October Surprise Revolution

Jews sans frontieres: Abraham Serfaty, communist, anti-Zionist, democracy activist, Moroccan Jew, dies aged 84

1795-96 A Merveilleuse as seen on the boulevard. Note the hair à la victime, in imitation of the toilette du condamne. [via]

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Headscarf Wearing Candidate Walks Out on France’s Anti-Capitalist Party | IslamToday - English

Twelve activists from Olivier Besancenot’s New Anticapitalist Party (NPA) have walked out on the party in protest.

“The numerous acts of defiance and hostility against us have become intolerable and it was time to put an end to the stigma and the witch hunt.” This is what twelve activists from Avignon have written in an internal statement to explain their departure from Olivier Besancenot’s Anti-Capitalist Party.

Among them is Ilham Moussaïd, the recent regional candidate who wears a headscarf.

Her candidacy caused a split within the party due to her wearing of a headscarf and the ongoing debate regarding the veil. She is a practicing Muslim and identifies herself as a pro-choice feminist.

[…]

Abdul Zahir regretted “the expectation of a conference (which seems never to happen) to decide if we have our place in this party. This is neither right nor worthy of a mass revolutionary party.”

The question embarrasses the NPA. Its national congress originally to be held in November, was postponed until December, and recently the month of February has been announced.

For her part, Moussaïd asserts that she is a feminist who wears the headscarf out of choice: “We need to concentrate on what unites us, on the fight for equality between men and women, and not to say we should all dress the same way, that you can’t wear a headscarf because otherwise you’re not a feminist. I think that shows a lack of respect. I don’t feel represented by feminists who say that the headscarf is always a question of obligation. There are a lot of feminists who agree with me, who see that I’m fighting the same battles as them, and they support me.”

The party’s leader and founder agrees. Besancenot said when Moussaïd was nominated as a regional party candidate: “A woman can be a feminist, can uphold secular values and wear a [Islamic] headscarf at the same time.”

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Disgusting

On Saturday the NPA debated the Islamic scarf. It seems to have decided, despite its divisions, towards prohibiting veiled women standing as party candidates, while, at the same time, recognising their right to be active in our party, wedded to Trotskyist, secular and feminist traditions. (Note: translation and link from a blog run by a supporter of this decision)

French secularism came about through a revolutionary fight with the massive power of the Catholic Church. Now it is used, even by self-described (or should that be soi-disant) revolutionary leftists, to pick on an oppressed minority - Muslim women. This will somehow fight for feminism and against patriarchy, just like banning a woman with a niqab from French classes in Québec. A democratic decision, but a very bad one that the party should regret. It doesn’t seem totally final, so hopefully it can be fought (by those remaining after 1/3 supposedly quit the party).

As party leader Olivier Besancenot said:

“A woman can be a feminist, can uphold secular values and wear a [Islamic] headscarf at the same time.”

See that last link for my previous reblogging on this issue, which is basically French leftist racists throwing a shitfit over this candidate:

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“

In 2007, women from the Movement of the Indigenous of the Republic took part in the annual 8th of March demonstration in support of women’s struggles. At that time, the American campaign against Iran had begun. We decided to march behind a banner that’s message was “No feminism without anti-imperialism”. We were all wearing Palestinian kaffiyehs and handing out flyers in support of three resistant Iraqi women taken prisoner by the Americans. When we arrived, the organizers of the official procession started chanting slogans in support of Iranian women. We found these slogans extremely shocking given the ideological offensive against Iran at that time. Why the Iranians, the Algerians and not the Palestinians and the Iraqis? Why such selective choices? To thwart these slogans, we decided to express our solidarity not with Third World women but rather with Western women. And so we chanted: Solidarity with Swedish women! Solidarity with Italian women! Solidarity with German women! Solidarity with English women! Solidarity with French women! Solidarity with American women! Which meant: Why should you, white women, have the privilege of solidarity? You are also battered, raped, you are also subject to men’s violence, you are also underpaid, despised, your bodies are also instrumentalized…

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Decolonial Feminism & the Privilege of Solidarity « Kasama

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“

A recent movie hit in France, Ma part de gâteau (I fought for a seat on Sunday night in a cinema on the boulevard Saint Germain, five weeks after it opened), takes a French banker based in London – Banker’s Posh English Boss: ‘You ought not to be very nice to do this job’; Banker: ‘Don’t worry, I’m not’ – and makes him fall in love with a single mother of three from Dunkerque. He’s moved to Paris to open an office and she irons his shirts, knots his tie, serves his appalling friends champagne, accompanies him on a work dinner with his English colleagues, inexplicably pretending – to ‘hilarious’ effect – that she’s Russian. When they fall into bed together it turns out he’s the reason she’s had to stoop to cleaning – his firm closed the factory she worked in for years in Dunkerque. In the rather wonderfully un-Pretty Womanish conclusion, she lures him to the grim seaside town where the workers set on him and chase him down the beach into the black water.

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Piece of Cake « LRB blog

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fyeahblackhistory:

The Scramble for Africa.

This is why I run this blog, they will not teach you in school about the modus operandi for the decimation of the African consciousness and they will not teach you your real history as it is not in their benefit.

An excerpt from the film Uganda Rising showing in a (very!) brief overview the utter decimation of Africa that took place via colonialism and the so-called “Scramble For Africa.”

Despite the film’s focus on Uganda, I think this excerpt sheds light on just how much of the violence that we see today actually has a colonial/European precedent rooted in exploitation and racism.

(via diasporicroots)

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fromonesurvivortoanother:

pussytooth:

Members of the Red Warriors, an antifascist gang in France, 1985. Red Warriors used violent force to remove Neo Nazi gangs from France and provide safe spaces for immigrants during the rise of white nationalism and an outbreak of violent crime against people of colour. They formed a squat called “L.U.S.I.N.E” and were considered the most effective gang to counter nazi violence, working to instill fear in their opposition.

the most effective at giving me a boner

next research paper topic, GO

(via fuckyeahmarxismleninism)

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theairtightgarage:

Go here to read Kim Thompson’s superb interview with Moebius for The Comics Journal, #118, December 1987

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joekeatinge:

The cover of Liberation, one of the largest newspapers in France, featuring a tribute to Moebius and a cover by famed bande dessinee illustrator Enki Bilal.

(via theairtightgarage)

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