Tag: news

[Mauvais Sang] Gen Z storms Marineford!

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Reproduced via Tridni Valka – Source in French: https://mauvaissang.noblogs.org/post/2025/10/28/la-gen-z-a-lassaut-de-marineford/

Nepal, Morocco, Madagascar, Indonesia, Peru… In recent months and weeks, massive demonstrations, riots, and even regime changes have taken place in various countries around the world, breathing new life into our most fervent hopes!

In Indonesia, growing outrage over the privileges enjoyed by the elite against a backdrop of austerity reached a tipping point when, on August 28, police killed a young man during a protest in Jakarta and then, on August 31, when videos showing parliamentarians dancing after receiving an indecent housing allowance were made public. In the weeks that followed, riots swept across the country, led by the slogan “Indonesia Gelap, Revolusi Dimulai” (“Indonesia is dark, we are starting the revolution”). Regional parliaments were set on fire and ministers’ residences were looted. The terrible repression, which mobilized the police and army, and led to dozens of deaths and disappearances, has achieved its goal of intimidation since… The movement was also unique in that its symbol was the flag of One Piece, a manga about pirates and their thirst for freedom, a symbol that was later taken up in Nepal, Madagascar, and Peru.

In Nepal, the movement, which initially denounced nepotism and the privileges of the ruling caste, was destructive. On September 9, after weeks of clashes in Kathmandu that left more than 70 people dead, protesters stormed the Parliament and the residences of several members of the government, including the Prime Minister’s one, and burned them to the ground! Because you never stop when you’re on a roll, the headquarters of the Communist Party of Nepal (Marxist-Leninist, the ruling party), the CPN (the Maoist opposition, which called on protesters to remain peaceful), and the Nepali Congress were vandalized by rioters, and the Kailali district prison was attacked and set on fire, allowing all prisoners to regain their freedom!

In Morocco, it was the death of eight women after giving birth by Caesarean section in Agadir due to the lack of resources in the Moroccan health sector that sparked the unrest. From the very first days of the protests, the authorities cracked down by arresting or beating up massively the protesters, but the rebels continued to pour into the streets.

Recently, the GenZ 212 collective, one of the movement’s faces, announced that the protests did not challenge the foundations of the royal authority, that they must remain peaceful, and that calls for action would be temporarily suspended following King Mohammed VI’s promises of reform (even though, at the same time, the justice system was handing down sentences of several years in prison to many protesters).

We won’t fall into that trap! The young Moroccans who took to the streets, set them ablaze, destroyed police stations, were shot while trying to storm police stations to seize weapons and ammunition, and injured more than 300 police officers were anything but peaceful and certainly did not have improving public services in mind!

In Madagascar, the demonstrations and calls for strikes began as a result of exasperation caused by water and electricity cuts imposed on the population and they spread to a widespread challenge to the ruling power, while the island is experiencing massive poverty. The authorities reacted as they know so well how to do: tear gas, beatings up, live ammunition… In the days that followed, despite the deaths and the curfew, the movement intensified and massive looting broke out: supermarkets, shops, banks, hotels… everything was targeted, despite calls for calm from democrats!

In Peru, it is also a widespread system of corruption among those in power and new pension reforms that are being denounced, mainly by students. In Lima, demonstrations punctuated by violent clashes with the police, Molotov cocktails, and attempts to storm the Congress have been repeated in recent weeks. On October 10, President Dina Boluarte was removed from office, which is “only one step” according to many of the rebels.

While the explicit demands of these movements refer to social justice, the fight against corruption, or against the mismanagement of public services, we can only see in all these protests a widespread challenging of the living conditions imposed on the exploited of this world. Everywhere, what is being attacked is the State and its bureaucracy, as well as the political class (even those who historically claim to be “revolutionary”, such as the Stalinist substitutes of the various Communist Parties, as in Nepal). What is being attacked is the bourgeoisie that is getting rich on the backs of the exploited. What is being attacked is the misery caused by pitiful wages or forced unemployment, the restrictions and lack of resources, the cops who protect the exploiters with batons and guns, the lack of future prospects in this shitty world.

We can also detect an anti-political force that partly underlies these demonstrations. In several of these movements, as in Nepal, it was the world of politicians in general, of all political persuasions, that was attacked for a time. It was the widespread enrichment of all the bourgeois and leaders that was called into question, as evidenced by the attacks on Parliament and the homes of parliamentarians. However, we can see that the siren calls of democracy and their endless promises of reform, appeasement, and judicial repression of former decision-makers are, unfortunately, still working just as well as ever. In Nepal, a new Prime Minister was chosen on Discord (which had been a decisive tool in the movement) after the fall of the government; in Morocco, the reforms promised by the king put the movement on hold; in Indonesia, the movement has ended while waiting for the promised changes; in Madagascar, a technocrat has been appointed Prime Minister; and in Peru, the opposition has taken advantage of the situation to remove the president from office, surely waiting to take her place and rule in turn…

Capitalism and the State, like snakes that shed their skin but never die, know how to constantly reinvent themselves in order to recuperate the most fervent hopes and integrate them. We must at all costs ask ourselves why and how democracy so easily co-opt revolts that are so offensive in material terms and can restore another authority that will change nothing.

Incidentally, it is surprising that in France, there is more interest in careerist deputies on show in the media than in people who attack their own deputies.

From Indonesia and Nepal to everywhere else, long live the revolt against the old world!

English translation: The Friends of the Class War

The Downfall of a Right Charlie

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Hyperbole around the assassination of the right wing Christian fundamentalist agitator Charlie James Kirk has made the removal of a footnote to the current populist chaos seem bigger than the sum of its parts.  Perhaps in an embryonic form, this demonstrates the endemic unease about the ripples across our current social fabric.

As if waiting for the brink of some fascist apocalypse, this has been widely described as a “Reichstag” moment – a reference to the murky ignition of the German parliament building in 1933 that acted as the pretext for the Nazis rolling out the seizure of power via democratic Parliamentary instruments.

The rest, as they say being history.  In this case, there is no replay.  This is now and the lessons are not the product of cosplay voyeurism but a pulsing Zeitgeist cautionary tale.  Whatever the motivation turns out to be, it inevitably feeds into the right’s strategy of tension to divide and rule.

The myth about Kirk at the moment is that he was speaking his beliefs and martyred on the crucible of free speech for doing so.  This fascist fantasy / liberal apologia is not the case, though it uncomfortably demonstrates the uneasy alliance between these two capitalist expressions.

He’s been speaking his beliefs for 13 years.  A juvenile debating school tirade of misogyny, racism, xenophobia and toxic masculinity masquerading as speaking truth to power.  His targets, as those of the ideological populist Right he represents, are the most marginalised, excluded and vulnerable in US society.  The diasporas of an atomised working class. 

His hate speech has moved beyond the expression of his belief.  Recently he’s been articulating, validating and fuelling the policy of social violence against minorities currently being enacted in the United States.

This makes Kirk not a dystopian visionary to disagree with, but a fascist street fighter.  Trump’s Horst Wessel, an extinguished nazi thug lionised to inspire others. 

His death’s utility to the reactionary project has been used with immediate effect – despite the lack of clarity re. motivation.  His image used as a central rallying theme to Stephen Yaxley-Lennon’s “Unite  the Kingdom” mobilisation of the right, the ignorant and the inarticulately frustrated on the streets of London.

Alarmingly attracting in excess of 100,000 people, most feeling understandably a great sense of disenfranchisement in the current era, they were addressed and incited by the world’s richest man, multi billionaire Elon Musk.

Channeling a chilling message through the convicted violent thug convening the rally, Musk said:  “Whether you choose violence or not, violence is coming to you…you either fight back or you die.”  A warning perhaps to the meagre 5,000 to 10,000 counter demonstrators from ‘Stand Up to Racism’.

And where is the Labour government’s real anxiety about this demonstration? Where do they stand on the assault on minorities and the dispossessed? Why is it that they felt it necessary to deploy new dystopian facial recognition technology for the Notting Hill Carnival yet not for the largest far right demonstration in British history?

The liberals and their Trotskyoid-Leninite allies in Stand up to Racism want you to think this is a choice between totalitarianism and democracy.  Your rights versus ‘their’ dictatorship.  This is a lie.  Liberal democracy took us to war and both want to crush us for power and profit.  Two cheeks of the same arse!

Liberalism like Fascism wants and needs capitalism, having throughout history betrayed the working class if capitalism was under threat, (from Spain 1936 to the other 9/11 – the anniversary of Pinochet’s US sponsored militarised junta/fascist coup in Chile 1973, for example).

It is not the fascists (yet) locking us up for protesting genocide and their warfare state but a Labour government.  This, the party of partition, strike breaking, numerous regressive immigration acts and the atom bomb.  Our enemy and our focus is capital and state in all their forms and their relentless drive to war, be the general’s democrats or fascists.

The rise of the right at the moment measures the scale of the challenge to a weakened and as yet, fragmented working class.  A weakness used for exploiting and manipulating fear and insecurity to preserve the agenda of the warfare state and its lust for profit. 

Ultimately, only class unity through class struggle can put an end to the abuse of the far right and our inevitable annihilation at the hands of the warfare state – whatever its political hue.

While we may at times have nostalgia for the days gone by when generals, presidents, Kings and Parliaments would genuinely fear the retribution of ardent members of our class, the actions of one cannot replace the action of us all.

As revolutionists we know that demonstrative acts of propaganda by deed are no substitute for the mass action of a revolutionary working class.   Changing the faces of the tyranny in power changes nothing and can easily reduce us to mere onlookers and passivity.  Yet that does not mean that we hypocritically condemn. 

We don’t slate our class; those exploited, repressed and now sometimes seriously living in fear of being targeted by violent nativist xenophobes, if they raise a smile when they see it as one of the bastards getting it.  For whatever reason transpires.

Article by Dreyfus

Health poverty is the challenge; Labour is the disability!

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‘Two-Tier Kier’ is no longer a smear following the compromise made with his back benchers to only do over one section of disabled people in the UK.

Like some inverse promo for loan deals or Internet packages, the government will lay off existing disability claims in exchange for duffing up people with the new ones.    ‘Get it while it lasts – new customers only.’  *Although a relevant change of circumstances such as a change in your condition classes you as a “new claim” and therefore under the new rules.

Despite it being only five years since the worst global pandemic in a century affected half the UK population killing quarter of 1 million, the government proclaimed its surprise that the numbers of people with long-term health issues have increased at all since 2020. Another example of them paying zero attention to people they would rather clap than pay during the pandemic.

That fatigue, respiratory issues and depression are running riot apparently has no link to what an ill-prepared society and our class had to survive under their watch. 

That the scale of benefits is so high, if nothing else, tells us what an unhealthy ‘shitpit’ surviving capitalism is. Ironically, maybe only a Labour government masquerading as the people’s friend could carry out such an assault on such vulnerable groups and hope to get away with it.

The financial reasoning of such decisions is of no interest to us as revolutionists. The well-being of our class versus the protection of the interests of the rich and their wars is always a political decision and, as such, we find no justification ever in the latter outcome. Democracy serves us no better than dictatorship on this.

It is however another irony that a decision driven by the desire to send us to war and increase the manufacture of disability is to be funded by the starving of the existing disabled communities.

We saw such a strategy fail already in the plan to cut winter fuel payments.  While at first glance significantly different demographics, there are some striking similarities: Both ‘passive’ recipients of hard fought for state benefits – though now deemed less entitled; both largely seen as passive politically – physically limited and without economic muscle.  Consequently, both are not just seen as vulnerable but beatable. 

What the state failed to notice is that elder people and people with disabilities are not discreet entities like trans people, migrants, or asylum seekers, but diversely dispersed throughout every house and community in the country. Embedded enough for every sinew of our class to scream no!

That such opposition to injustice can be seen and shared on such a widespread level needs extension to those truly vulnerable communities made invisible by prejudice. The lesson of the response to disability and the elder community should be extended to every section of our class because we are all targets for elimination to facilitate and finance the coming war.

Division is diversion! Labour didn’t invent that.  The state requires all its political representatives to divide our class in whatever way it can to divert us from seeing the importance of our unity in our struggle against it. 

At times it tries to get us to participate in this by ‘othering’ the other dispossessed of our class, on race, gender, origin, sexuality etc.  Each time we fall for this ruse we widen the opening of the avenue of attack back to the main targets of class and vulnerability in all its diverse forms again. 

Racism breeds attack on disability, disability discrimination breeds attack on our class made workless by capitalism, et cetera.  The cycle of division and defeat begins and ends with the ‘isms’ and the targeting of difference.

The partial defeat of Labour in power was led by activist mobilisation and opposition of our class. The scale was small but indicative of potential. To upscale we need to link struggles of one community with another and identify the ultimate challenges that confront us – growing austerity and impoverishment to meet the war aims of the state’s imperial ambition. 

Hunger and austerity are about war and our opposition must oppose war with the energy it refuses division and poverty.  Resistance, survival and victory are both the right and obligation of our class.  It is our necessity not just to survive from day to day but to abolish an economic class system that offers us no better way of survival. 

The class struggle is the peace movement, and victory on the Homefront is its defeat of their plans for war!

Article by Dreyfus

ANTI-WAR PROTESTS IN ISRAEL AND GAZA

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Despite chauvinistic sentiments in Israeli and Palestinian societies,
not everyone on both sides of the front lines agrees with the war that
began with the brutal attack by Hamas clerical fascists on October 7.
Demonstrations are taking place in Israel and Gaza demanding an
immediate ceasefire and holding to account the ruling circles on both
sides responsible for escalating the conflict.

Already on October 14, voices were raised in Tel Aviv in solidarity with
Israeli hostages taken by Hamas, demanding the resignation of Prime
Minister Netanyahu. He is accused that his policies have actually
strengthened Hamas in opposition to Palestinian Authority circles
willing to seek compromise and coexistence with Israel. The very next
day, the government introduced measures authorizing the arrest of those
who harm the “spirit of the nation.” After an anti-war demonstration in
Haifa, the police chief threatened to send protesters to Gaza on October
19. Despite repression and terror by the far-right, a protest was staged
outside the Israeli prime minister’s residence on November 4. On
November 8, Israel’s Supreme Court authorized police to disperse
anti-war rallies. Nevertheless, on November 18, the first legal
demonstration against the war was held in Tel Aviv. A week later, on
November 25, demonstrators gathered in Jerusalem, demanding the prime
minister’s resignation. The following actions were met with police
repression: on November 29, protesters were arrested outside the
parliament, and on December 2 – outside the prime minister’s house in
Caesarea. On December 16, protesters camped outside the Israeli War
Ministry.

(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel-Hamas_war_protests [4])

On December 28, Israeli Jews and Arabs demonstrated together in Tel Aviv
to demand a ceasefire. However, scheduled protest marches for
Israeli-Palestinian peace in Tel Aviv on January 11 and in Haifa on
January 13 were banned by the police.

(https://www.timesofisrael.com/police-deny-permit-for-anti-war-protest-left-wing-groups-vow-high-court-appeal/)


But a demonstration in Haifa followed on January 20. Protesters chanted:
“Refuse to kill, refuse to fight, refuse to murder!”

(https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2024/1/20/refuse-to-fight-jewish-arab-activists-call-for-peace-in-israels-haifa)


The first protests against the Hamas regime in Gaza since the beginning
of the war were reported back in the fall, but it was difficult to
confirm this information, and the videos circulating on the Internet at
the time were from before the war began.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1OaYZO-aWs)

However, there were periodic reports of “hunger riots” in Gaza – attacks
on warehouses and food convoys. Now, in January 2024, there is finally
evidence of major protests in Gaza against the war with Israel and
against the clerical-fascist dictatorship, which, with its bloody
provocation on October 7, exposed civilians in the Strip to bombing and
fighting. For several days in January, hundreds of residents took to the
streets. On January 25, they marched through the Khan Younis
humanitarian corridor, chanting, “Down with Hamas!” “The people want a
ceasefire! Netanyahu and Sinwar, we want a ceasefire. Enough with war
and enough with the destruction!”, – could be heard over loudspeakers.
The day before, a video of a protest by Gaza youth in front of a
hospital in Deir el-Balah went around. Participants demanded that Hamas
release Israeli hostages and end the war so that they could return to
their homes in the northern sector.

(https://www.msn.com/de-de/nachrichten/welt/gazastreifen-hunderte-palästinenser-protestieren-gegen-die-hamas/ar-BB1hnNYd

Post Office Scandal – 1st Class Capitalism

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What has Government ever done for you? – The Bloody Sunday scandal; the Windrush scandal; the Hillsborough scandal; the Infected Blood scandal: the Iraq War scandal; the Grenfell Scandal; the Covid disaster scandal…  Liz Truss!

And now the Post Office Scandal.

Tragically it took a representation of real life through TV drama to bring a longstanding injustice to public awareness.  But it did, and its power is both intrinsic and resonant.  We have seen it all before.

The current focus and justified anger in the UK over the scandalous prosecution by the Post Office of over 700 sub-postmasters over a 20 year period reveals an inconvenient truth.  That the modern State in all its forms is a bastard of capitalism!

Perverting the course of justice; bullying and abuse of workers; implications of perjury; the alleged lying to the accused; the relentlessness of pursuit, the suppression of evidence and silencing of those who raised their voices was done by a nationally owned institution that once rivalled the NHS in prestige and affection.  In “Mafia” style.

The public ownership of the nationalised Postal Service has not prevented It from acting as a persecuting agent of state and government interests with the tenacity of an East European secret police.  A business like any other.

The experiences of corporate bullying and injustice will be very familiar to those working in much of the private sector, assumed to be the poorer employer in terms of quality of work experience than the nationalised sector.  What shocks many is the exposure of the myth of the state as a benign controller of capital.

The reality is that nothing about capitalism is benign.  Wage labour always exploits as it never pays us for the true value of the product of our labour. Every employer (bar perhaps the smallest inspirational charitable enterprises) has a boss or hierarchical management that mimics the state without its democratic pretensions.

Even Local Authorities, and the worthiest of charitable Human Rights enterprises see themselves as businesses, with what used to be collaborative personnel sections reconfigured as ‘HR Business Partners’.  Standing not for Human Rights but an Orwellian dehumanising concept of ‘Human Resources’ – serving the corporate structure not the individual or collective. 

Millions of us workers, at home and abroad, witnessed the tooth and claw nature of employment in its totally holy alliance with state and capital as we recently struggled, or continue to, against war driven austerity. 

(Never austere for war though, there’s always enough money for that as they bomb Yemen and hand another £2.5 billion pounds for Ukraine to buy British weapons.)

Whoever controls capital, individual rich exploiters, carpet bagging hedge funders or the powermongers behind state nationalisation, it remains what it is – Capitalism!

State Capitalism and Private Capitalism are two cheeks of the same oppressive arse that needs a damn good kicking!  The whole rotten collaborative structure of government, exploiters, their lackeys and minions needs tearing down.  That will end their austerity and their wars.

We know and feel we have to fight back.  Our lives depend on it.  Millions of us want to, and the workers at the Post Office might not even be at the front or the queue!

Article by Drefuss

Israel and Anti-Militarism

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Murderous conflicts occurring through the system of capital and state continue, intensify and now threaten to engulf entire regions.  Both the wars in Eastern Europe and the Middle East drag on into another year and become increasingly barbarous.  Starvation, mass killings, ethnic cleansing, kidnappings, humiliation and torture are clearly encouraged by the powers that be.  The war in the Middle East, as well as in Eastern Europe, increasingly involves power and imperial blocs taking up their battle positions. This, despite the war focused on Gaza supposedly being “over by Christmas” (how many times have we heard that before?)!

As such, effective resistance often demands great bravery on the part of members of our class, their companions, supporters and friends.  In this context, a number of us now know the names, Tal Mitnick and Yuval Dag. 

Tal Mitnick is an 18-year-old vocal member of ‘Mesarvot’ (‘We Refuse’), which numbers a few hundred.  Tal became the first open objector to serving in the IDF since the start of the current conflict and cited his opposition to the attacks upon the collective population of Gaza as a reason.  For Tal considers the attacks, a “murderous revenge”, that does nothing to address the root cause of the conflict. 

Meanwhile, Yuval Dag is a 21-year-old who served 64 days in Neve Tzedek military prison in Tel Aviv last Spring.  He was supported as a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International and has if anything, become increasing vocal in his criticism of the situation throughout the Middle East and in Gaza and the West Bank, in particular, since then.

In Israel, military conscription is mandatory and is seen as, “defining you as a somebody in Israeli society”.   There is also a saying that, “a nation building an army is a nation building itself”.  This lays bare the shared roots of nationalism and militarism, as part of the cancerous ethos of state and capital. 

Dissent in Israel does have quite a lengthy tradition.  However, outside of the ruling class, nationalist religious zealots, and their supporters (who often get a pass on risking their necks), people there trying to avoid military service lately face massive obstacles and are at the least pressurised to keep quiet – or else! For in the wake of the attacks of 7th October last year, the state in Israel and unfortunately among a substantial part of the wider society, has been engaging in a bitter offensive against any who dare to even think about resisting the cry to take up the fight for nation, religion, and the exploitative and oppressive current system.  This reflects a call by the master class that increasingly imperils our class and humanity itself.

It is likely then that for such reasons, reports of actual open opposition to the draft in Israel during the Gaza war have not been noted or publicised until very recently.  However, in the last month, pieces on Mitnick, Dag, their friends and supporters have appeared.  Of note too, these reports describe their increasingly determined stance, where they have made comments strongly alluding to the importance of internationalism among our class.  Mitnick has appeared in embracing both radical anti-authoritarian and anti-militarist perspectives.

The bravery of these people in doing this is laid bare by the fact that Mitnick faces at least 30 days (and likely substantially longer) in jail after being sentenced in late December 2023, and will no doubt be bitterly ostracised when is freed.  Meanwhile, Dag, though being imprisoned last year and from a nationalist family, has not kept quiet, and vocally supports Mitnick and fellow conscious workers for their anti-militarism.  There are others starting to do the same.

The names of those openly resisting is now increasing.  Sofia Orr (18 yrs old) and Iddo Elam (17 and also from the ‘Mesarvot’ group) have gone public in stating their opposition to being drafted (the former in the face of being ‘called up’ next month). All have described the importance of having a network of friends and supporters around them, now more than ever. 

Iddo has stated that “one massacre doesn’t justify another” and then gone on to say that they are now steadfast in their “rejection of the entire current system”.  Iddo and Sofia fear both for their friend Tal in prison and of the same fate whilst receiving death threats awaiting themselves.  However, being members of a group showing solidarity with each other has galvanised their collective determination.

Their numbers may appear still relatively few as yet, but they could increase notably further as the murderous battles continue, the reality of the current system perhaps becomes transparent to many more and if the internationalist word spreads.  Importantly, as noted above, some appear to be starting to embrace a class struggle, emancipatory position, as opposed to a liberal pacifist one.  It is greatly encouraging to see that revolutionary No War But the Class War graffiti has now been spotted in the local urban streets around Tel Aviv.

All is vital to stop the nightmare of war, famine, poverty, nationalism, ethnic cleansing, barbarity, torture, the growing threat of theocrats, as well as the daily dose of oppression, alienation and exploitation.  The anti-militarist class war is the only war which will unite us as an international working class to prevent a death spiral, to liberate ourselves and to finally live in harmony with this planet.  Total respect to those resisting and to those who share the struggle in solidarity!

Article by Bloque