The May Day riots in France have a more sinister undertone than just police beating up "hoodies" and intimidating people so as to prevent further protests. The police in France like those in Greece, and probably elsewhere, practically vote en-mass for the far right. This is the foundation of a police state, the bedrock for a fascist establishment, irrespective of how you vote.
Those who fear the election of Marine Le Pen must understand that the French police are already carrying out an effectively fascist program. Not only do the majority of policemen admit to voting for the extreme right, but the state is already employing them to implement totalitarian conditions. Migrants and refugees can tell a lot about this.Here in the UK we are having a slowly-slowly approach to arming the police, a policy that will accelerate as protests and unrest increases. After all, do you need armed police to tackle 99% of the crime in this country? They are there to control civil unrest, which the establishment see on the horizon, as their policies start to inflict ever more misery on the population.
In this two-week interval between the two rounds of the election, it is becoming clear that the real seizure of power is not taking place through the election, but at its borders, more or less concealed, in the increasing autonomy of the police force. In our last report, we explored the ways that extending the state of emergency has both paved the way for the police state and rendered it invisible. Since the arrival of Le Pen in the second round of the elections, we see the police behaving as if she had already won the election.
The swing to the far right is not just in those countries "over there", it is here, and across Europe and elsewhere. Prepare to sentence future generations to the harshness and divisiveness of an ever increasing right-wing establishment, or organise to resist this cancer that is eating our society. At the heart of this march of authoritarianism is capitalism, a capitalism that has the state apparatus in its pocket, and uses it to implement its desired policies, of increased profit at the expense of the people. This will not end when their coffers are over flowing, as they are at the moment, their greed is insatiable. They will continue to plunder the planet and decimate its population to the point of total destruction. They need an authoritarian state to protect them as they drag us to that destruction. Only we the ordinary people, can stop this death march, those in power are blinded by their avarice.
The evening of the first vote was the occasion of an anarchist-organized call to gather at the Place de la Bastille for a “Night of Barricades.” Dozens of people were wounded by police that evening, humiliated, undressed in the street. Journalists were beaten up with their own cameras.
Two days later, statutory refugees (who are officially supposed to benefit from “state protection”) were expelled from their homes and thrown into the streets by police, for no reason, out of pure racism. The next day, a friend’s squat was attacked by the police. Our comrades were tackled to the ground with a Flash-ball on the temple. One of our friends was subjected to sexual assault in the car that took her to the police station. Coincidence or not, a few days prior, that squat had hosted a projection of videos we have made in Paris over the past few months documenting police violence against migrants.
All this is further evidence, should more evidence be necessary, that fighting against the extreme right means fighting against the State. It is something we must make a daily practice.
The police violence was some of the worst seen in Paris recently. and is a policy that is being refined to intimidate people from any form of protest. After all all those armed to the teeth police didn't just materialise out of nowhere, they are recruited, armed and trained in establishments all over the country and are paid for by the public. They same is going on here.
In response, some people throw stones. Fireworks too. Some Molotov cocktails. The police pushed us relentlessly towards the Place de la Bastille, shooting at us without pause. Once there, they formed a trap at the foot of the steps of the Opera Bastille with perhaps two hundred people inside it. For those people, it turned into a scene of tragedy worthy of The Battleship Potemkin. The police pushed people on the steps while soaking them in tear gas. We could see nothing, there was no place to escape, people crashed against the steps, jostling and falling on top of each other like in the Odessa Steps Sequence.Read the full article HERE:
Fortunately, we were not in this group. The police pushed us onto Avenue Daumesnil, then Boulevard Diderot.
Picture yourself in this scene. Tear gas grenades are exploding incessantly. Sometimes you think you can escape by a street, so you run there—in any case, you have no choice, because you need to breathe—but the police are waiting for you on every street. As soon as you pass the street corner, they kettle you in, shooting concussion grenades into the middle of the crowd, knowing perfectly well that there is no space to avoid them.
