WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE ITALY - news journal UPDATE - (en) Italy, FDCA, Cantiere #43 - Racism and Suprematism: Reflections on Colonialism - Roberto Manfredini (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 Among the themes of historiography dedicated to long-term phenomena is the study and interpretation of modern colonialism. ---- One theme analyzed concerns the search for new territories for the purpose of relocating masses of populations to create new societies, militarily and politically superior and economically integrated into a system of trade relations. This also aims to create an ethnically homogeneous and closed population by physically eliminating or isolating indigenous populations. These are historical processes still underway, based on different projects, ideologies, and rhetoric. The analysis of social relations reveals the dispossession of sovereignty from populations subjected to colonialism, but also diverse geopolitical dynamics, including divisive anti-imperialist approaches.

The encounter between European culture and the cultural diversity of the "savage" occurred in the modern age with the conquest of the New World. The history of the conquest of the Americas is the history of the genocide perpetrated by Europeans against the Native American populations, while in the works of some travelers and philosophers (for example, Michel de Montaigne in the 16th century), the peoples of the New World are characterized positively. On a religious level, the discussion of the nature of these peoples culminates in the papal recognition of their humanity (veri homines).
From the 17th century onward, many works, on the contrary, highlight the barbarity of savages, where it becomes clear how the absence of a political and state organization comparable to that of Europe is decisive in classifying a population as savage or bestial. This is the case with the thought of Thomas Hobbes (1558-1679) with his negative conception of the natural state; where the absence of a political-territorial state determines the perpetual succession of wars which, according to the philosopher, is typical of the primitive and natural condition of man.
Voltaire later conceived the state of nature as the zeroth degree of civilization, the state of primitive humanity experienced by all peoples in their past. The historical state reached in Europe with modern science is the state of maturity of the human species. This is one of the first philosophical elaborations of the concept of progress, which Voltaire combined with the idea of the natural inferiority of blacks and Native Americans, a thesis that helped lay the foundation for the birth of modern racism in the eighteenth century. Jean-Jacques Rousseau's view of the process of civilization contrasts with Voltaire's: science, culture, art, and material progress have corrupted humanity, forcing man to adopt external social behaviors that constrain him in a perpetual state of fiction. The state of aggression, contrary to Hobbes's view, is for Rousseau typical of civilized man, not of primitive man. According to the French philosopher, a revolution that led to civil society was brought about by the birth of private property, which gave rise to inequality among men, avarice, luxury, and the various vices that corrupted European customs. This condition, typical of the civilized state and absent from the natural state, gave rise to the social pact that gave rise to the state and the laws that protect the position of the wealthy, legalizing property and inequality that forever destroyed natural freedom.
Romantic nationalism can be considered one of the components of modern racism. According to this conception, every people possesses natural and instinctive characteristics that distinguish it from others and identify it throughout its journey through time. In the view of thinkers such as Johann G. Herder, nationality takes on an aesthetic, historical, and linguistic dimension that makes it an entity separate from any form of political organization and tends to mark the difference between one people and other populations.
The intermingling of science and ideology is also one of the distinctive features of modern racism and white supremacist privilege. In a country like the United States, racial segregation remained legally in force until 1964. For example, in his Winning of the West (1889), American President Theodore Roosevelt celebrated the destiny of the white race that came from Europe to civilize the American continent and spread its political system throughout the world. A system of social regulation that also made it difficult to reunite the working classes, considered a colonial-type workforce, in the face of the system of exploitation and wage demands.

In this context, also in the second half of the nineteenth century, key works in the development of racist ideology were published, including Arthur de Gobineau's Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (1855) and Houston Stewart Chamberlain's The Foundations of the Twentieth Century (1899). In An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races, the concept of race is adopted as a criterion for interpreting human history in general, a reactionary reflection that rejects the processes arising from the French Revolution and economic and political modernization. The essay The Foundations of the Twentieth Century presents what, for scholars such as George Mosse, are the fundamental traits of European racism.
Regarding the Italian situation, it is worth remembering the publication in July 1938 of the so-called Manifesto of Racial Scientists, which served to provide cultural support for the fascist government's racist legislation. The Manifesto asserted that humanity was divided into biologically distinct races and that, therefore, the differences between different populations were not determined by history, culture, or environment. These pseudoscientific theses were taken up by the journal La difesa della razza until 1943 to support Italian colonial policy.
Sources
Les Grands Dossiers, Sciences Humaines, Auxerre (FR), no. 61, December 2020 - February 2021.
Alessandro Scassellati Sforzolini, White Suprematism: At the Roots of the Economy, Culture, and Ideology of Western Society, DeriveApprodi, Bologna, 2023.
Wolfang Reinhard, Storia del Colonialismo, Einaudi, Turin, 2002.
Emanuele Ertola, Il Colonialismo degli Italiani, Carocci, Rome, 2022.

https://alternativalibertaria.fdca.it/wpAL/
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca

WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE FRANCE - news journal UPDATE - (en) France, Monde Libertaire - Sad news (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Jean Marc Raynaud passed away on Monday, April 30th, at the hospital in Bordeaux. ---- His libertarian commitment began in May 1968 in Bordeaux. He became an activist with the Anarchist Federation (FA) a little later. ---- For JMR, having ideas and sharing them (even in controversial situations) was the bare minimum, but it mattered little if these ideas didn't lead to a project, a concrete action. ---- He therefore actively participated, with his whole personality, in the renewal, influence, and strengthening of the Anarchist Federation in many different ways.

By writing for Le Monde Libertaire or by co-founding journals such as Les Oeillets Rouges and Éditions Libertaires.

But he preferred to act:

As early as the 1970s, he organized a Friends of the Earth group in Charente-Maritime and demonstrated against the Blayais nuclear power plant. Later, he would occupy the McDonald's in Rochefort with the local FA group and participate in GMO-destroying actions in his region.

But it was in education that he would do the most work, first through his writing, then by co-creating a self-managed daycare center, libertarian summer camps, and finally the Bonaventure school on the Île d'Oléron.

On a more festive note, he participated in the founding of the "Ni Dieu Ni Maître" (Neither God Nor Master) Grand Prize, a truly farcical event in Merlieux.

One of his proudest achievements was avenging Kronstadt and N. Makhno by winning the pétanque tournament organized by the PCF (French Communist Party) of St. Georges d'Oléron!

Since the word "solidarity" only had meaning in action, his home was always open, sometimes a little too open. He was even arrested along with his partner, Thyde Rosell, for harboring a Basque terrorist... for three years!

In Domino, the café-tabac-newsagent lost its best customer.

And me even more so.

Wally Sud Loire

https://monde-libertaire.net/?articlen=8905
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca

WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE FRANCE - news journal UPDATE - (en) France, UCL AL #370 - Spotlight Facing the Far Right: A Mass and Class-Based Antifascism (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 Following the death of a fascist activist in Lyon on February 14th, our social movement remained calm and continued to assert its antifascism despite attempts at co-optation. But faced with the ever-increasing rise of the far right, it is becoming urgent to consider the form this commitment should take.

The uncertainty following Quentin Deranque's death in Lyon was short-lived. It took only a few days to confirm his activism among the most violent and radical fringes of the far right. Investigations even revealed the profile of an individual who had firmly conceptualized his fascist ideas[1], the ultimate refutation of the far right's narrative of a "good Catholic" who was almost there by chance. This journalistic work quickly put an end to the far right's attempts to exploit the situation. It also revealed that the activist's death followed more than two hours of refusing to go to the hospital, a decision reinforced by his "comrades" in a dangerous display of machismo.

At the same time, it was reassuring to see that, after some initial hesitation, the entire social movement and the revolutionary left presented a united front and almost unanimously delivered a clear message on the need for an antifascist front, avoiding the pitfall of rejecting all violence, into which the entire parliamentary left has fallen. This was not to advocate violence as a means of action, but to affirm the necessity of defending oneself against the violence of the far right.

On March 14, rallies across France reaffirmed the antifascist roots of the social movement.[Photo: Red Library/Alexandre]
Presenting a united front
In the weeks and months to come, the question of antifascist solidarity will continue to be relevant, especially given the string of arrests in recent days. Whatever the conclusions of the investigations into the sequence of events, and whatever analyses we draw from them, it will be essential, at the very least, to denounce with one voice the media and political treatment of these accused individuals. Treated as guilty by a large part of the media and political parties, they have not benefited from the sacrosanct presumption of innocence, so often invoked in other circumstances. The identities of some of those accused were even publicly revealed by the fascist rag Frontières, likely informed by a police force whose political leanings are well known.

Holding the streets?

But beyond this case, after the calls for unity in antifascism, a question arises: what kind of antifascism are we talking about? Or in other words: what strategy is needed to truly and effectively block the path of the far right?

This resurgence of antifascist rhetoric has had the predictable effect of reviving groups within the Antifascist Action (AFA) movement here and there. Pre-existing the Young Guard whose dissolution now seems more certain than ever these groups share with it the idea of specifically antifascist organizations, generally accompanied by similar practices: monitoring to identify local far-right activists, and more or less martial sports, with the stated objective of "controlling the streets" and ensuring popular self-defense.

One of the most useful historical tasks of these movements has often been monitoring and publishing information and maps of the far right, as the La Horde collective has long done. In recent years, this work has been largely joined by the press: Streetpress, Mediapart, Libération, and more recently Blast and L'Humanité, all devote a significant portion of their resources to investigations into the far right, with the advantage of having access to logistics and personal and legal protection far superior to that afforded by a small political group. This surge in activity and this work are to be welcomed, although it does not entirely replace the fieldwork of activist organizations, which often serves as its source.

Over the years, most of these antifascist groups have concluded that vigilance and self-defense actions are insufficient, and have sought to play a leading role in unified frameworks alongside other organizations, or to put forward alternative political proposals, sometimes revolutionary, sometimes seeking alliances with the reformist left, as the Jeune Garde did by getting Raphaël Arnault elected with the support of LFI[2]. But while numerous groups, often with substantial membership, have emerged in the last ten years AFA Paris-Banlieue in 2012, the Jeune Garde in 2018 in Lyon, and then in several other cities it is clear that their actions alone will not be enough to stem the rise of the far right.

Demonstration of July 14, 1935, Paris, Place de la Bastille.

Wikimedia Commons
Among libertarian communists, it is common to say that they advocate for mass antifascism. The interpretation of this stance often includes a certain critical view of specific antifascist organizations, whose often forceful practices are ill-suited to mass mobilization. They also risk having antifascist work delegated to them, work that should concern the entire social movement. It also seems to us that to combat fascism in the long term, it is essential to oppose it with a substantial societal project, necessarily revolutionary, anticapitalist, and emancipatory.

Do not delegate antifascism!
But above all, this antifascist project must be carried everywhere! If we don't want "siammo tutti antifascisti" to remain just a slogan, we must give it substance everywhere we live, work, and are active. If we refuse to allow antifascism to be confined to a few specific organizations, it is so that we can better integrate it into all aspects of our lives. For, in turn, fascism also tries to infiltrate everywhere, ready to co-opt any movement. We see this in attempts to infiltrate unions, such as last July in Mertzwiller near Strasbourg, where a National Rally (RN) member of parliament was able to speak at a rally against the closure of a factory, or in attempts to co-opt feminist struggles by far-right groups like Némésis.

Within the unions, the Visa association[3]has seen several developments in recent months, documented by Alternative libertaire[4], and constitutes a genuine example of grassroots antifascism integrated into a broader struggle, in this case, the union movement. Within feminist and LGBTQ+ struggles, monitoring is often an integral part of activists' work, while femonationalism and homonationalism[5]are largely co-opted by the far right. As we enter a presidential campaign year that will unfortunately serve as a megaphone for far-right propaganda, we must close ranks and embody a popular and combative antifascism everywhere. To oppose the deadly ideas of the far right with a united front for emancipation and solidarity, let us all be antifascists!

N. Bartosek (UCL Alsace)

Submit

[1]Alexandre Berteau and Marie Turcan, "Quentin Deranque, a traditionalist Catholic in his private life and a neo-Nazi online," Mediapart, March 12, 2026.

[2]On this subject, the article "Antifascism, the State, the Revolutionary Rupture, and Us" details, in this issue, a libertarian communist revolutionary perspective.

[3]Vigilance and antifascist union initiatives.

[4]"Antifascist union collectives are taking root," Alternative libertaire no. 362, Summer 2025.

[5]Femonationalism and homonationalism are concepts referring to the instrumentalization of feminist and LGBTQ+ struggles by the far right, conservatives, or the State.

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Face-a-l-extreme-droite-Un-antifascisme-de-masse-et-de-classe
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca

WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE GERMANY - news journal UPDATE - (en) Germany, Ruhr, Die Platform: May 1st Doesn't Mean: "Celebrating What We Have!" - But "Fighting for What We Need!" (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 Today isn't just a holiday today is International Workers' Day. A day that reminds us that our rights were never given to us. They were fought for by people like you and me. People took to the streets, were arrested, or shot for them. ---- A day that reminds us: Our rights are the result of organizing, resistance, and countless struggles against the ruling class. The eight-hour day, the right to strike, continued wage payment these are not gifts, but victories against the logic of profit. And these very victories are under attack again today.

The center-right coalition government is preparing to erode the boundaries of working hours under the guise of "flexibilization." Employers will be able to agree with employees on when and how long they work in reality, this means: More work. More stress. Less protection.

While the eight-hour workday now needs to be defended, for many people this "standard" has never been a reality. Millions work multiple jobs, temporary and precarious often not by choice, but out of necessity. Women, INTA* people (intersex, non-binary, trans, and agender), migrants, and queer people in particular work in sectors that are lower-paid, less secure, and often invisible: care work, cleaning, education, assistance, retail, and hospitality. These are jobs without which our society cannot function yet they receive hardly any recognition. Those who do this work often live close to the poverty line even with full-time employment.

In addition, there is a higher proportion of unpaid care work cooking, caring for others, looking after children, relatives, partners, and neighbors. This work holds our lives together. But it is not treated as work but rather as a "natural role." And it is hardly considered in statistics, collective bargaining agreements, or public debate.

Prices rise, but wages don't. You work more, but have less left over. Whether you're a salesperson, caregiver, warehouse worker, or office worker, you notice it every day. Rent, food, energy everything is getting more expensive while the rich get richer. And what is the government doing?

As always, the government isn't improving the situation at all. On the contrary: While billions are flowing into armaments and corporations, social services are being cut. Child benefits have been reduced to a minimum. Citizen's income is being penalized. Migration is being criminalized. Homophobic attacks are on the rise, partly because right-wing rhetoric has long since permeated the political mainstream. The coalition government (SPD, Greens, and FDP) and the CDU/CSU-SPD coalition are using racist narratives, relying on populism and division, while the AfD is increasingly openly inciting hatred against the poor, against migrants, against LGBTQ+ people, against feminists. And these attacks are happening more and more often in the streets with violence, with approval, with frightening normalcy.

This right-wing mobilization is no coincidence. It is the result of a political vacuum that arose because left-wing alternatives were too rarely concrete, militant, or visible. The unions also bear some responsibility here. Although there have been labor disputes in recent years for example, at the postal service, the railways, or in social and educational services these were often not pursued with any real determination. Instead of building solidarity and strengthening their own base, many union leaderships rely on symbolic actions, short warning strikes, or compromises that fall short of inflation. While the lived reality of many colleagues is characterized by precarious contracts, overtime, psychological stress, and structural discrimination, large parts of the unions function like cumbersome bureaucracies, operating far removed from the needs of their members.

Decisions are made from the top down, instead of with the rank and file. Large segments of the union leadership have resigned themselves to the status quo to co-management, to the logic of location-based decision-making, to "social partnership."

We cannot trust the state and capitalism; we must begin to organize collectively in our neighborhoods, in our workplaces, in our networks, otherwise nothing will change. The state will not save us. Elections will not fix it. The crisis is real and it is affecting us in different ways. But that is precisely why we need collective solutions.

Organizing begins where we are. Solidarity begins where we live. Feminism begins where we decide to no longer fight alone.

This May Day belongs to us, the ones without a lobby. To everyone who has to function day in and day out under shitty conditions. To everyone who fights against exploitation, against division, against patriarchal power structures. We have to do it ourselves. Together, from the bottom up.

Let's unite our struggles. For a good life for all not just a few. For a society where work doesn't make you sick. For a world where solidarity is the foundation, not profit. Let's organize in our workplaces but also beyond! Let's fight for co-determination where we work, live, love, and fight! Let's transform our unions from passive administrative bodies to active, grassroots democratic tools for the class struggle!

Let's ask feminist questions! Who does unpaid work? Who becomes invisible in the system? Whose concerns matter and whose don't? Let's be uncomfortable in solidarity with care workers, with strikers, with people in precarious jobs, with queer youth, with migrants at the borders!

Let's become collective again. Loud. Uncomfortable. In solidarity.

https://ruhr.dieplattform.org/2025/04/29/1-mai-heisst-nicht-feiern-was-wir-haben-sondern-erkaempfen-was-wir-brauchen/
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca

WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE BELGIUM BRUSSELS - BRUZZ - News from Brussels - Woensdag 6 mei 2026.

 

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