On Black Intifada in France

Image by Anthony Choren.

The police racist killing of children is a regular occurance for decades in France, often triggering burgeoning spontaneous working class insurgencies. The moments after French police killed 17yr old 'Nahel M' in the Parisian suburb of Nanterre wasn't any different. 45,000 riot police, including the infamously brutal BRI special forces, contributed to the quelling of another uprising in France conducted mostly by young working classes of African heritage in the 'banlieues' or contained council estates often many miles out of the urban centres. Over two nights of the uprising at least 2,000 insurgents have been arrested by French authorities, the average age of arrestees is 17yrs old, pointing to another generation that will see considerable sections of their neighbours experiencing the French criminal justice system and prisons that will only boost their sense of alienation and confrontation with the French colonial state. Black working class communities across colonial centres in the 'West' are seeing multiple generations of the same family in prisons at the same time.The average age of the arestees also indicates how young our children are brutalised by the police and schools. The youth who led the uprising are of African heritage, both northern (Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia) and also other regions like from West Africa and other former colonies of the French state. The uprising saw the insurrectionists use fire bombs, grenades and firearms against the state, indicating a further intensification by means of tactics as compared to previous similar uprisings. There is much to explore as to the significance of the uprising by means of class-struggle against capitalist-colonialism and for socialism in the colonial centre in a context of global victories of white supremacist racism and the far-right.

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