, has put a spotlight on the rigid discipline of the reactionary regime which beyond the oppression of women (Iran is one of the world’s top executioners of women) and the brutal punishment of the queer community as the recent death sentences of queer activists, Zahra Seddiqi Hamedani and Elham Choubdar show, also extends to the denial of basic democratic rights like the recognition of independent trade unions. 

Developing Tendencies toward Crisis and Class Struggle 

Since the beginning of 2022, the social atmosphere in the country has also been marked by  waves of protests and strikes, mostly targeting water shortages and the growing cost of living crisis exacerbated by the war in Ukraine. As Red Flag recently reported, the Iranian economy is facing a serious crisis: 

The currency hit its lowest value ever in June and annual inflation is sitting at 41.5 percent and climbing, according to figures from the Statistical Center of Iran. The price of essential foodstuffs has increased by 90.2 percent, and household expenditures have tripled, while real wages continue to decline.

The effects of crippling maximum pressure sanctions, coupled with the seemingly comatose nuclear deal, has led the regime to impose austerity as a way to make workers pay for the crisis that is crushing them. Already, Raisi has introduced a slew measures like cuts to wheat subsidies and an elimination of pharmaceutical subsidies. As a result, there has been a thirteen-fold increase in the price of bread, and bread riots quickly emerged in the southern province of Khuzestan, which is home to a large Arab minority and a frequent flashpoint of struggle due to environmental problems in the region and the presence of the militant sugarcane workers of the Haft Tappeh union. 

Within the workers’ movement, teachers have also led struggles related to the cost-of-living crisis and have spearheaded a series of nationwide strikes, rallies and occupations, including huge demonstrations across the country on May Day this past year as part of the Coordinating Council of Teachers’ Trade Unions. On a political scale, new Marxist organizations (largely operating underground) like the “Labour Organised Action Committee” (LOAC) are emerging among the student and workers’ movements as revolutionary socialist ideas re-emerge among the Iranian vanguard which has been involved in the recent waves of struggles from the mass uprising in 2019 to the oil workers’ strike in 2021. 

From Fury to Freedom 

The social explosions emerging in Iran have the potential to build threads of continuity with the historic struggle of the Iranian masses against their oppressive regimes and the threat of imperialism. In order for the mobilizations that are emerging against women’s oppression to advance in a way that responds to the interests of the oppressed and exploited in Iran, it’s important to tie the struggle against Iran’s particularly undemocratic and patriarchal regime with a struggle against the capitalist system that sustains the bourgeois mullahs. 

In that sense, the convergence of the burgeoning women’s movement with Iran’s combative working class that has emerged as an important actor in recent struggles can play an important role in pushing these struggles forward. Let us not forget that the Iranian revolution was set off by the Shah’s violent suppression of protests and authoritarian rule. It was the oil workers’ strike in response to this repression that set off a general strike that brought the Shah’s regime to its knees. The oil workers in Iran today have the potential to wield their strategic power in a similar way.

And the Iranian revolution was not only a revolution against the Shah’s regime but a revolution against the imperialist forces that benefited from his rule. These lessons are important today, as imperialist countries like the U.S. and France denounce the murder of Mahsa Amini as a way to conceal their own interests. These are the so-called “democratic” countries whose police also brutally murder women, whose regimes deny the right to abortion, and impose racist hijab bans limiting a woman’s autonomy from another angle. These are the countries that impose maximum pressure sanctions that inflict suffering on Iranian workers everyday. 

Against the Iranian ruling class and foriegn powers, the involvement of the left can be decisive in fighting back independently against these oppressive attacks. After all, it was Marxist women who organized the first massive protests against compulsory veiling during International Women’s Day in 1979. 

The international Left and feminist movements around the world should also take up the banner of the Iranian women, youth, and workers in struggle, in the spirit of the George Floyd protests which spread globally. The problems we face as a class go beyond our borders and can only be resolved internationally.

_________

Source: https://www.leftvoice.org/say-her-name-protests-erupt-across-iran-after-police-murder-of-mahsa-amini/

written by

Maryam Alaniz

Maryam Alaniz is a socialist journalist, activist, and PhD student living in NYC. She is an editor for the international section of Left Voice. Follow her on Twitter: @MaryamAlaniz

The post Iran on Flames after Morality Police murder of Mahsa Amini- Videos and Reports appeared first on Void Network.

“Revolution — without icons and without capital letters — remains a necessity, as an indeterminate idea of change and as the compass for human will. Not as a model, not as a prefabricated schema, but as a strategic hypothesis and a regulating horizon.” These words by the philosopher Daniel Bensaïd begin Enzo Traverso’s new book, soberly entitled Revolution: An Intellectual History. Traverso, one of Italy’s foremost historians of ideas, now teaches at Cornell University. Il manifesto met up with him in Rome during a recent visit in which he presented his book.

Today, the enemies of political and social revolution speak of “revolution” when they are selling the latest model of smartphone, the latest brand of toothpaste, or running for election. Whereas those who would be in favour of revolution are silent. In what sense is revolution still a “strategic hypothesis” today, as Bensaïd argued?

There has been an obfuscation of the word “revolution,” which has become devoid of content, an empty signifier. There was a time when the Left had to choose between reform and revolution. Today, the word “revolution” refers to the latest model of iPhone and “reform” to some socially regressive measure related to the introduction of neoliberal management (hence labour reforms, reforms to the healthcare system, university reforms and so on). This metamorphosis is also significant in the field of historiography, where the idea of “fascist revolution” — itself belonging to fascist rhetoric — is widespread, while the revolutionary dimension of events such as the Spanish Civil War or the Paris Commune tends to be ignored. The concept of “revolution” changes, as do its political uses. We are well past the era when a historian like Eric Hobsbawm made it the key to interpreting modernity. I am convinced that this eclipse has its origin — far from questions of the communicative strategies of politics and the culture industry — in the defeat of the revolutions of the twentieth century. This was, indeed, the age of revolutions, not just wars and totalitarianism. In the century of the “principle of hope,” communism had become a concrete and possible utopia, in Ernst Bloch’s sense. This “horizon of expectations” has vanished.

You write that the movements over the last fifteen years, and perhaps even longer than that, have not manifested a historical memory, yet they are not prisoners of the past and they need to reinvent themselves. How is it possible to create a revolutionary political tradition, under these conditions?

Obviously, it is not a matter of blaming young people for their lack of historical memory. Rather, it is a question of coming to terms with the “sense” of history that is today dominant. The new social and political movements have considerable potential, but they are the offspring of a historical turning point that has evacuated the utopian horizon of the past, identified precisely with the idea of revolution. Reconstructing its history and semantic shifts will perhaps help us understand that it remains a compass for our time.

What does it mean not to have a memory of revolution?

It means that the cycle of revolutions in the twentieth century has come to an end and that we are living the consequences of this change. For a century, history seemed to be running towards socialism, whose premise was the conquest of power by military force. This vision is light years away from our intellectual universe today. It is this turn of events that prevents the new movements from fitting into a historical continuity. This does not mean that there will be no more revolutions. On the contrary, there have already been some in recent years — just think of the “Arab Spring”. These revolutions, however, no longer identified themselves with past models — socialism, national liberation, pan-Arabism —which are now obsolete, exhausted, or defeated, and they did not really know where they were going. Once the oppressive regimes of Ben Ali and Mubarak had been overthrown, they did not know how to replace them.

Even when strong models did exist, many revolutions failed. Is a loss of bearings an aggravating factor?

It is also a condition that allows for great freedom. The idea of a radical transformation persists even though it does not recognise itself as heir to the models inherited from the twentieth century, in particular communism and anti-colonialism. But a new model is not yet in sight. This vacuum is at the origin of an incredible creativity, I would even say a considerable theoretical sophistication, present in movements that are forced to reinvent themselves. At the basis of this creativity is a revolutionary question: how to change the world, put an end to capitalism, save the planet, overcome the appalling inequalities that plague our societies? I think that this need is widely felt among young people today.

Reference to the 1960s and 1970s runs through several of your books, for example Left-Wing Melancholia. Marxism, History and Memory. What are the differences between those years and today?

Those who discovered politics in the 1970s had to choose from a wide range of well-defined movements and organisations. This is, fortunately, not the problem for young people today, who think and act without feeling that they are being enclosed in ideological cages. However, this change does not only offer advantages, but also brings great fragility, precisely because these movements are not inscribed in a historical continuity. They are ephemeral, short-lived sparks. When they do manage to build up a durable and established political presence, they run the risk of being reabsorbed by traditional politics, as we have seen with Podemos, with Syriza, or even in Great Britain, where the attempt to renew the Labour party from below hit a wall. In Italy, all the movements that have appeared in the last twenty years have failed to give themselves a political expression except through coalitions of micro-apparatuses that would stifle any enthusiasm. We need to go beyond these brief upsurges to reconstruct a horizon of expectation, to reinvent an idea of futurity.

In the neoliberal societies that you analyse in Singular Pasts: The “I” in Historiography there is the terror of failure and defeat. Does this put us off even thinking of trying again?

Maybe, but socialism was born out of “working through” defeat, namely the defeat of the French Revolution that ended with the Restoration. The twenty-first century was born out of another historical defeat, of global dimensions. The younger generations probably do not realise this, but they act in a context heavily burdened by this legacy. Recovering a sense of history, knowing that changing the world is an age-old project — a project that in the twentieth century not only seemed possible, but was put into action — could offer an identity, however unstable it is, and make us feel less vulnerable.

One of the most interesting ideas that has emerged in recent years from the movements is intersectionality, the convergence of struggles and a new idea of class as the object of multiple oppressions and the subject of possible resistances. This perspective is often evoked in France, a country where you have lived and taught, including in the experience of La France Insoumise. Can this be a useful practice for constructing the sense of the revolutionary perspective?

La France Insoumise has evolved in a positive way. Several unsavoury nationalists or “sovereigntyists” left or were asked to leave. It participated in the Gilets Jaunes even without being the driving force in this movement. It was able to integrate the environmental dimension and practise — as far as possible — intersectionality between claims and demands based on gender, race, and class. Because it is attuned to the anti-racist movements in working-class banlieues, it overcame the narrow limits of “national-republicanism”, the old framework of French socialism. The left-wing coalition has achieved a significant electoral success, but clearly this is no revolution. It must overcome many obstacles.

How so?

From a purely formal point of view, the programme of the left-wing NUPES coalition is more moderate than that of François Mitterrand’s Union de la gauche in 1981. It does not include the nationalisation of certain key sectors of the economy. Mélenchon has honestly acknowledged this: even if he had become prime minister, he would not have had the strength to implement his programme without the support of a strong social movement, which is missing at the moment. The problem is the very high level of abstention. In the current context, the old programme of social democracy — redistribution of wealth, social reforms, defence of wages and pensions, access to education, transport, and health — implies a rupture with the neoliberal order. La France Insoumise embodies this rupture. In the post-war period, social democracy was the instrument of the “humanisation” of capitalism facing a gigantic challenge, that of socialism as a “principle of hope” unfolding across a global scale. Today, social democracy has become one of the pillars of the neoliberal order. In the era of universal reification, a genuine social-democratic programme cannot be realised without a rupture with the dominant model of capitalism.

There is not only the history of revolutions but also a history of counterrevolutions. This has been the case since the beginning of the modern revolutions, the French and Soviet revolutions, with devastating effects. Are counterrevolutions simply reactions or are they autonomous, producing a new reality of their own?

It is a kind of norm of history: there is no revolution without counterrevolution, bound by a symbiotic relationship. The “velvet revolutions”, which emerged when Soviet power was in crisis and could no longer send the tanks to suppress them, were an exception. Counterrevolutions have a culture and ideology of their own, which go through transformations. In the twentieth century, they produced fascism. The rhetoric of fascism was intended to be “revolutionary”, but its main component was reaction against Bolshevism. The twentieth-century counterrevolution did not claim to restore the ancien régime but rather to invent a new form of power. Its culture was not insignificant, even if some considered it only an “anti-culture”; after all, fascism invented a new idea of civilisation. In Germany, Nazism produced great figures like Jünger, Schmitt and Heidegger. In France, the literature of the first half of the twentieth century is marked, after Proust, by a string of fascists like Céline and Drieu la Rochelle.

Can the current neoliberal cycle be interpreted as a counterrevolution — as a reaction to the global revolutionary cycle of the 1960s and 1970s?

Yes. I would like to answer, as a historian, by evoking Fernand Braudel’s longue durée. The neoliberal age we are living through today can be seen as a backlash — in this sense, a counterrevolution — against the long cycle of twentieth-century revolutions. On the social level, this is obvious. All the social achievements of the last century have been called into question. The power relations between classes on a global scale have changed profoundly. In Brooklyn, workers in an Amazon warehouse gained recognition for their union — and this was one of the great achievements of recent years. If we think about what the labour movement was in the 1960s and 1970s, there is no doubt that this achievement comes in a frightening context of regression.

What is the history of the counterrevolution which we are living through?

For decades, neoliberalism was a heretical current within the culture of the ruling classes. During World War II, who would have taken seriously a book like The Road to Serfdom, which presented Roosevelt as a fifth columnist for totalitarianism, at a time when the Soviet Union, the United States and Great Britain were fighting Nazism and fascism? At the time, Hayek’s ideas were inadmissible. The first sign of a turnaround came with the Chilean coup of 1973. The Chicago Boys arrived and introduced structural reforms that the Left around Gabriel Boric still has to joust with today. Pinochet embodied the armed counterrevolution. Subsequently, neoliberalism imposed itself with an “anti-totalitarian” rhetoric based on the combination of liberal democracy and market society.

So, neoliberalism is not only a reaction, but also an institutionalised political form and a specific form of life that aspires to continual self-renovation. Is it right to cast it as “revolutionary”?

The neoliberal “revolution” — which extends far beyond neoliberalism as an economic model — is a permanent bombardment of images, fashions, commodities, and illusions. It is, in a word, a “privatised utopia”. This is no innocent operation. It seeks to instil the feeling that everything is transforming around us even if the socio-economic order that produces catastrophes and immense suffering, capitalism as civilisation — what Andreas Malm calls the “capitalocene” — remains immutable. I would like to emphasise that neoliberalism has not only imposed itself with armies, but above all as a “democratic” alternative to totalitarianism, which all twentieth-century history has been folded into.

If revolution has been hijacked by counterrevolutionaries, how can this outlook be turned around?

I don’t think that anyone has the recipe for that. Revolution is a historical moment in which the oppressed become aware of their strength, their ability to change the world through collective action. Walter Benjamin used an evocative formula: the splitting of the atom that unleashes extraordinary and explosive forces. Revolution is the moment when the linearity of history is suddenly broken and everything becomes possible, when new horizons open up: revolutions are factories of utopias. This inevitably entails considerable risks because dangerous paths can also be taken.

Revolutions, however, do not happen by decree, they arise from below and spread like “furies”, as Jules Michelet put it. But it is important to know that, even though revolutions are continually being exorcised, they are still breathing life into history.

________

Source: autonomies.org/2022/08/enzo-traverso-revolutions-are-still-breathing-life-into-history

The post Enzo Traverso: Revolutions are still breathing life into history appeared first on Void Network.

Preface 

Below are two excerpts from Rodrigo Karmy Bolton’s The Future is Inherited, a compilation of essays and reflections composed during the initial months of the 2019 Chilean uprising, which recently appeared in English. 

In October 2019, Transantiago, the Metropolitan Transit system in Chile’s capital, raised the train fare by thirty pesos. In response, high school students planned what they called a Evasión Masiva, a week of coordinated protests across the city where participants and commuters alike jumped metro turnstiles and refused to pay the fare. On Friday, October 18, a “mass evasion”  shut down Santiago’s metropolitan transit system during rush hour. Crowds began gathering across the city, and by nightfall, barricades guarded by singing revelers burned at every major intersection. Banks and government buildings were set ablaze, while supermarkets, WalMarts, and one sixth of all corporate owned pharmacies were looted. The country’s President at the time, Sebastián Piñera, held a press conference in which he declared a “state of emergency” in the city. Twenty-four hours later, tanks and Humvees patrolled Santiago, military curfews were enforced, and civil liberties were suspended for the first time since the Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990).

This inaugural wave of unrest was quickly countered by a series of political maneuvers that sought to channel the energy in the streets into institutional changes. By November 2019, the ruling conservative party and its opposition agreed to initiating a process that would lead to the drafting of a new constitution. 

Two years have since passed. The constitutional convention has begun to draft a new constitution, and Gabriel Boric, a leader from the 2011 university student movement turned congressional representative, now serves as Chile’s president. In the eyes of many who cleave to the normative framework of political conflict, this trajectory appears as a sorely needed process of social change. However, as Karmy’s meditations on the experiences and rhythms of October 2019 reveal, the most powerful elements of the revolt are often those least capable of being translated into institutional transformations.  

For Karmy, the date “October 18th” marks not simply a night of insurrection, but a fissure that split Chilean history open, like a short circuit that bridged the anger against the Pinochet Dictatorship, the 1990’s transition to democracy, and the present forms of technocratic governance. After decades of violent social control, forced disappearances, torture, and extrajudicial murder, the political reconciliation that announced the shift from dictatorship to parliamentary democracy was made possible by a series of agreements and accords between Pinochet’s administration, its political supporters, and its centrist and leftist opponents. This meant that throughout the 1990s, Pinochet remained a “senator for life” and the head of the Chilean military, while his 1981 constitution enshrining the Chicago boy’s neoliberal principles remained in place.

Although social democrats and progressives like to present the rampant inequalities and political restrictions that plague contemporary Chile as institutional hangovers from the dictatorship, the Chilean left has its own part to play in this history. As Karmy shows, their inability to break away from “the transitional episteme” has committed them to a pragmatic framework of political conflict, which prioritizes the restoration of a shared legitimacy and the practical matter of governability over all expressions of “popular,” i.e., everyday people’s concern for justice, dignity, and self-respect. If the revolt taught us anything, it’s that the real conflict is not between the camps of left and the right, but between an elitist framework for resolving questions of governance, and a Chilean people who no longer wish to be governed as a population whatsoever.

Whether or not the energy from October 2019 will succeed in breaking out of this transitional episteme remains to be seen. What limitations would need to be overcome, in order for this to happen? In Chile’s capital, it was the state of exception and the military in the streets that allowed the game of mass evasion to be transformed into a general revolt. Yet constitutional states of exception have been declared many times in Chile’s periphery in recent years, without the corresponding eruption of mass revolt. Mapuche communities in Southern Chile have been occupied by the Chilean military since September 2021, in response to an escalation in direct actions against the local elite complicit with extractive industries and ecological destruction earlier that year. In the desert regions along Chile’s northern border, the military has also been called on to police the crisis of mass undocumented immigration spurred by Venezuelans fleeing the economic crisis. This suggests, first, that our understanding of popular revolt must expand beyond the spectacle of urban riots and street demonstrations, to consider what revolt looks like in other territories. At the same time, the concept of “popular” revolt has often been hamstrung by its association with an idea of “the people” as the agent and actor of struggle, whether this be the Nation or various abstract “communities.” As Karmy shows, the protagonists of the Chilean revolt, at the moment they take to the streets, cannot be neatly subsumed under any such categories. In this way, his work not only allows us to see the limitations of the 2019-2021 wave of global uprisings, but also helps us identify potential connections with others struggles internationally that continue to confront similar obstacles. 

—Emilio Janequeo, Santiago de Chile, April 2022

October 18 [1]

Whatever happened to this date? Is it just a chronological date? Perhaps, a dislocated number that, while locating itself on a calendar, desperately flees from it. Its potency does not match its figure, its life with its letter. It explodes without referring to any leader, nor to any political party or partisan vanguard. Everything is much more precarious, but at the same time, more resistant, it can flee between the interstices of the city and permanently “evade” the “who” created by police dynamics. “Evade” designated the subtraction of the sensible life of bodies — what we will call “surface” — with respect to the governmental machinery of neoliberal reason.

As if a crack opened in the middle of the road, as if a historical continuum had stopped. The atmosphere normalized the presence of multiple sounds: sirens breaking the city buzz, helicopters machine-gunning the airspace, shots from various weapons filtering through diverse populations, never before images being monitored by images already frozen, songs — Víctor Jara ^[2] or Jorge González ^[3] — penetrating from other times to face a voracious repression; pots and pans biting into the night coming from dark windows and protesters defying the curfew with shouts and hand-to-hand combat against police or military uniforms.

Nights and days were not the same, but they were the same. A single day, hour or minute that condensed days and nights, days and nights as if there was no more difference between them. Other faces ravaged the mornings, other voices dictated the rhythm; the poor, the blind, those who had said “enough” to a life that promised nothing but debts, to an existence that had renounced all historicity, to an agony whose grief paralyzed bodies. The streets were invested with graffiti with which the crowd embraced the moment of their celebration. It all meant that the downward gaze in front of the boss could not carry on. The randomness of the clash was violent: the boss found the servant in the ferocity of a revolt, without the domestication he presupposed, without the ignorance he attributed to him, without the fear that he had instilled in him.

“No fear” is infinitely replicated on the walls of Chile. With no fear, but with rage: a whole generation that had been hardened by the silence of dictatorship imploded in the emergence of rage brought by their children. But anger not as a psychologically manageable emotion, but as a politically ungovernable affect. The entire transitional episteme was made for docile bodies. It was always a matter of modesty, of control, of learning not to demand beyond “what is possible” within a historical and political limit that became ontological. If not, the military could return or the businessmen could flee: fear provided the affective tonality to the transitional episteme. Sociologists, economists and politicians consolidated an upper echelons’ agreement around the prevalence of neoliberal reason. Everyone had to give in because everyone had to accept the established limit that was forged in the formula “as far as possible”. 

Those who raged during the dictatorship could faint in the desolation of democracy, those who fought during the dictatorship had to tame their spirits in the new transitional machinery. But injustice remained unredeemed. And it is that fissure that always challenged the transitional episteme that is actualized in the politicization of anger that ends up leading the Chilean government machine to bankruptcy.

Rage has been the ardor of an injustice that went beyond the psychological sphere captured by neoliberal confiscation and, like a blast crossing two eras at once, it left historicity in the hands of children: “He who doesn’t know about children, knows nothing of riots.” A revolt leads a people to experience its in-fancy, precisely, the inactuality with oneself, the strange thunder of its untimeliness. Usual spaces and times are shattered into a thousand pieces. And the revolt reminded us that the most decisive tremor, the adjustment with our historicity, is nothing more than a future that is inherited.

It is not a question of “future” as a horizon that owns a precise direction, but of a future in the sense of a disposition to the possibility of becoming others, in which a potency never rested on some trauma that could foreshadow it in some way, but always remained irreducible to the tricks of the law. It is a power that is nothing more than future and that only its clandestine transfer of the impersonality of a common can make it possible for bodies to know what it is that they are actually capable of. Because this potency is defined by its transmissibility and it becomes nothing more than an affirmation of life that escapes any suture provided by power. The future is inherited precisely because the bodies were able to “evade” the fear inoculated by the oligarchy during their years of dictatorship and in the convoluted transition.

The gaze of the former servant — like that passive “Indian” before the colonist — does not bow his head in front of power, but rather defies it and suffers the direct destruction of its eyes. The servant burns everything, launching himself in his martyrological potency for yesterday’s dead, for those who were defeated in the past. Rage burns everything on history’s pyre, without the authorization by the masters who once crushed the native, the worker, the student. In-fancy dislocating the civilized continuity between life and language to lead us to the cleft of popular imagination: the only barricade that connects bodies with surfaces, the new with the old, life with its forms.

The entire university apparatus, with its knowledge of order, believes that the revolt is a “social phenomenon.” A reduction to causalism by current sociology, when truly the revolt is a medium of common sensibility in which the spirits of the past embrace the incandescence of our present. Thousands of Chileans knew this when they sang “The right to live in peace” (El derecho de vivir en paz) by Victor Jara or “The dance of those left behind” (El baile de los que sobran). Uncle Ho, who fought against North American imperialism, became a surplus, a remnant, much like the municipalized students of the 1980s, ungovernable who transmitted potency from one moment to another, who inherited the future to those who could hear the intensity of their voice. That is why October 18 is not a date, but rather an artifact of spiritualism by which the defeated were able to “evade” the historical cruelty of the victors.

Revolt^[4]

One of the first days of protests I found myself at 11am in Plaza Italia. I was going to the demonstration called for 2pm, but decided to arrive earlier to get a feel for the atmosphere. After all, politics is always an atmospheric affair. I began walking from Plaza Italia towards the Andes, that is, towards the Salvador Metro station and the landscape was made up of the rubble after the battle. On Sunday, there was a large demonstration, and protests continued during the night, in the midst of the declaration of a curfew. There was the sour smell of tear gas along the road, burning the skin; burned plastic occasionally penetrated the urban ruin. Some shops were burnt, others were intact: The Gabriela Mistral Cultural Center (GAM) was intact, the Kentucky Fried Chicken branch was burnt; the theater of the University of Chile was intact, the branch of the Bank of Chile was completely burnt.

Popular violence is not a “Hobbesian violence”[5] but a violence interrupting capitalist symbolism. These are not vandals who simply destroy everything they touch, but molecular movements that, most of the time, direct their fury against the signs of power. But this does not mean, that once the revolt is in full swing, several criminal gangs will not penetrate the popular din to progressively restore exchange value from within, inoculating economy into what the revolt had made aneconomical. Precisely: every revolt runs at a loss. The aneconomy of the revolt interrupts “the normal flow” of the country’s capital, the institutions stop working, temporality is strongly suspended. The upsetting of reality, a necessary elixir of revolt, is a sign that a people has broken out as a revolt. 

Because no revolt carries with it the sign of purity. It is dirty, full of mixtures that flourish in the suspension of historical time it has opened. Every revolt fights against its own centrifugal forces, because its power is measured in the ability to remove sovereign violence that, however, tries to capture it permanently. For this reason, a revolt must bring into play an untimely relationship with the present. It never fits with itself because it wildly differs from itself. We cannot demand purity and hygiene from a revolt, because all dynamics oriented towards cleansing or purification symbolize the triumph of sacrificial or sovereign violence that the revolt is destituting. It is sacrifice that purifies, sacrifice that cleanses the world to slaughter the goats that crystallize the new evil on earth.

Sacrifice is precisely the weapon of all reactionary politics, waiting like a shadow within the state formula: “no people has ever doubted that there was an expiatory virtue in the effusion of blood,” wrote Joseph De Maistre in his Treatise on sacrifices.[6] Precisely because the violence of the revolt deposes the sacrificial dynamic, because in it the martyrological power is at stake, that is, the one that seals without blood the revocation of all sovereignty: “A political execution”, asserts Paul W. Kahn, “read as an act of martyrdom, proclaims the weakness, not the strength of the state.”[7] This is because martyrdom threatens to “expose the state and its claim to authority as nothing.” [8] Popular violence is martyrological in this sense: its potency destitutes [9] sovereign violence, exposing its weakness and dissolving its claim to authority as nothingness.

It does not destroy, but destitutes; it does not establish, but revokes. It breaks the subject supposed to know that has erected the discourse, making it fall like a mask, and it can do nothing but exercise sacrificial violence so as to restore order. All calls from the government and the occasional political actor to dialogue are based on the sacrificial fiction, in which all the agents in conflict get solved in the same general equivalent: police lives are as much of a victim of violence as those of citizens who have fallen under the military bullet or police hunt. The government’s discourse is sacrificial precisely when it condemns violence “wherever it comes from.” This sets it up to exercise the greatest violence of all — sovereign violence precisely — which is such because it can crush all the other types of violence that it considers simply sectorial.

But in addition, the sacrificial paradigm raised by the state discourse restores, in turn, capital, to the extent that it restores the equivalent codification that enables state violence to be reconciled in the same unit with the torn revolt of a citizenry out in the open. The martyr breaks sacrifice to the same extent that it exposes its nothingness. Could we say that the notion of sovereignty once proposed by philosopher Georges Bataille is that of a true and properly martyrological sovereignty inasmuch as it implodes the moment it is exercised? [10] And if this is so, would not the Schmittian conception of sovereignty be one that has not assumed the radical nature of its concept, that has never lived up to what it proclaims? [11]

In any case, the term “martyrdom” has had a bad name because, from my point of view, it has always been conceived under the sacrificial aura or, what is the same, it has always been represented from the point of view of the victors who appropriated its concept to capitalize on it in terms of the restitution of order. Using the well-known Benjaminian distinction between pure and mythical violence, I would like to differentiate martyrdom from sacrifice and maintain that the first refers to a popular violence of a redemptive and destituent nature that establishes or preserves nothing and, the latter is oligarchic violence oriented towards the establishment and preservation of order.

In this light, a revolt is martyrological and not sacrificial, and brings with it the courage of living labor in which the affirmation of a potency is played out, rather than the consolidation of power. Beyond the purification of liberal discourse that condemns all violence, wherever it comes from, thereby trying to exempt itself from sacrificial dynamics while reproducing them, it is necessary to vindicate the violence opened up by the revolt that, however, suspends the sacrificial violence that, time and again, does nothing more than exert its mythical death power. It is not a matter of aestheticizing it, but to assume the materiality with which it denounces the injustice of the current state of affairs, exposing sovereign power to the nakedness of its nothingness.

A revolt is never welcome. Crowds don’t know whether to laugh or cry in front of it. They don’t know if it happens for better or worse, precisely because it does not obey any telos or any guarantee to the extent that it exposes the fragility of our bodies before history’s elements. But a revolt never comes in a uniform shape or mode, but is always different, multiple and intense. It is also unpredictable. All efforts to identify its causes always come to a limit. Knowledge goes bankrupt. And suddenly, everyone remembers the thousand reports that kept on showing the misery of our conditions. But at such a moment, we wonder: if the conditions were already there, why did the fuse light at this moment? Why not before or after? Between the conditions and their outbreak, something key always takes place: a murder, an act of radical injustice against certain bodies, committed by the exercise of State violence.

In the Arab Spring, the immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi in front of the police station was the imaginal operator that triggered the revolt. In Chile on October 18, thousands of high school students who had evaded the Metro turnstiles were brutally repressed by the police force. Five days after the proclamation of the State of Constitutional Exception, accompanied a nightly curfew apparatus, national and international Human Rights organizations were counting the death toll by State agents as the fierce way in which sacrificial violence was being deployed in the streets of a flooded city.

The revolt breaks out in various ways, an organization can take over — such as the one articulated today by Unidad Social. Like the Unified National Leadership of the Uprising, which articulated a minimum organization during the 1987 Palestinian intifada, Unidad Social could also become an “agency” (a “support” according to Judith Butler) [12] born out of the revolt itself to keep its work alive and not to confiscate it in a dead and completely bankrupt representational apparatus. Because, in the midst of the bankruptcy of a state model violently implemented in 1973, we are witnessing a beginning. 

We do not know what will happen or how events will unfold. But in the face of the devastation wrought by the dictatorship and later by the transition, directing its efforts to separate bodies from their potency, lives from their images, in a neutralization process, the revolt restored their intensity. Faced with the neoliberal body confiscated by the company form — turned “to prey”, said Guadalupe Santa Cruz — the revolt restored a body potency. The fascination experienced by the participants in a political process such as this is entirely linked to the surprise that awaits the conscience — that poor counselor — of what a body can do, what bodies can do. Because the revolt throws us into this: a hand-to-hand combat.

We never imagined what our bodies could do, we were never aware of it. How could we be, if consciousness — that representational apparatus — does nothing more than instill fear in us and push us to calculate our every movement? The revolt is aneconomic precisely because it does not calculate and always runs at a loss. We have already lost comrades in struggle, eyes, academic calendars, international events (APEC-COP 25) and we will continue to lose. Everything has been suspended, then, as Furio Jesi saw: unlike a revolution, a revolt implies the “suspension of historical time.” [13] A suspension that brings with it a radical loss, an unconditional expenditure that is impossible to foresee, but also the opening of a beginning in which we can re-imagine another historical era. It is precisely that beginning that we must embrace today with all the forces of history. Without it, we will not only be left without a future or a past, but above all we will be stripped of the heat of a present.

Rodrigo Karmy Bolton’s The Future is Inherited is now available in English from les presses du réel

Images: Tomas Munita

Notes

1. First published in El Desconcierto on November 27, 2019. 

2. Victor Jara (1932-1973) was a Chilean theater director, actor, playwright and folklore researcher, but generally known as a singer-songwriter, who actively participated in the Popular Unity’s presidential campaign. He was arrested after the coup in 1973 and was sent to the “Estadio Chile” (currently called “Víctor Jara Stadium”) where he was tortured and killed by the military. One of his most relevant songs was “The right to live in peace”, which Jara wrote inspired by Ho Chi Min and the Vietnam War. This song was massively sung during the recent protests along the country. —Editorial note.

3. Jorge González was the leader of Los Prisioneros, one of the main musical bands in recent Chilean history. Formed during the 1980s, they became a critical voice to the political and social order established by the dictatorship. One of their key songs was “The dance of those left behind”, which was massively sung during the protests in Plaza Dignidad. —Editorial note.

4. Originally published in Ficción de la Razón on October 29, 2019, as part of the special dossier “Estado generales de emergencia” coordinated by Sergio Villalobos-Ruminott and Mauricio Amar.

5. José Joaquín Brunner. Democracia, violencia y perspectivas futuras. Online here.

6. Joseph De Maistre. Tratado sobre los sacrificios. México, Sexto Piso, 2009, 24-25.     

7. Walter Benjamin, “On the Critique of Violence.”  

8. Paul W. Kahn. El liberalismo en su lugar. Santiago, Universidad Diego Portales, 2018, 112. 

9. The English edition incorrectly renders “destitutes/destituent” throughout as “dismisses.” —Note added by Ill Will.↰

10. Georges Bataille. Lo que entiendo por soberanía. Buenos Aires, Paidós, 1996. 

11. Carl Schmitt. Teología política. Cuatro ensayos sobre el concepto de soberanía. Buenos Aires, Struhart y Cia., 2005. 

12. Judith Butler. Cuerpos aliados y lucha política. Hacia una teoría performativa de la asamblea. Buenos Aires, Paidós, 2017.

13. Furio Jesi. Spartakus. The Symbology of Revolt, Translated by Alberto Toscano, Seagull Books, Ch. 2. Online here. 

_______

SOURCE: IllWill

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As the omicron variant sweeps through American communities, many of our workplaces and institutions are grinding to a halt. With nurses, teachers and other essential workers getting ill or quarantining, we are facing disruptions at schools and in hospitals. Some employers are seeking stopgap measures, trying to hire rapidly to fill open jobs, begging for community volunteers to help keep things running and even lowering requirements for substitute teachers to get people into school buildings.

Can this be a moment for workers to demand more from shorthanded employers, whether that be higher pay, more remote work options, hazard bonuses or needed personal protective equipment to lower health risks? And how can gains gleaned in this moment be retained and even surpassed in a post-pandemic future?

Past labor shortages caused by extraordinary circumstances in other places may offer lessons. For example, in the aftermath of World War I and the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic, a labor shortage and strike movement in France created conditions for envisioning transformative change. French workers seized the opportunity to pressure employers as well as the state, ultimately succeeding in changing that nation’s labor code and inspiring a growing youth rebellion against work — led by a group of young veterans who called themselves “Surrealists” — that would aim at even more radical changes.

During World War I, France faced a labor shortage because of the mass mobilization of soldiers and the steep military and civilian death toll of the war. With a dearth of workers, France recruited and, in some cases, conscripted immigrant workers from the French colonies of Algeria and Morocco, Spain and elsewhere, who labored to support the war economy. But the onset of the influenza pandemic in 1918 exacerbated the labor shortage because of several conditions, including the large number of maimed veterans unable to work after the war, a low birthrate and the massive pandemic death toll.

To mitigate the labor shortfall and regulate wages, the French government accelerated the supervised immigration of mostly male workers from its empire and other nations, and, in some cases, it re-incentivized work for French women, even amid fears about declining natality.

Despite these efforts to reduce the labor shortage and keep wages artificially low during a period of rapidly rising postwar inflation, the shortfall of workers persisted. Perceiving an opportunity to gain leverage, workers organized and fought for a shorter workday and higher wages.

In a concentrated period between 1917 and 1920, French citizens ignited a protest movement in which millions of workers across sectors participated in organized and wildcat strikes, sabotage actions, walkouts, slowdowns and absenteeism.

As a result, the French labor force soon succeeded in winning a major demand: the enactment of the eight-hour workday by Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau in 1919. By comparison, it took the United States two more decades to institutionalize the eight-hour day and five-day workweek, with the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1940.

However, not all French workers were satisfied. Many employers refused to comply with the new eight-hour law, and as pandemic conditions waned and the labor shortage eased slightly in the mid-1920s, dissatisfaction remained palpable. Workers wanted higher wages (there was no legal minimum wage yet), the “English week” (Saturdays off, the precursor to the “weekend”) and improved conditions. Their struggle came to a head in 1936, when nationwide strikes resulted in the Matignon Agreements, which implemented significant wage increases, the 40-hour workweek and the country’s first paid holidays.

But some people had a radically different vision. In 1924, a group of young artists, writers and intellectuals, many of whom were veterans of the war, formed a cultural movement in Paris called “Surrealism,” soon declaring a “war on work” meant to battle wage-labor exploitation and what they viewed as the cult of the work ethic. In 1925, they emblazoned the cover of their journal “Surrealist Revolution” with a declaration of collective work refusal. In 1929, one member, André Thirion, penned “Down with Work!,” a powerful manifesto that echoed the 19th-century utopian socialist Charles Fourier in its demand for the essential human right to “refuse work” whenever desired.

Workers were badly needed in France’s postwar reconstruction, but the French Surrealists, most of whom were white men with some college education or professional training, attempted to abstain from further participation in what they saw as a corrupt system for workers across race and class sectors.

Disgusted by the nationalistic belligerence of wartime France that had resulted in mass death, they rallied behind the idea of a “big quit” — a radical refusal to participate in the French economy. Yet, instead of the temporary solution of voluntary unemployment, in which the worker bides time until finding a better job or higher wages, Surrealists proposed something more extreme: permanent strike.

The notion of permanent strike, or lifelong withdrawal from the workforce, meant a lifestyle of precarious labor, or what is known today as “gig work.” Their radical and utopian demand pushed up against the limits of the practical. Most Surrealists could not afford to live without earning income. Nevertheless, many deserted careers and, on principle, worked barely enough to survive. Whenever possible, Surrealists attempted to resist the allure of consumerism, believing that excessive consumption was the flip side of capitalism’s drive toward production.

For the Surrealists, the system of wage labor was historically linked to the violence of nationalism and imperialism. In 1925, they proclaimed, “We do not accept the laws of economy or exchange, we do not accept the slavery of work, and on an even wider scale we proclaim ourselves in revolt against history.”

The Surrealist goal of the permanent strike was not to pressure the boss, nor to instigate reforms, but to undermine the foundations of the capitalist nation-state altogether. This extreme position presaged (and, in some cases, influenced) the broader work refusal that characterized various youth and activist countercultures going forward in the 20th and 21st centuries — including beatniks, hippies, gutter punks, purportedly “lazy” millennials, today’s anti-work advocates and the current “lying flat” movement in China. If certain anti-work countercultures are primarily pursuing, in the words of 19th-century communist writer Paul Lafargue, “The Right to be Lazy,” the Surrealists were wage labor abolitionists who sought a utopian post-work system.

Today’s labor market differs from that of post-World War I France in almost every imaginable way, and the ongoing pandemic is playing a distinct role right now. Nevertheless, a comparison of our workforce shortages with those of a century ago is telling. The “Great Resignation” of 2021 has been likened to an “unofficial general strike.” For workers, at least, such frictional unemployment and aspirational job switching can be a good thing. Taking stock of the 1917-1920 French labor crisis and the Surrealist “war on work” provides a provocative example of how organized workers can escalate their advantage and bolster their morale during and after a shortage — and how oppositional countercultures can imagine a totally different future for workers.

______

Abigail Susik, who wrote this piece for the Washington Post, is an associate professor of art history at Willamette University and author of “Surrealist Sabotage and the War on Work.”

source: https://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/

READ ASLO

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The 23-year-old, who like every other protester in this article has been given a pseudonym for their safety, uses a shield fashioned from a SkyNet satellite dish for protection against rubber bullets. The activist also wears a yellow plastic hardhat and goggles to protect his eyes from tear gas and smoke.

 “We are frontliners. We know that we can be arrested or killed by live rounds when the soldiers shoot at us, but we have to protect our friends,” he said.

While the early street protests against the February 1 military takeover remained largely peaceful, attracting people from all strata of society, the police and army have violently broken up more recent demonstrations, killing more than 70 so far. This has whittled down protests to younger, more daring groups engaging in cat-and-mouse games with security forces: making tactical retreats and reassembling the moment forces move on. To avoid death, injury or arrest, they have had to quickly adopt new methods and tools.

Mayangone Township resident Ko Phyo Tin, 25, who joins the Kyun Taw protest group every day, uses a shield improvised from a piece of steel as protection against rubber bullets and live rounds, and dons a Chinese-made combat helmet.

“Most of us are using protective equipment made in China. We don’t trust its quality but we have no alternative,” he said, adding that the group would gladly accept donations of quality gas masks, hard hats and body armour.

Women have also taken up positions as “frontliners”, the protesters bearing the brunt of the police and army assaults and shielding those behind them. They include Ma Thu Thu, 23, a founder of a team of frontliners that operates in Hlaing and Kamaryut townships, where such groups proliferate.

Thu Thu said her team comprises a core group of more than 10 people that is supported by about another 50 volunteers, who have learned from the street tactics used in dissident movements overseas.

“I saw the protests in Hong Kong and they gave me ideas about how we could defend ourselves,” said Thu Thu, whose small frame belies a capacity to endure gruelling confrontations with security forces.

She has been protesting against military rule since February 6 and is increasingly convinced that the people need protection from the lethal force police and soldiers used against striking dockworkers in Mandalay on February 20, when security forces fired live rounds on a crowd of more than 1,000 demonstrators at a shipyard, killing two and injuring dozens.

On February 26, Thu Thu watched a violent crackdown by police on big crowds of protesters at the Myanigone and Hledan junctions in Yangon.

“Police opened fire to disperse protesters, who fled in chaos. Some were arrested. When I saw that, I thought we needed to be able to protect protesters during demonstrations planned for February 28, Milk Tea Alliance Day,” she said, referring to a loose alliance of pro-democracy movements in Thailand, Hong Kong, Taiwan and now Myanmar.

“I posted [these thoughts] on Facebook and one of my friends said she would donate 30 shields. I talked with some of my male friends and we decided to volunteer as frontliners,” she added.

“When we first started posting [about our plan], about a hundred people contacted us [wanting to join]. Members of our group are from many different townships in Yangon.”

Retaking the streets

On Milk Tea Alliance Day, the group had intended to use wooden shields to defend protesters at Hledan junction, but the police and army opened fire with rubber bullets and some live rounds before Thu Thu and her team arrived, killing two kill people.

Hearing this, they discussed whether to abandon their plan, knowing that their wooden shields weren’t bullet-proof, but they decided they had a duty to protect other protesters no matter what. They took their positions at the frontline and, fortunately, police did not open fire again that day at Hledan.

The next day, they turned to homemade remedies when tear gas was thrown at protesters on a section of Insein Road, near the Butaryone bus stop in Hlaing Township.

“[At first] we suffered a lot from the tear gas so we each carried with us a can of Coca-Cola, […] prepared bags of water and wore towels around our necks,” Thu Thu said, explaining that because “many gas masks on the market are useless against tear gas”, protesters learned to douse their faces with liquid or apply a wet towel instead.

“We also switched our wooden shields for steel shields,” she said, describing how the group created a front line of shield-carriers called the “Tank” group – a reference to a battle role taken in online smartphone game Mobile Legends, which is popular among youth across Southeast Asia.

Behind the Tank is a group charged with countering tear gas volleys, including by smothering the discharging cannisters with bags of water and soaked pieces of cloth, and in some cases by dousing the cannisters with a fire extinguisher.

The frontline groups also try to erect two makeshift barriers to separate security forces from protesters.

“We need two so that when police destroy the first we can fall back to the second,” Thu Thu said, adding that they had improvised the strategy themselves.

Despite the police and army’s use of brute force, she said experience had taught the protesters that they “needed brave people more than physically strong people” to serve on the front line.

“At first, we chose the physically strong, but when police started shooting, they ran away,” she said, laughing. “In our Tank group none of the men are taller than five feet eight inches.”

“When we end a day and both the frontline defenders and ordinary protesters are okay, we regard that as a victory,” Thu Thu said, adding that they found it hard to forgive themselves whenever a protester was hurt or arrested. “We think about it until late at night. Sometimes I cry.”

Frontliners told Frontier they are not scared of the police, but if soldiers are deployed, they flee.

“If it’s just tear gas, rubber bullets or stun grenades, we aren’t afraid. But we are afraid of real bullets. That’s why we switched to steel shields,” Thu Thu said, though conceded that even those may not protect them from live rounds. This was proved on March 11, when a protester in Yangon’s North Dagon Township died when a bullet penetrated his makeshift metal shield.

While the security forces have been unable to break the resolve of protest groups like Thu Thu’s, they have increasingly cleared them from the main roads and junctions and pushed them into residential lanes. This has allowed them to hide in the apartments of supportive residents during crackdowns, but it’s also put those residents and their homes in danger. On March 10, police in Sanchaung began raiding the apartments of people suspected of sheltering protesters.

Thu Thu said this risk to ordinary city residents made it more important for protesters to reoccupy the major roads.

“On March 1 and 2, we can say that we won; the protesters owned Insein Road,” she said, referring to the major thoroughfare. “But then police fired tear gas and bullets and destroyed our barricades, so people became too afraid to protest on the main roads.”

Some want to protest from what they think is the relative safety of their living rooms, Thu Thu said, but if they do that, “police will shoot into their homes”. That’s one reason she said she wants to see more people out on the streets.

“I believe that a revolution is not won without bloodshed, but as long as the protesters are on the streets, we will help to defend them,” she said, adding that frontliners are thinking hard about ways to offer more protection so that “the people have the courage to go back out”.

“If we do not get back on the main roads, we will lose,” she said. “There are about seven million people in Yangon; if they all take to the streets it will not be easy for the police to crack down on them.”

The frontliners know they are risking arrest, and even death. Thu Thu said she had told her friends, “If I die, please give everything I have to my parents.”

‘We know we are risking our lives’

Hlaing resident Ko Thiha, 22, is a frontliner active in his township. He wears a red flannel shirt and carries a steel shield that he hits with a short length of plastic pipe as he and other frontliners chant, “The revolution must win!”

He said the first time he served as a frontliner at the junctions of Baho and Hlaing River roads on March 2, he was both excited and scared. “Now, I am more confident,” he told Frontier three days later.“We ask the protesters to stay behind us and not be afraid because we will protect them from the riot police.”

When army units advance, he said, the instructions are different: “run”.

Thiha and his friends learned their tactics, including the use of metal shields, from watching other protest groups in Yangon. They’ve also drawn inspiration from the Hong Kong uprising, where protesters erected barricades, used homemade shields, wore hard hats and found inventive ways to neutralise tear gas cannisters.

But Thiha’s group has also claimed their own innovations. “We make the shields ourselves using polished steel, meaning we can also use them to reflect sunlight onto the eyes of police when they are advancing towards us,” he said proudly. “This was our idea.”

Thiha, who said he had also watched a documentary about the so-called Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine that began in November 2013 and took 91 days to overthrow an oppressive regime, said the steel shields only protected against rubber bullets that police use. “If soldiers are involved, we must run ­– they use live rounds,” he said.

He also acknowledged that his hard hat and cheap gas mask offer little protection against rubber bullets or tear gas at close range, but are still better than nothing.

“We know we’re risking our lives, but we must protect peaceful protesters. That’s why I decided to join the front line,” he said.

“They can arrest, injure or kill us, but if we get democracy, it all will have been worth it.”

___________

source+ more info: FRONTIER / Myanmar- Independent Journalism

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Originally published by Embat. Translated by Riot Turtle.

After the imprisonment of rapper Pablo Hasél for a song against the monarchy, after the violent repression of the protests against his imprisonment, after the totally unpunished demonstration of neo-Nazis in Madrid praising the Blue Division, after the unleashed police action in Linares, after months of curfew at nightfall while every morning we go to work in crammed buses and trains like anchovies or even after the haste to put the “Procés” prisoners [1] back in prison after the bad results for the regime in the Catalan elections, we are experiencing a new turn of events in the Spanish state.

ll of the above, and more, is related to the so-called “democratic normality”, or rather its non-existence. As indicated by the Vice President of the Government himself – the same one who commissioned the song by Hasél and then did not want to know anything about its legal repercussions – Spain is a low-intensity democracy. With all the above, we are moving towards converging not with the more advanced countries of Northern Europe, but rather with the countries in the East.

In less than a week the contradictions of the Spanish state have become evident. The biggest of all is that there is a government that claims to be left-wing and progressive and every day we have received information of the opposite. For example, its lack of decision or desire to protect those at the bottom, while submitting those at the top, or its cynicism in defending that nothing happens when Francoist declarations are signed in the army. It is made clear time and again that the Government has no power. Who has it then? It is a deep state that controls the drains. And from there it controls all the other levers: the army, the judiciary, the media, big business, politicians and the police. And of course, the monarchy. That is not missing.

The problem is not Hasél. It is a consequence of the problem. The real elephant in the room is that the Spanish state is in the hands of that deep state which is traversed by the same reactionary ideas of Francoism. The state is Francoism with a democratic veneer. And this cannot be changed by neither the PSOE nor Podemos no matter how many governments they might have.

The rise of the far-right in Spain means that somehow the flock of sheep has gotten out of control and it is time to call in the dogs. The Catalan national question of the last decade provoked the gradual appearance of this new political actor that dominates the country, the judiciary. This actor is in charge of legislating, expressing its opinion and clearly setting the political agenda of the state. And this actor is fed by the media bombardment with certain topics, in order to “educate” the population. They do so, for example, when they talk about lost eyes instead of mutilated ones, when they do not talk about the violence exercised by the State through the police or when they divert attention from the root of the problem by putting a perverse definition of civic behavior at the center of the debate. The institutions also feed this bombardment by proposing, as a matter of urgency, a reform of the criminal code that could have been done months ago, the removal of the Gag Law and a pardon for Hasel which, besides being late, is nothing more than a band-aid and not a solution.

This whole issue was well brought to light during autumn 2019, with the ruling of the Referendum. And it is now becoming clearer. Spanish judiciary does not care about the law, except to impose a way of life in accordance with their principles. There is no place for anything else.

Not to understand that in order to move forward we have to expose all this, is to continue playing the game of the post-Francoist state. Catalan politics are in such a situation. They understand how the state works, but then they call for order. They don’t want their barracks to burn down. Protests yes, but peaceful. Feminism yes, but without losing privileges. Anger yes, but contained. Four chants and then go home. Those who follow this logic do not aim to change anything, but to participate in the management of the current situation. To do nothing, as leftist politicians or catalanists would wish, is to allow situations like these to become normalized and to increase.

Anger and indignation appear as isolated outbreaks. When they are shared by the population, no manifesto is needed. All it takes is a burning container and thousands of people – not only in Catalonia but all over the country – get the message. Young people understand that we have to face this reality, young women no longer accept to stay in the rear guard. Not only for Pablo Hasél but for our future as free people.

So we must emphasize the messages that are being spread these days, because they erode the credibility of the state. And the most important message is the defense of liberties in the streets by any means necessary. The best of our people are at risk every night. And it is necessary that as a society we give them all our support in these days and those to come. It is necessary that we show our solidarity with those who have been arrested and injured.

We demand the release of Pablo, and of all political prisoners, the immediate release of all detainees, the dissolution of BRIMO [2] and the fall of the monarchy and the fascist state. Only from here, we can build something else.

Embat, February 18, 2021.

Notes

[1] The “Procés” prisoners are prisoners that are imprisoned because of their alleged involvement in the Catalan independent process.

[2] The BRIMO is a Mobile Brigade, the riot police of the Mossos d’Esquadra (Catalan Police).

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