A-Infos (en) Greece, Saints Anargyro - Kamaterou: France: Popular Front? No thanks! (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Take over factories, businesses and hospitals! Understand universities 
and colleges! General strike! ---- In the collective and historical 
imagination, with the Popular Front we remember two events that took 
place in the summer of 1936: one in France and the other in Spain. In 
France, a spontaneous wave of strikes swept the country in June 1936 
following the victory of an alliance of various political parties from 
the far left (Communist Party, PCF), the social democrats (Socialist 
Party, SFIO) and the center left (Radical Party). In Spain, on July 19, 
1936, a mass uprising started by the population and the anarchists of 
the CNT-IAA against the fascist coup d'état of General Franco, who was 
responding to the election of a coalition of radical left, leftist and 
republican parties.

In France, millions of strikers had occupied their factories in 1936, 
not waiting for instructions from the political parties, but often 
AGAINST the instructions to show moderation from the political parties. 
In doing so, they created such a balance of power against the employers 
and the bourgeoisie that the latter made concessions to them more 
quickly than at any other time in the social history of this country - 
for fear that the strikers would be further radicalized and the 
rebellion turned into a revolution .

And it was the left-wing parties of the Popular Front that interrupted 
the momentum of the strikes by calling on them to end their movement. 
For example, the leading communist Maurice Thorez famously proclaimed: 
"You must know how to end a strike." This was only the first betrayal of 
the Left and the beginning of a long series that ended tragically: the 
French Popular Front abandoned the Spanish Popular Front, which was 
finally crushed by Franco's troops, with the support of Nazi Germany and 
Fascist Italy. In 1938, the radical socialist[Édouard]Daladier signed 
the "undesirable aliens" laws, which were a precursor to the 
anti-immigration laws of today's French interior minister Darmanin. And 
then, in 1940, the Popular Front voted 569 to only 80 in the Chamber of 
Deputies to hand full power over to Marshal Petain[the Vichy regime](1).

The Popular Front also suffered a disastrous fate in Spain: while the 
libertarian revolution started by the anarchists on July 19, 1936 was 
trying to build a different future free of the state and capitalism in 
the midst of extremely adverse conditions, the republican government 
continued to interfere with them. faces serious obstacles. This 
government was unfortunately supported by some anarchists who believed 
that the Republicans were serious about stopping fascism. But many 
republicans, starting with the communists, unfortunately still preferred 
fascism to anarchism. And in May 1937, the Spanish Popular Front stabbed 
the anarchist revolutionaries of the CNT-FAI and the unorthodox 
communists of the POUM in the back. This was the end of the revolution 
and, shortly after, the defeat of the Popular Front against fascism.

History should teach us: If the workers are united and act independently 
and directly, without obeying the directives of the political parties, 
which always end in betrayal, then the workers and the people in general 
can achieve great and great things together and they might even conquer 
heaven. But as long as workers give up their self-determination and 
surrender their right to vote to proxies - whether political or union - 
sooner or later they will be used as cannon fodder for state and capital 
or one political faction fighting another.

Whether it's poverty, climate change, racism and the rise of identity 
politics or religious ideas, and inequalities of all kinds... Yes, we 
really need a radical social change, a break with the mainstream things. 
We would like to warn those who dream of a popular front at the ballot 
box about the disappointments that lie ahead:

How should these left-wing politicians*, whose caricature 
is[Jean-Luc]Mélenchon and who have all failed since 1981, represent any 
hope of breaking with a system that literally feeds them? Either through 
their parliamentary salaries or in the form of state funding of their 
political party or trade union?

Our only hope lies in our autonomous and horizontal self-organization, 
without leaders, without representatives, without someone to speak for 
us. Therefore, as in the era of the Popular Front, instead of passively 
waiting for a savior to emerge from the polls (especially since the 
result will probably be that of the extreme right), it is now and 
without waiting:

Let us occupy our factories, let us occupy our shops, let us occupy our 
hospitals, let us occupy our schools and universities!

Against fascism and for life: General strike!

Notes:
1). die 1940 die Nazi-Besatzer*innen aufforderten, die Zeitung 
l'Humanité wieder herauszugeben
2) Source: http://cnt-ait.info/2024/06/25/popular-front/

* Posted here: 
https://anarchosyndikalismus.blackblogs.org/2024/07/08/frankreich-volksfront-nein-danke/ 
Translated from French[and note]: ASN Cologne (CC: BY-NC). Greek 
rendering: Neither God nor Master.

https://anarchism.espivblogs.net/2024/07/13/gallia-laiko-metopo-ochi-eycharisto/
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