Also: The whisper-quiet declaration of severe drought across a swathe of southern England, and the unsurprising news that far-right terror is on the rise. The post French student revolt reaches Argentina appeared first on Freedom Press.

Last week, I told my boss I was going on strike. ‘It’s good that you’re supporting the students’, he said, before telling me how he runs past a school each morning and sees peaceful, friendly students blockading it on the way out, and riot cops attacking them on the way back. I moved to France for work almost three years ago. Shortly after arriving, President Macron made his ill-fated decision to call a snap election. In the weeks that followed, I joined a union and received a crash course in French politics. I happened to be in Paris on the night of the election, and had to choose between an authorised viewing party in Place de Stalingrad, or a wild one in Place de la République. I chose the latter, and descended into the Métro in a sombre mood, expecting miserable results. When I emerged and regained phone signal, I saw that the exit polls favoured the hastily-assembled leftist coalition. What I had expected to be a riot became a riotous celebration, complete with fireworks, beers and whooping cheers every time a constituency declared for the New Popular Front. I’ve become more politically engaged through the years that followed and so, when the Freedom crew were recently bemoaning a lack of direct links between the UK and the French scenes, I thought I ought to do my bit to provide a bit of cross-Channel cross-pollination. The whole of France effectively runs on the academic calendar, and we have just entered the return-to-school period (la rentrée). Every year so far, this has been the peak time for protests: in 2024 it was a huge antifascist march in the run-up to the elections; last year it was the decentralised social media-organised Bloquons Tout movement (though an attempted follow-up flopped); and this year, it’s the lycéen·ne·s (i.e., college students and Sixth Formers). These are just the major events that reliably bring out 7,000–11,000 people; there are other, smaller marches just about every weekend. When I first arrived I went on a tour of the city centre, but lost the group amidst a huge protest in front of the Préfecture. I circled the building to try and find my group, and found another, unrelated farmers’ protest on the other side. It was a Saturday, so I’m not even sure anyone was in. The French are well aware that it only takes a small number of people, strategically placed, to cause outsized disruption. Famously, Haussmann widened the streets of Paris in part to make them harder to blockade; in Montpellier, only one street was so designed before the designers ran out of money, leaving the old centre of Écusson a tangled mess of narrow, winding streets. Protests rarely enter there (it’s usually declared off-limits by the Préfecture), but if they ever did it would prove remarkably unfavourable terrain for the forces of order. Instead, marches usually circumambulate the centre, around which all of the tramways are centralised. However, as long as these protest movements remain somewhat siloed into ‘left’ or ‘right’ or ‘pro-Palestine’ or whatever, the state can generally keep things under control. Over the last couple years they’ve sacrificed a few prime ministers to appease the crowd (although, bizarrely, last year Macron just reappointed the same guy, who remains in post to this day), but so far waiting for the momentum to die out and crushing particularly obstinate holdouts with riot police seems to have worked out. What the French state really fears, though, is a confluence of struggle. This is what happened in the Gilets Jaunes protests, where anger over cost of living united people across normal political divides and (crucially) social class. The result was the greatest threat posed to the Fifth Republic since May ‘68; there was one point where helicopters were being prepared to evacuate Macron from the Elysée palace. That confluence seems to be what is happening again today. When we talk of the French police as ‘militarised’, it conjures US-centric images of a police force given access to all sorts of military tools and gradually becoming a holding pen for people too violent for airsoft, yet too incompetent for the military. But in France, a major component of their riot control force is the Gendarmerie mobile, part of the Armed Forces; in the French case, then, it’s perhaps more accurate to call them policified soldiers. Whether civilian or soldier, what all French cops have in common is a predilection towards violence that exceeds their peers in neighbouring countries. In recent days, National Police armed with assault rifles have been dispatched to schools, and the Municipal Police (roughly equivalent to traffic wardens) have been co-opted into riot control duties for which they are untrained and from which they are normally prohibited. In the past few weeks, teenagers have lost teeth, eyes and hands facing off against the CRS, leading to condemnation from Amnesty International and the UN. Yet the students continue to march, and increasingly their signs (and those of their parents) reference these shocking acts. The students have also clearly been paying attention in history class: last week I saw a sign that read ‘we’ve killed kings for less than this’; and I’ve been seeing more and more references to May ‘68. History weighs heavy on the French everyday imaginary. It’s almost like the experience of both the Nazi occupation, and the preceding Vichy collaboration, have left a traumatic impression on the very language itself: one is not a ‘traitor’ in French, but a ‘collabo’; the police are routinely compared to the Vichy-era Milice; and the word ‘rafle’ (roughly ‘police roundup’) is laden with Holocaustic baggage. But equally, you can trace the history of pretty much anything here, from a contemporary newspaper to the French equivalent of HMV, and eventually hit on a connection to the French Resistance (or, the other side). This sense of movement history is also expressed in the remarkably intergenerational membership of many of the marches I’ve been on and groups I’ve participated in. Grandmas here do not retire quiescently; they stand facing our march flipping the double bird and shouting ‘ANTIFA’ at the top of their lungs (true story). It is hard to overstate how much of a strategic misstep the state’s decision to violently suppress the early student protests has been. Spend any time in the outdoors and one of the first things you learn is that most animals are safe enough, except when they are protecting their young—the sense of ‘mama bear’ energy behind French society’s protective enveloping of their youth is also hard to exaggerate. Teachers have connected their own struggles with that of their students; university students—older brothers and sisters to the lycéen·ne·s both figuratively and, often, literally—shut down 100% of mainland institutions last Tuesday in solidarity; apolitical parents are out in the street en masse to protest the mutilation of their children; farmers in tractors joined school blockades; and the youth uprising has not been limited to only metropolitan France. This all coincides with rolling waves of pre-planned strike action, ranging from public servants to exhausted firefighters (following an unprecedented summer of wildfires).It’s hard to say what will happen next. There were rumblings, even before the lycéen·ne·s seized control of the headlines, that this coming Saturday would mark a new Gilets Jaunes movement, but this seemed to be mostly limited to unsourced AI slop posters shared on social media. But former GJ organisers have urged their supporters to support the students, and so it’s possible that even an originally inorganic movement may provide a point around which these various struggles can converge. Ultimately it’s hard to see an off-ramp for the state: they have nothing plausible to promise the youth except the excitement of being conscripted to go die in the Balkans. The political centre has thoroughly discredited itself, and next year’s elections are set to be a literal choice between socialism or barbarism. But whilst the left-wing LFI stands to gain the most electorally from this mass mobilisation of young people (many of whom will be voting age come April), and the LFI certainly has a prominent flag-waving presence on these marches, I don’t think the students are content to wait until next year, nor overly convinced that electoral politics are the way to best achieve their demands. I’ve just come back from my third march in two weeks, as ‘Act V’ of the student protests begins. All I can say for now is that the marches have been larger than I’ve seen before, that they remain so, and that I see little sign that the momentum is slowing. The post Postcard from Montpellier appeared first on Freedom Press.

From 8 to 14 October 1906, 300 representatives of local CGT groups gathered in Amiens, at what is now the Albert Roze School, to discuss and adopt a common trade-union programme. It was the ninth congress of the trade union founded in 1895, and a milestone in the history of the revolutionary workers’ movement. . On the penultimate day, 13 October, the Charter was adopted. This was followed by a two-day conference of the Bourses du Travail. The CGT itself had been founded in 1895 and, at the time of the congress, was still regarded by some like James Guillaume as standing firmly in the tradition of the International Workingmen’s Association. In 1906, it had around 300,000 members. The significance of the declaration can be seen in the following aspects: the Charter advocates both the day-to-day struggle of the working class to secure immediate improvements in its living and working conditions and the ultimate aim of abolishing capitalist exploitation as such. At the same time, it asserts the independence of trade unions from party politics of any kind. These positions are clearly expressed, for example, in the following passage: “The Congress considers that this declaration is a recognition of the class struggle which, on the economic front, pits workers in revolt against all forms of exploitation and oppression, both material and moral, perpetrated by the capitalist class against the working class. (…) As trade-union organisations, the affiliated organisations have no concern with the parties and sects which, outside and alongside them, are free to pursue social transformation.” The declaration is now regarded as a founding document of revolutionary syndicalism, comparable in significance to Rudolf Rocker’s Principles of Anarcho-Syndicalism (1919) for that particular tendency. In Germany, revolutionary syndicalism can be compared with the positions of localism, from which the Free Workers’ Union of Germany – Freie Arbeiter Union Deutschlands (FAUD) emerged. Although revolutionary syndicalism overlaps with anarcho-syndicalism, the two tendencies should nevertheless be clearly distinguished. Revolutionary syndicalism can be understood as a political and economic current within the workers’ movement which regards trade unions as the principal means of overcoming capitalism and establishing a self-managed society. It is therefore a revolutionary trade-union strategy. Anarcho-syndicalism employs the same strategy, but combines it with anarchist principles. Anarcho-syndicalist tendencies only became discernible in France from the early 1920s onwards and found organisational expression in 1926 with the founding of the CGT-SR (Confédération générale du travail – Syndicaliste révolutionnaire), from which the CNT-F later emerged. The Charter of Amiens did not, of course, emerge in a vacuum. From 1904 onwards, the syndicalist George Sorel had been propagating revolutionary-syndicalist ideas in trade-union newspapers, and in 1908 he published Réflexions sur la violence, another key work of revolutionary syndicalism. One year before the adoption of the Charte d’Amiens, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) was founded in the United States. Its unionist concept overlaps with revolutionary syndicalism in several respects, particularly in its emphasis on trade-union independence and on the general strike as a weapon of the working class. The Charter also shaped the debates surrounding the trade-union question at the International Anarchist Congress held in Amsterdam in 1907. One of the speakers was the Italian Errico Malatesta, who criticised the exclusive focus on syndicalism in his contribution Syndicalism: An Anarchist Critique, thereby making an important contribution — still relevant today — to the question of the relationship between anarchism and anarcho-syndicalism. A contrasting position was taken by the French activist Pierre Monatte, who placed his hopes in the trade unions as the agents of social revolution. With the outbreak of the First World War, the Charter lost much of its significance and was superseded by other principles. After the First World War, anarcho-syndicalism also emerged as a distinct tendency, developing the ideas of revolutionary syndicalism further by giving them a clearly anarchist orientation. Today, a commemorative plaque at the school recalls the congress and the Charter adopted there, to which several trade unions in France still nominally refer, including the CNT-F. The plaque bears the following inscription: “On 13 October 1906, the Charter of Amiens was adopted at the 15th National Trade Union Congress of the C.G.T. The independence of trade unions from political parties and sects. C.G.T. Force Ouvrière.” The post The birth of revolutionary syndicalism appeared first on Freedom Press.

At the end of last month the US Supreme Court endorsed – and effectively advanced – the Trump/MAGA sadist agenda by ruling against those working to stop ICE’s (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) abduction, kidnapping and torturing of mostly non-whites before (often illegally) expelling them to countries other than their homelands without giving them the chance to appeal or adduce the deportations as human rights violations. These include, for instance, being flown into war zones or areas where LGBTQ+ people are targets. Given that ICE (also implicated in voter suppression efforts) was recently ordered to increase the number of arrests it has to make each day back up to the previous ‘target’ of 3,000, such abuses seem certain to increase. Bo French is a candidate to lead the Texas Railroad Commission, the body that regulates that state’s oil and gas industries. But he has other interests. He enjoys posting images of non-whites at a sports event and describing them as being “…far worse than any of us could imagine…” and calling for the public execution of his opponents. After asking on social media last year whether Jews or Muslims posed the greater threat, French won the nomination in May. This is, of course, well in line with the ways in which the US government also frequently acts towards LGBTQ+ opponents. The US State Department (the equivalent of the UK’S Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office) appears to be illegally diverting a significant amount of money (the equivalent of roughly £152m) officially apportioned by Congress for human rights. It’s going to far right, Fascist and racist/supremacist groups and organisations in order to ‘safeguard western civilisation norms’. This is largely consistent with a view expressed belligerently and unequivocally by the US Vice President Vance recently when, referring to a black candidate for the US Senate in Florida, he said that because of her views and race she should “Get the hell out of here”. The same treatment is meted out to those drawing attention to and actively opposing the genocide in Gaza and the West Bank, such as lawyers like Florida-based Jalal Shehadeh.  They have either been detained or had their phones and other belongings seized without cause. High profile critics of Trump continue to be subjected to deliberately intimidating searches of their homes – without cause. After all, if Trump can order an investigation by the FBI into posts on TikTok because he doesn’t like them, and can defy a court ruling that he must reverse his exclusion on media of which he disapproves, he can pretty much do anything – including apparently turning a blind eye to, even encouraging, an attack on Los Angeles and San Diego, which would take 10 million lives. In fact, Trump’s supremacist incitements to violence against non-whites reached a new low last week when he posted just about as clear a threat as possible that he will use government terrorists to kill and injure guest-workers in (in this case) Minnesota if he wants to. As long as supremacist rants of this kind on fascist propaganda outlets like Fox are broadcast, accepted and consumed by the estimated third of the adult population in the US, which is still taken in by MAGA, it’s of little surprise that not more people have yet caught up with what’s really happening; and why. Little that the Trump/MAGA cult has done in their second term more starkly highlights corruption and arrogance than their illegal campaign advertisements for next month’s midterm elections. They have been estimated to cost a total of $20 million dollars (about £15 million). So each resident in the US is having to pay to be lied to. It is illegal to use government funds for (party) political campaigning. Indeed, what is happening may even count as theft. But the Supreme Court has already ruled [pdf] that everything which a sitting president does in furtherance of their official activities automatically indemnifies them from criminal prosecution. The Trump/MAGA censorship wave continues with – according to a new report issued last week by PEN (Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists, Novelists) America – a total of almost 12,000 books being banned in the school year, 2025-2026. Texas and Florida, unsurprisingly, account for by far the greatest numbers, 68% and 27% respectively. Many of those titles which the cult deems unfit to be read are young adult fiction by non-white authors. The same demographic, however, is trusted with weapons. ENVIRONMENT Minimally satisfactory though it was, the last administration did make a show of promoting electric vehicles, and a move away from transport using fossil fuels. Trump and members of his cult can’t or won’t understand the wisdom of taking (such) steps to address climate collapse. So at the end of last month they announced a significant reduction in the requirements to which car makers must adhere on the control of emissions from cars and smaller lorries produced between 2022 and 2031. Vehicles are the largest source (nearly 30%) of greenhouse gas generation in the US. In the middle of last month it was widely reported that Trump’s Environmental ‘Protection’ Agency (EPA) was planning to repeal limits to carbon pollution for coal- and gas-powered power plants. This is well in line with MAGA’s environment lying. With few objections from lawmakers, they soon did just that! Although there will be legal challenges, the time those may take and the favour with which the ultimate legal authority, the US Supreme Court, looks upon MAGA suggest that this, but the latest move for the cult in characterising climate collapse as a ‘hoax’, may well be successful. As El Niño promises to be fiercer than for many years, the emissions from fossil fuels are likely to accelerate the disaster. The cult inflicted double damage last week when its border patrol agents attacked and arrested protesters to remove a 200-year-old cottonwood tree in southern Arizona. They both destroyed ancient plant life, inflicting irreparable harm on the environment; and desecrated the ‘grandmother tree’ sacred to local populations. This was to further the building of Trump’s border wall to keep non-whites out of the US. HEALTH Of major concern are also the assertions by prominent Trump/MAGA cult members such as this one by quack secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert Kennedy Jr, that we should prefer the diagnostic conclusions of AI to those made by qualified doctors. Kennedy has also announced an ‘inquiry’ into ‘injuries caused’ by vaccines. Cult members at every level have also so far failed to make it clear why Trump’s own AI chatbot should be believed when it returns several assertions such as that Trump did not lose the 2020 election. One wonders how long it’ll be before he abandons it and takes it down. The post Paying to be lied to appeared first on Freedom Press.

France is at the forefront of a European wave of school and university-led insurrection with protests now spreading to Belgium, Italy, Ireland, Germany and Austria. Demands vary from country to country, but the shared grievances are the cost of living, access to decent housing and deteriorating school infrastructure, all of which deepen the chasm between privileged minorities and excluded majorities. State administrations are therefore no longer facing isolated protests over education, but a groundswell of youth-led unrest that brings students in generalised direct conflict with police forces—events that could once again gain momentum and set the agenda for political and social transformation. In France, the youth uprising, now in its third week, began in Paris-suburb high schools and spread nationwide despite heavy police repression. The high school union says about two-thirds of public high schools were blockaded on 6 October, and nearly all mainland universities shut down. Meanwhile the mainstream political system tries to rise to the occasion, condemning or co-opting the movement depending on which side of the spectrum it sits, right or left respectively. The problem officials face is that this movement is on the offensive, going for victory. It has its own agenda—it did not simply erupt “against a reform” or “in reaction” to political events but is reportedly in revenge, echoing the Nahel uprising. Working-class crews (bandes) are also reported to be the driving force, without demands or representatives, indifferent to the codes of the Left and to bourgeois politeness. High school actions are diverse and go beyond blockades to sabotage, barricades, wildcat strikes and the mockery of authority. The mainstream unions want to defuse the renewed call for 17 October, which recalls the Yellow Vests, while the left puts forward demands that help separate “good” protesters with demands from “bad” rioters. In Belgium, the mobilisations have led to repeated clashes with the police and hundreds of arrests. The tension was such that local authorities banned public gatherings of more than three people until 16 October, citing the risk of further incidents. Hundreds of school and university students kept gathering regardless, protesting the cost of education, overcrowded classrooms and scarce resources, and showing that the state’s response is not enough to halt the momentum. Madrid (Radical Graffiti) In Italy, the first school occupations in Turin and Rome took place under the slogan “Let’s do as they do in France”, over chronic underfunding, dilapidated school buildings and rising living costs, and a student delegation travelled to Paris in solidarity. Students in Ireland are demonstrating against high fees, higher education funding and the lack of affordable student housing. In Germany they are joined by teachers and parents, and in Austria university students have announced new mobilisations. In Spain, housing protests sparked by the eviction of 87-year-old Maricarmen Abascal have spread to dozens of cities, prompting a snap election and a general strike call. The Gen Z movements in Europe follow those across the globe: widely leaderless, centreless insurrections led by tech-savvy youth who use social media to spread instantly and create real political shifts in their home countries. In Nepal, a mobilisation born online and on the streets toppled the government and led to a Discord-based nomination of an interim administration. In Madagascar, university students forced the president to flee the country. In Morocco, Discord-based organising extracted government promises of more spending on employment, health and education.  In Peru, two presidents were removed within four months and new coalitions of youth collectives took shape. Protests in Indonesia, India and Timor-Leste forced reversals of unpopular policies. In Albania, decentralised Gen Z-style protests that began against a destructive luxury resort widened into demands for government resignation, and cost-of-living protests returned in Kenya and the Philippines. These movements largely form outside existing structures, have in some cases resisted co-optation by opposition parties, and build cross-border solidarity through symbolism and social media. The horizontal, anti-hierarchical structures and the thoroughly anti-authoritarian ethos of this uprising of kids against police authority recall the youth insurrections of the late 2000s and early 2010s around the world. The current waves feel like they pick up the baton from those years, and from the break with vanguardist politics signalled in the mountains of Chiapas in the 1990s. The excluded rise up, loudly, in search of a response to the root problem of hegemony at the level of everyday life, while raising existential questions about humanity’s future on a declining planet. States, capitalists and all political forces, anarchists included!, have been scrambling ever since to catch up or respond. Governments of the left and of the authoritarian right alike, formed in the echo of those revolts, have proved at ease with a capital-backed far-right surge that the neoliberal centre props up to contain the cyclical waves of insurrection across the globe. As illustrated in more detail in Gen Z Makes History, the youth-led uprisings have occurred in international resonance with each other, in places toppling governments and shaking others into changing in ways unimaginable only days before. It is not elections but militant street actions that strike fear into regimes and compel reforms in governments on three continents. The cost in lives and injuries is high (at least 76 dead in Nepal alone), but those once dismissed as “narcissistic babies of the Internet Age” and a “lost generation” are, through their sacrifices, changing the conversation globally and inspiring people to look to the future with new hope. The post Gen Z on the barricades appeared first on Freedom Press.

Can you talk about your political background? Any people, events, or texts that influenced you? It’s difficult to give one person because the collective was always important to me, I think collectives are vital for people to flourish as human beings, so I never want to put people on a pedestal. But I would say that obviously Crass was really big for me, because at a time when there was a massive stigma around things like women’s sexual health or Britain’s “adventures” throughout the world, I absolutely admired that they were never afraid to speak out. I am a person of the left, my family were trade unionists, I was a trade union rep for a while, my brothers were, my dad was, so that’s where I came from. But in the context of the left I had questions, I didn’t think it was right to verbally support regimes that suppressed people, because I could see some of the regimes of the “left” around the world, and to me they were almost as bad as the regimes on the right. So I think Crass underlined that, one of the phrases that they had was “left or right it’s all shite”, I’m paraphrasing a little bit, but that started me questioning things that I’d never previously thought about, being very entrenched in being a person of the left. Then it was the Falklands War – I was coming towards the end of my secondary school in Birmingham, I was very aware of it, the schoolkids would turn up waving Union Jacks and stuff, and to me from whichever perspective you tried to look at it, it was colonialism, and I could never, ever tie myself to any brand of colonialism. But the intimidation of people that spoke out against it at that time, you could get punched in the face as quickly as you’d said something. I just got shoved, but you almost had to be very brave to really stand up and speak. More so then than now, patriotism was extremely important to quite a lot of people, even if they didn’t understand the context of what was going on, the default position was “oh you must stand behind the troops”. Well of course, anyone who goes into uniform, and acts upon the wishes of the State – we don’t want them to get killed, you know? Same on the Argentinian side, even though it was a fascist regime. There’s one book in particular that really did something for me, and I never knew about it, it just arrived one day in my hands: Days of War, Nights of Love by CrimethInc., that book to me was incredible. I’d read lots and lots of books and pamphlets before, but this one phrased it in such a down-to-earth, simple way, and it brought humour into it and humour is essential if we’re gonna liberate ourselves as human beings. Where would you draw the line in terms of bands Napalm might refuse to perform with? On the flipside, is there actually a moment where it’s okay to party with someone who doesn’t share your values? We’ve always either jumped off bills, or given the promoter a choice, whether it’s with openly fascist bands or with fascist tendencies, we’ve done that every time. I can make that choice, I don’t have to play that gig, or Napalm as a collective doesn’t have to play that gig. So yeah we have done that. But that doesn’t mean to say that I’m not going to play on a bill with a band that has someone that’s, just for example, a Trump supporter. What’s the point of that? Because at some point you have to understand that if we’re going to move forward as human beings we actually have to talk, and have dialogue, and be around people that we don’t necessarily agree with. I think sometimes the left struggles with that concept, it just shuts everybody out. But freedom for everybody, not just for me, not just for you – it means everybody, even people that we don’t agree with. Vanessa Castillo, NPR Any music or art scene is just a microcosm of what’s out there in the rest of the world. People might try to tell you otherwise, but it’s no different. So in daily life we’re going to have to deal with things that we don’t particularly like, we’re gonna have to bite our tongue a little bit, and it’s the same in the music scene. I have played and will play with bands where I don’t share the views of those people, but it doesn’t mean I shouldn’t play with them, and of course there are different degrees. There are people who have conservative viewpoints far removed from mine, but I actually like them as people. I don’t hate them as people, I don’t exclude them; we diverge – but that shouldn’t stop you from connecting with your fellow human beings. If bands and fans have a responsibility to challenge oppression in practice, what does that look like? Napalm does, of course, we’ve never not done that, because it’s important to do it. At the end of the day we’re a purveyor of art, so the way we do that we include it in our lyrics, we include in our art, when we play gigs we speak about it on stage, we’re never afraid to do that. If you’ve ever seen any live stuff of Napalm Death you will see that, and that’s any gig, doesn’t matter where we are in the world, it’s consistent. So that’s really all I can say to that, unfortunately I don’t have a magic machine that can change everything, but we do what we are able and capable of doing. Because let’s be honest, not everybody in the world, if we are going to move to a point where we have true freedom, not everybody can do everything. Some people are capable of some things, others can do others. For me what I do in my life and what I do with my art, I do as I see fit and as I can do. Many people in the mainstream have heard of Napalm Death, but they probably never get past that to the lyrics. Do you feel like with your best efforts you still end up being a commodity? When I go to metal festivals where Napalm get asked to play I will meet a lot of people who are on the same wavelength as us. Just because their music doesn’t translate into that wider effect it doesn’t mean it’s less relevant. It’s almost accidental sometimes, that a lot of bands where their lyrics don’t get talked about but the desire and the will are definitely there. It’s obviously not the bands’ fault, but yeah it’s difficult … sometimes I get frustrated because the things that Napalm does that you would hope would have an impact in a certain direction and it just doesn’t, you know. Sometimes you’re just at the hands of fate (and I use this word very loosely), what you do is you put your stuff out there, and sometimes it can be a glorious accident that what you did achieves the effect that you wanted, and actually I would say 90 times out of 100 you’re not going to achieve what you wanted, you know. But on the other occasion you do. People that don’t know bands from the inside out, probably their minds would be blown by the amount of stuff that just kind of sails down the river, that never gets talked about, and the moments that do hit home are few and far between, so it can be tricky like that. Animal liberation was always a thing for me, that’s frustrating to me because we’re not getting far enough, even though people talk about “a nation of animal lovers” we’re still now really not significantly further down the line in giving liberation to sentient beings, ending the misery of the abattoir. So that frustrates me, because in the end, the reason we do this is not because it makes us feel good, and this is my perspective, yes you have to take pleasure from something but I don’t do it to put myself on a pedestal, I do it because of artistic satisfaction, artistic achievement, and also that we achieve results in terms of general liberation. So needless to say, Napalm has been going since 1981, have we achieved the things that we might necessarily wish to see in the world? No we haven’t, of course we haven’t, but we’re gonna keep pluggin’ away for as long as we are, and that’s it really. I do get frustrated but you can’t stay frustrated for too long because that’s not gonna help you in the end, you have to move past it and start on the next thing. You often speak against violence, how do you feel about anarchists joining military formations to resist the Russian invasion of Ukraine? I believe in non-violent anarchism, I think violence is never the answer, and I underline that because how are we going to move forward if we just keep doing the same thing that the old regimes have made us believe are legitimate to do so, to commit State sponsored murder against other people? I just think that’s something we have to completely eradicate. Vanessa Castillo, NPR I can’t give you the absolute answer about how, it would be naive to even try and do that, but I think we have to move towards that point of consciousness. And I would be surprised if Russian anarchists were fighting for the Russian military, because the sort of policies that Putin has been pushing in the last 10 years have no basis in human dignity, human rights; discrimination against trans people, gay people, people who are murdered in Russia. I’m sure there’s other places too, even in the UK, but the intimidation, the threats, the violence over there is another level. And on the Ukrainian side of course we know about these very ultra-nationalist, fascist groups that seem to mingle in a very strange way with the rest of the population, when you were seeing in Maidan Square ten years ago the fascist groups … so it’s a very difficult one. Finally, what’s the future for Napalm? Will we see you on a 50-year tour in a few years? I will continue, not speaking for the other guys you know, I will continue to the point where I feel that what Napalm offers live and on record is creative and interesting and exciting. If it starts to feel not that anymore I just wouldn’t do it. Honestly I don’t do things for gain, for prestige, for any of that stuff; yes it’s nice that people appreciate the band and stuff, but for me it’s more about those other achievements and if that at any point becomes compromised then I just wouldn’t do it. I don’t want to inflict a 50% version of Napalm Death on people, that undermines everything we’ve done for the last forty years. Artistic integrity is really important to us on all levels of the band basically. You know that it’s become even more of a thing these days that bands will have VIP elements to their tours, they’ll charge people extra money for some crappy fuckin’ five minutes with them, and Napalm is completely opposed to that. What’s problematic about it for me is you’re enforcing the dynamic that people are able to buy your time, buy this added significance and I don’t like that, it leaves a really fucking bad taste in my mouth, so we don’t do it. It makes me feel really uncomfortable, like a show pony, turning up in a room somewhere that people have paid all this extra money to get the Willy Wonka gold ticket, it makes my skin crawl. On a personal level I just find that stuff really uncomfortable, the whole concept of people being more important than others. For me it goes to my historic thoughts about the monarchy, which needless to say I think should be dissolved completely, I still don’t get it, how they still have this place on the pedestal like higher than all of us, and I just think it’s absolutely ridiculous. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This interview first appeared in the Winter 2026 27 issue of Freedom anarchist journal. The post Barney Greenway: “Moments that hit home are few and far between” appeared first on Freedom Press.

We also consider the increasingly desperate measures the US government is taking to try and shore up its position ahead of the mid-terms, especially on diesel reserves; the likely capture of Brazil by Trumpish far-right candidate Flavio Bolsonaro; Royal Mail’s upcoming jobs cull; and the rise of attacks by the far-right against HMOs. The post La Revolte! Panic in the French State appeared first on Freedom Press.

Crushed by price hikes, humiliations, social rollbacks of every kind, and authoritarianism in every sphere, the French people seemed to be ending this decade of Macronism drained and listless. Like a boxer knocked out cold, staring blankly ahead, waiting for the final blow. Then came this uprising, sparked in high schools in the Paris suburbs; it spread like wildfire, turning the end of the presidential term into a nightmare for the powers that be—and a dream for all those who are still somewhat alive and yearning for a better future. Tuesday, 6 October, was a test: following the spontaneous high school blockades, would the crowds turn out? Would the high school movement link up with other sectors? The answer is a resounding yes. The streets were filled with people young and old—students, wage-earners, parents, and teaching staff—all there to show that high school students do not stand alone against state violence and to back their cry of revolt. According to the CGT, at least 450,000 people took to the streets: 100,000 in Paris, 30,000 in Toulouse, 25,000 in Lyon and Lille, 20,000 in Nantes, 15,000 in Strasbourg, 8,000 in Brest… and in dozens of other towns and villages. State terror was intended to force the youth back into line. It failed. Even more impressive, according to the high school student union, over 1,800 schools were blockaded on October 6—representing nearly two out of every three public high schools. Similarly, 90% of universities were closed; excluding overseas territories and Corsica, 100% of universities in mainland France came to a standstill. This is unprecedented in the last 20 years. The movement taps into something very deep within an entire generation. A remarkable fact: this movement did not erupt “against a reform” or in “reaction” to a specific event. It has its own agenda, and that is precisely why it has the potential to go far. It is an offensive movement aiming for victory. Paris (Global Project) Finally, the marches were generally very calm, with the exception of a few cities. This calm is surprising given the extreme brutality unleashed in recent days—violence that could easily have sparked widespread upheaval. For three days, the government and the media had been predicting chaos for today. In the end, it was a massive yet disciplined wave of protest. Yet now, the government can boast that it has quelled the dissent and that the movement is running out of steam. Ultimately, whether things explode or not, those in power will always have a narrative that suits them: when anger burns hot, it is criminalised; when it is peaceful, it is dismissed as defeated. Our methods of action must therefore be based on effectiveness rather than on our enemies’ opinions of the struggle. High school and university student organisations are calling for another day of mobilisation on Thursday, October 8, to ramp up the pressure. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Machine translation The post France: A tidal wave of youth appeared first on Freedom Press.

France is bracing for another massive wave of demonstrations by striking students and teachers. The mobilisation follows a week of escalating tension, spontaneous school blockades, and a record-breaking government crackdown What began as a series of protests in the Parisian suburbs quickly evolved into a nationwide youth uprising. From major metropolises to rural towns in Brittany, hundreds of high schools have been blockaded. In an attempt to break the momentum of the physical blockades, the government administratively closed nearly 500 schools and mandated “distance learning.” However, the move backfired as students organised “e-blocus.” Using TikTok and Snapchat, they have coordinated the sabotage of virtual classrooms, flooding video calls with noise and fake profiles to disrupt instruction. France’s public school infrastructure is severely degraded, with 18% of premises containing mould and 5,000 schools containing asbestos. Staffing is also in crisis, with 4,000 teacher positions cut this term and a reported 50% burnout rate among educators. Meanwhile, the state provides approximately 12 billion euros in annual subsidies to private schools—covering roughly 65.7% of their budget—while several top political leaders are noted to have attended private institutions. These protests coincide with a proposed government budget that would freeze family and housing benefits (APL) to offset tax cuts for large corporations. Additionally, students are protesting the Parcoursup selection system and rigid school schedules, which they say prioritise discipline over learning. Approximately 5,000 people have been detained, most of them minors, surpassing arrest records from the height of the “Gilets Jaunes” protests and the 2023 riots. In Argenteuil, a student was reportedly blinded by a rubber-coated bullet, while in the Val d’Oise, a 15-year-old suffered a double jaw fracture after being hit by a grenade. Further allegations include a “car-ramming” incident in Troyes, where a police vehicle allegedly drove into a group of students while deploying tear gas. Reports indicate that parents and educational staff, have also been targeted. Yesterday (5 October), CRS riot police entered the Sorbonne Nouvelle university in Paris during a General Assembly attended by over 500 students. Officers reportedly kettled students for several hours and forcibly entered buildings, with reports of assaults on those inside. While the government suggests the movement is a manoeuvre organised by the far-left party La France Insoumise (LFI), recent polling suggests the anger is far more widespread. Data from Ipsos indicates that 62% of the French population views the student mobilisation as justified, while President Emmanuel Macron’s approval rating has plummeted to between 16% and 18%, marking one of the lowest points of his presidency. The Minister of National Education has attempted to open dialogues with unions and parent associations, but these gestures have been dismissed by protesters as “smoke and mirrors.” Today’s scheduled protests are expected to centre on major hubs, including Place de la République in Paris, Place Bellecour in Lyon, and the Miroir d’Eau in Nantes. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Machine summary from contre-attaque.net [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13] by gemma4:31b-cloud on Ollama The post French students disrupt mandatory distance learning appeared first on Freedom Press.

Capitalism begins from a simple assumption: resources can be owned. Land can belong to an individual. A factory can belong to a corporation. Software can belong to a company. Data can become an asset. Knowledge can be enclosed behind intellectual property. Anarchist politics begins by asking a different question: What if some things should belong to everyone? A commons is a resource collectively governed by the people who depend upon it. Its participants establish rules for access, maintenance and use rather than simply handing control to an owner or distant authority. The commons offers an alternative to both private ownership and centralised state control. This idea can be applied far beyond traditional common land. Housing can also become a commons. Community land trusts and cooperative housing models separate land from speculative ownership and allow residents to collectively govern their homes. The objective is not to make housing free of responsibility. Residents still maintain buildings, pay costs and establish rules. The difference is that housing becomes a collectively governed social resource rather than primarily an investment asset. Urban infrastructure could follow the same logic. Community energy systems, shared workshops, local transport networks and neighbourhood gardens can all operate through collective management. Publicly funded research could produce technologies available for collective use rather than being enclosed behind permanent commercial ownership. Digital knowledge can also become a commons. Open-source software already demonstrates how large communities can build sophisticated technological systems without conventional corporate ownership. Contributors cooperate across borders, improve shared infrastructure and make their work available to others. Digital technology could also make some forms of commons governance easier. Transparent records, open-source tools, and distributed decision-making systems can help communities coordinate across geographical boundaries. NASA image on Unsplash The same principle could extend to artificial intelligence. Instead of allowing advanced computational resources and models to become concentrated entirely within a few corporations, communities could develop open AI infrastructure governed through transparent rules. But technology cannot replace political participation, since a commons is not simply a database or a platform, not just an economic arrangement, but a political relationship. People who use a commons participate in governing it. This is unlike the relationship between citizen and institution. Instead of receiving services passively from either corporations or governments, people are active participants in maintaining commons and governing shared systems. There are obvious challenges. Commons can be badly managed. Communities can exclude outsiders. Participation can become dominated by particularly powerful members. Rules can become complicated. These problems do not invalidate the concept, but demonstrate that collective ownership requires institutions. Anarchism means no rulers, not having no rules. It means creating rules without permanently concentrating power in a ruling authority. The deeper significance of the commons is that it challenges the assumption that every useful resource must have a conventional owner. Some things can be collectively governed because people depend upon them together. The future of radical politics may therefore involve expanding the territory between private property and state ownership. More land can become community-governed. More knowledge can become openly accessible. More technology can become collectively controlled. More infrastructure can become locally governed. The commons offers a simple but radical proposition: Not everything valuable needs an owner. Some things can belong to everyone precisely because no individual owns them. The post The politics of the commons appeared first on Freedom Press.