“Revolution without borders” – Demonstration against the health pass (France)

This movement expresses itself with some virulence in France, and revolutionary militants try to infuse it with guidelines for a clear break with the capitalist order (like “Let’s fight exploitation and nationalism” or “The only perspective for a better life is the revolution!”) and thus they try to assume their tasks of direction. In Toulouse especially, comrades who organized a “revolutionary march” under the banner of “Revolution Without Borders” were physically attacked by a gang of a few dozen far-right activists. Although these comrades refuse to fall into the trap of anti-fascism, the opportunity was too good for all the local sectors of social democracy and leftism to cry wolf and try to sell us their adulterated ideological commodity for the thousandth time while spreading the motto “Toulouse Antifa!”

We therefore take advantage of the republication of several small contributions around these events to succinctly reaffirm our long-standing position on the question of fascism and antifascism, as well as the need to organize the self-defense of comrades and our struggles.

The critique of anti-fascism is fully a part of the global critique of the false bourgeois polarization of fascism versus anti-fascism, it should not be limited to the critique of frontism and activism, nor should it be separated from the totality of the anti-capitalist struggle. Fascism is not a third force; it is only one of the facets, one of daily manifestations among others of the State force. Historically, the proletariat has always had to confront these organs of the State which are the employers’ militias (Pinkerton in the US, networks close to the SAC, the OAS and Peugeot in France), the pistoleros in Spain during the years 1920s, the White Guards and Armies, the death squads (Triple A in Argentina, Honor of the Police in France, GAL and Guerrillas of Christ the King in Spain during the 1970s) or the Free Corps in Germany and Hungary in 1919. The proletariat also had to always arm itself consequently to defend itself from threats and attacks against its living conditions and against the organization of its struggle.

In this sense, it is necessary to clarify the real content of the action of proletarian groups which act as self-defense groups against the State which in this case takes the form of armed fascists often ready to kill, because the use of expressions like “anti-fascist struggle” can only reinforce the confusion. The polarization fascism versus antifascism has only served to lock up any revolutionary advance in the defense of a lesser evil and therefore of the existing order, by mobilizing the proletarians for the defense of the State, to prepare the warlike confrontation on a terrain which is not that of our class. It is a global vision of the phenomena and a historical critique of anti-fascism that allow us to consider quite correctly the example of the so-called “Spanish war”: the latter was not only in an eminently practical way the coffin of the militant proletariat in this region but it also ideologically prepared the whole class of the exploited to accept to become recruited in the generalized massacre that was the so-called “second world war”.

For decades, some militant sectors have been also defending a “revolutionary antifascism”, considering that “genuine antifascism” should not only focus on the disappearance of fascists from the surface of the Earth, but should also strengthen the (revolutionary) change in society, a change that allows to get rid of the reasons why fascism appears, in opposition to what is called “democratic antifascism” that “comes from citizens’ initiatives” and that “paradoxically only helps fascism”. Obviously, even if some formulations are still ambiguous, there is a certain will to clarify things.

Nevertheless, we consider that it is somewhat counterproductive to want absolutely to “revolutionize” what is blatantly and fully counter-revolutionary from the outset: it is just as absurd to “revolutionize” anti-fascism as it is to “revolutionize” syndicalism or parliamentarianism. Following the lessons drawn by many militants, groups, collectives, parties…, we point out that the need for our class and its revolutionary minorities to organize against “fascist militias” can in no way correspond to any adherence (and even less in a structuring manner!) to anti-fascist ideology (which has already proven its harmfulness in history) but to a need for self-defense in their struggle as a minority to affirm their means of existence quite simply.

Let’s remember this essential lesson that the entire history of the workers’ movement has taught us for a hundred years: whether fascist or anti-fascist, democracy is always the dictatorship of Capital![/b]

May Capital and its democracy die, as well as its fascists and anti-fascists!

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Small clarification about FAFWATCH’s article
Published on September 15, 2021

A text that ignores the revolutionary perspective of the march in order to hide behind a “pacifist and democratic” strategy. The exact opposite of what was carried by the revolutionary march attacked by the fascists.

Fafwatch’s text about the attack on the demonstration (to be found here [in French] https://iaata.info/Toulouse-attaque-fasciste-contre-la-manifestation-anti-pass-sanitaire-4931.html) is in turn an attack against the position that the revolutionary march tried to carry in the demonstration.

In this respect, it is not insignificant to see that the revolutionary march against exploitation and nationalism has become merely, once it had been put through the wringer of the innocentist antifascism of this text, a march against exploitation and nationalism.

So it is not surprising to see the text hiding behind the defense of a “democratic and pacifist” demonstration. Basically: innocent pacifist citizens exercising their right to demonstrate were attacked. The position of exteriority of this text is obvious here. Whereas the revolutionary march assumes itself as a part of the demonstration, while taking sides for a revolutionary future, against the interclassist, citizenist, legalist and democratist tendencies, but also confusionist and nationalist ones, Fafwatch posits antifascism as a kind of bunch of vigilantes external to the struggle, which stands up for innocent citizens. A militia that defends the inoffensiveness of the movement is not revolutionary at all (euphemism).

And by the way, a real job of investigation and snitching is made from the images of the scene to establish the responsibilities, a real work of cops! Who cares to bring the evidence, with three pictures, about who carried the bag with their gear? Or if the act was premeditated? If not in the hope that the cops will seize these images to arrest them? Moreover, the call for the State to try and convict these fascist groups is clear in this text.

The revolutionary perspective is in fact swept away by this text in favor of an innocentist denunciation in due form.

And the text is nearly ending with the importance of going to vote in the next elections in order to counter the far right (because the fascists will “put a brown ballot in the box next May”).

So let’s recall what the banner attacked was saying: Down with the State, the cops and the bosses. Revolution without borders.

Defending the status quo of an inoffensive, democratic and pacifist demonstration plays indeed into the hands of tendencies that pave the way for these fascists. See the text published on iaata here [in French and English]:

https://iaata.info/Cortege-revolution-sans-frontiere-Manif-contre-le-pass-sanitaire-4927.html

Source in French: https://iaata.info/Petite-mise-au-point-a-propos-de-l-article-de-FAFWATCH-4932.html
English translation: The Friends of the Class War

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“Revolution without borders” – Demonstration against the health pass

This text was written by people who participated in a revolutionary march during the demonstration against the health pass, Saturday 11.09.[2021, in Toulouse].

Why a revolutionary march?
We wanted to hold a revolutionary march to defend an orientation: the one that links the demonstrations against the health pass to the uprising of the Gilets Jaunes and more widely to the great wave of revolt that has been shaking the world since then.

Why “Revolution without borders”?
We wanted to insist on the borderless character of the revolution, because we know well that the attacks against the exploited, the policing which generalizes, may take different forms according to the countries but follow globally the same approach: to crush the proles, to divide us in order to better exploit us.

Some political tendencies would like to make a clean sweep of the practices and struggles of these last years.
They try to limit the protest to authorized spaces and reduce the struggle to partial demands, such as the freedom to consume without a pass, while more and more factions of the population simply do not have the financial possibility to consume.

The hostility of these tendencies to take the revolutionary path opened by the GJ, whereas they favor the status quo or the reaction, this is what gave confidence to the fascist groups. The latter that attacked the revolutionary and gilet jaune march counted on a lack of solidarity from the rest of the demonstration. But the demonstrators didn’t hear it that way and together the demonstration cleared the fascists, before the cops gassed the whole place.

And now?
We reiterate our opposition to the social control embodied by the health pass, and especially to the deterioration of our living conditions, to the layoffs and dismissals that are coming!

Long live the revolution without borders
Let’s build the solidarity of all the exploited

Source in French: https://iaata.info/Cortege-revolution-sans-frontiere-Manif-contre-le-pass-sanitaire-4927.html
PDF in French: https://iaata.info/IMG/pdf/sans_titre-3.pdf
English translation: The Friends of the Class War

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LET’S FIGHT EXPLOITATION AND NATIONALISM

Leaflet found during the demonstration against the health pass in Toulouse on September 4, 2021 and published by Détruisons l’économie.

With the introduction of the Health Pass and the measures that accompany it, the State is once again applying the same strategy it has used since the beginning of the Covid epidemic: strengthening social control, setting people against each other, this time those who have the pass against those who do not.

The quarrels between vaccinated and non-vaccinated make any solidarity between the exploited more complicated and prevent them to identify what causes the successive crises we are living: i.e. it is the capitalist system and not a colleague, a neighbor, a friend…

On the other hand, they want to accustom us to submit to ever more regular controls. Police powers are strengthened, identity checks are generalized, and they are subcontracted to an ever increasing part of the population. Not surprisingly, it is thanks to the support of technology that this policing takes place.

The already harsh living conditions of undocumented migrants will be even worse. On the other hand, commodities, various international traders and tourists from the richest countries will continue to move from one country to another without difficulty, while people who do not have the right documents will have more and more trouble at the borders and while travelling.

It is against this dynamic of accelerating social control that we intend to fight.

If we fight against the pass, it is not because we are opposed to vaccination, but against capitalism and the different tools it uses to maintain itself, contrary to certain components of the movement that are there for reasons antagonistic to ours: the far right has always been opposed to the overthrow of the system.

It has always ensured maintenance of the established order, of bourgeois morality, cloistered behind the borders that it defends at all costs. The designation of scapegoats has always been part of its practices. They are nothing but scavengers, who want to strengthen themselves through this movement to establish an even more authoritarian society.

Faced with the health pass, faced with the deterioration of our living conditions that the economic crisis will bring, faced with the layoffs that are sure to happen, faced with the reform of unemployment or pensions, rather than being complacent with the far right:

THE ONLY PERSPECTIVE FOR A BETTER LIFE IS THE REVOLUTION!

Source in French: https://twitter.com/bk122LR/status/1435681863037820929/
English translation: The Friends of the Class War