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.

Another IoT cyberattack, this one in France: > Hackers gained control of the software that regulates the temperatures of the > refrigeration units, forcing some to warm to 50C (120F) overnight, according > to one supermarket chain affected. > > […] > > Normally, supermarket freezers go through a short period of defrosting > overnight, in which temperatures rise slightly. But the hackers ordered the > units to heat up and stay hot, although Danfoss did not confirm any reports > about just how warm the fridges and freezers could become in that process. > > Danfoss said the affected cold units were older models whose security software > could not be updated to ward off a risk they had identified...

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.

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.

A SINGULAR AND GENEROUS THINKER OF ANARCHISM, HIS WORK TRACED LIVING LINES OF REVOLT AND CREATION ~ David Berry ~ Daniel Colson, anarchist theorist and labour historian, died on 9 January in Lyon. He was 82. Colson was an active member of the anarchist movement in Lyon from the early 1970s, a member of the collective that ran the city’s anarchist bookshop ‘La Gryffe’ from its creation in 1978, and a member of the editorial collective that has produced the anarchist review Réfractions since 1997. A professor of sociology at the University of Saint-Etienne, he published extensively on labour history, revolutionary syndicalism, anarchism and, latterly, philosophy. Colson first moved to Lyon, France’s second biggest city, in 1966, when he went to university there to study sociology, after two years studying philosophy at a seminary near Clermont-Ferrand. At the university he discovered revolutionary politics, and soon became active in the student movement, which was dominated in the late 1960s by Maoists, Trotskyists and other assorted ‘gauchistes’ (‘leftists’—originally a pejorative term used of the student revolutionaries of 1968 by the French Communist Party, referencing Lenin’s “Left-Wing” Communism, An Infantile Disorder). Through his friendship with the libertarian communist Michel Marsella, Colson also learned about anarchism, the Socialism or Barbarism group around Cornelius Castoriadis, Situationism, Luxemburgism, etc. Like so many of his contemporaries he was involved in the campaign against US imperialism and in particular the Vietnam war, and was the prime mover in the ‘Vietnam Committee’ in Lyon’s old town. The group produced a newsletter, Informations rassemblées à Lyon (IRL), and after the repression and collapse of the 1968 movement, the Vietnam Committee transformed itself into the ‘Comité de quartier du Vieux-Lyon’ (Old Lyon Neighbourhood Committee). When asked years later what the objectives of this committee had been, Colson replied: “Nothing less than creating the embryo of an insurrection at a local level.” Influenced by the automobile workers occupying the local Berliet factories, the group decided to occupy the local ‘Maison des jeunes’ (youth centre), which had been where the committee had met over the previous months. “We were very ambitious. We were seriously hoping, when the right conditions arose, to take over the local police station—including its armoury.” That plan never materialised, although the group did occupy the town hall briefly. Colson was inspired by 1968 and especially by his experience of “spontaneity in action and in organisation”, including widespread co-operation between students and workers. He was also inspired by the discovery of three important books: the four-volume history of the First International written by the Swiss anarchist James Guillaume; the Russian anarchist Voline’s The Unknown Revolution (originally published in French in 1947, but republished in the aftermath of 1968 in a series edited by Daniel Guérin and the anarchist artist Jean-Jacques Lebel); and Anti-Œdipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1972) by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Not that he understood Anti-Œdipus at all when he first tried to read it—he found it “pretty indigestible” in fact— and even ten years later when he tried again, it was only the first chapter that he really got to grips with: for Colson, that chapter successfully demolished the “enormous Marxist theoretical apparatus” that dominated the French left at that time, and made clear “not only the theoretical but also the emancipatory, ethical, philosophical and practical power of anarchism”. Colson was actively involved with a number of anarchist newspapers: the Cahiers de mai (the May Notebooks, which was launched in June 1968 and was the voice of the Action Committees which had sprung up across France), ICO (Informations et Correspondences Ouvrières, Workers’ News and Letters, focussed on autonomous workers’ struggles, outside of trade unions and parties), and IRL (Informations rassemblées à Lyon, literally News Gathered in Lyon, which published eye-witness accounts and documents on social struggles in the Lyon area not published by the mainstream press or the main left-wing papers). IRL, which Colson helped create, was interested in workers’ struggles, but also illegalism and other forms of resistance, and discussed a range of movements: anarchism, council communism, feminism, ecology, antimilitarism, sexual liberation, etc. In 1978, Colson was one of the original group of anarchist activists who set up the La Gryffe bookshop in Lyon, and the collective is still going strong. As well as selling the usual range of anticapitalist, antiauthoritarian material, La Gryffe also has a meeting room that regularly hosts debates, exhibitions, film showings, etc. When Colson published a book about the collective in 2020, he was careful not to give an idealised view of a successful anarchist collective at work, but to highlight also the long and sometimes difficult history that La Gryffe was built on, including some serious differences of opinion and conflicts within the collective, but conflicts which were worked through and resolved according to anarchist principles. Having returned to academia, Colson gained his doctorate in 1983 with a thesis—later published as a book—on anarcho-syndicalism and communism in the labour movement in Saint-Etienne, 1920-25. (If ever you’ve been confused about the difference between the terms ‘syndicalism’, ‘revolutionary syndicalism’ and ‘anarcho-syndicalism’, and how the once revolutionary syndicalist French labour movement came to be dominated by Communism, this is the book for you.) A second historical-sociological book followed in 1998 on the iron and steel industry—and its owners, the famous ‘iron barons’ or forgemasters—in Saint-Etienne from the mid-nineteenth century to the First World War. Colson explained once in a talk he gave on ‘Proudhon and the contemporary relevance of anarchism’—the main thrust of which was to argue for the rehabilitation of Proudhon, who remained unpopular in anarchist circles—that he had discovered Proudhon at about the same time in the 1970s that he discovered “the left-wing Nietzscheanism” of Foucault and especially Deleuze. Deleuze, he argued, “developed an emancipatory thought which had a lot in common with Proudhon.” Indeed, moving away from his earlier sociological work, and after writing books on Proudhon and Malatesta, Colson became increasingly focussed on philosophy, and was especially interested in Spinoza, Leibniz, Nietzsche, Deleuze and Guattari (among others) and how their thinking related to anarchism. This led to a number of conference papers, journal articles and books on these subjects—in 2022, for instance, he published a book on ‘working-class anarchism and philosophy’. Unfortunately only one of his books has been translated (by Jesse Cohen) into English: the Little Philosophical Lexicon of Anarchism. From Proudhon to Deleuze—“a provocative exploration of hidden affinities and genealogies in anarchist thought”. Daniel Colson was an active member of the anarchist movement in Lyon from the early 1970s, a member of the collective that ran the city’s anarchist bookshop ‘La Gryffe’ from its creation in 1978, and a member of the editorial collective that has produced the anarchist review Réfractions since 1997. A professor of sociology at the University of Saint-Etienne, he published extensively on labour history, revolutionary syndicalism, anarchism and, latterly, philosophy. Colson first moved to Lyon, France’s second biggest city, in 1966, when he went to university there to study sociology, after two years studying philosophy at a seminary near Clermont-Ferrand. At the university he discovered revolutionary politics, and soon became active in the student movement, which was dominated in the late 1960s by Maoists, Trotskyists and other assorted ‘gauchistes’ (‘leftists’—originally a pejorative term used of the student revolutionaries of 1968 by the French Communist Party, referencing Lenin’s “Left-Wing” Communism, An Infantile Disorder). Through his friendship with the libertarian communist Michel Marsella, Colson also learned about anarchism, the Socialism or Barbarism group around Cornelius Castoriadis, Situationism, Luxemburgism, etc. Like so many of his contemporaries he was involved in the campaign against US imperialism and in particular the Vietnam war, and was the prime mover in the ‘Vietnam Committee’ in Lyon’s old town. The group produced a newsletter, Informations rassemblées à Lyon (IRL), and after the repression and collapse of the 1968 movement, the Vietnam Committee transformed itself into the ‘Comité de quartier du Vieux-Lyon’ (Old Lyon Neighbourhood Committee). When asked years later what the objectives of this committee had been, Colson replied: “Nothing less than creating the embryo of an insurrection at a local level.” Influenced by the automobile workers occupying the local Berliet factories, the group decided to occupy the local ‘Maison des jeunes’ (youth centre), which had been where the committee had met over the previous months. “We were very ambitious. We were seriously hoping, when the right conditions arose, to take over the local police station—including its armoury.” That plan never materialised, although the group did occupy the town hall briefly. Colson was inspired by 1968 and especially by his experience of “spontaneity in action and in organisation”, including widespread co-operation between students and workers. He was also inspired by the discovery of three important books: the four-volume history of the First International written by the Swiss anarchist James Guillaume; the Russian anarchist Voline’s The Unknown Revolution (originally published in French in 1947, but republished in the aftermath of 1968 in a series edited by Daniel Guérin and the anarchist artist Jean-Jacques Lebel); and Anti-Œdipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1972) by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Not that he understood Anti-Œdipus at all when he first tried to read it—he found it “pretty indigestible” in fact— and even ten years later when he tried again, it was only the first chapter that he really got to grips with: for Colson, that chapter successfully demolished the “enormous Marxist theoretical apparatus” that dominated the French left at that time, and made clear “not only the theoretical but also the emancipatory, ethical, philosophical and practical power of anarchism”. Colson was actively involved with a number of anarchist newspapers: the Cahiers de mai (the May Notebooks, which was launched in June 1968 and was the voice of the Action Committees which had sprung up across France), ICO (Informations et Correspondences Ouvrières, Workers’ News and Letters, focussed on autonomous workers’ struggles, outside of trade unions and parties), and IRL (Informations rassemblées à Lyon, literally News Gathered in Lyon, which published eye-witness accounts and documents on social struggles in the Lyon area not published by the mainstream press or the main left-wing papers). IRL, which Colson helped create, was interested in workers’ struggles, but also illegalism and other forms of resistance, and discussed a range of movements: anarchism, council communism, feminism, ecology, antimilitarism, sexual liberation, etc. In 1978, Colson was one of the original group of anarchist activists who set up the La Gryffe bookshop in Lyon, and the collective is still going strong. As well as selling the usual range of anticapitalist, anti-authoritarian material, La Gryffe also has a meeting room that regularly hosts debates, exhibitions, film showings, etc. When Colson published a book about the collective in 2020, he was careful not to give an idealised view of a successful anarchist collective at work, but to highlight also the long and sometimes difficult history that La Gryffe was built on, including some serious differences of opinion and conflicts within the collective, but conflicts which were worked through and resolved according to anarchist principles. Having returned to academia, Colson gained his doctorate in 1983 with a thesis—later published as a book—on anarcho-syndicalism and communism in the labour movement in Saint-Etienne, 1920-25. (If ever you’ve been confused about the difference between the terms ‘syndicalism’, ‘revolutionary syndicalism’ and ‘anarcho-syndicalism’, and how the once revolutionary syndicalist French labour movement came to be dominated by Communism, this is the book for you.) A second historical-sociological book followed in 1998 on the iron and steel industry—and its owners, the famous ‘iron barons’ or forge-masters—in Saint-Etienne from the mid-nineteenth century to the First World War. Colson explained once in a talk he gave on ‘Proudhon and the contemporary relevance of anarchism’—the main thrust of which was to argue for the rehabilitation of Proudhon, who remained unpopular in anarchist circles—that he had discovered Proudhon at about the same time in the 1970s that he discovered “the left-wing Nietzscheanism” of Foucault and especially Deleuze. Deleuze, he argued, “developed an emancipatory thought which had a lot in common with Proudhon.” Indeed, moving away from his earlier sociological work, and after writing books on Proudhon and Malatesta, Colson became increasingly focussed on philosophy, and was especially interested in Spinoza, Leibniz, Nietzsche, Deleuze and Guattari (among others) and how their thinking related to anarchism. This led to a number of conference papers, journal articles and books on these subjects—in 2022, for instance, he published a book on ‘working-class anarchism and philosophy’. Unfortunately only one of his books has been translated (by Jesse Cohen) into English: the Little Philosophical Lexicon of Anarchism. From Proudhon to Deleuze—“a provocative exploration of hidden affinities and genealogies in anarchist thought”. The post Daniel Colson (1943-2026) appeared first on Freedom News.

Someone hacked an Italian ferry. It looks like the malware was installed by someone on the ferry, and not remotely.

I assume I don’t have to explain last week’s Louvre jewel heist. I love a good caper, and have (like many others) eagerly followed the details. An electric ladder to a second-floor window, an angle grinder to get into the room and the display cases, security guards there more to protect patrons than valuables—seven minutes, in and out. There were security lapses: > The Louvre, it turns out—at least certain nooks of the ancient former > palace—is something like an anopticon: a place where no one is observed. The > world now knows what the four thieves (two burglars and two accomplices) > realized as recently as last week: The museum’s Apollo Gallery, which housed > the stolen items, was monitored by a single outdoor camera angled away from > its only exterior point of entry, a balcony. In other words, a free-roaming > Roomba could have provided the world’s most famous museum with more > information about the interior of this space. There is no surveillance footage > of the break-in...