12) FRANCE MOURNS MURDER OF STUDENT ACTIVIST BY FASCISTS
By Adrien Welsh
Progressive and democratic‑minded people across France are responding with deep sadness and horror after the death of Clément Méric, student union leader and anti‑fascist activist from the Political Sciences' Institute in Paris. Méric, who was 18 years old, was attacked on the evening of June 5 near the Saint‑Lazare train station, in central Paris, by a group of skinheads linked to a far‑right movement. While police are interrogating some skinheads, the group they could belong to is not yet known.
Méric's death is being considered a "political assassination," as a headline from the progressive French newspaper l'Humanité said, and linked to the tense social climate in the country. The young man was announced brain dead on arrival at the hospital and died shortly after. To honour his life and denounce his murder, rallies and demonstrations were quickly organised across France, bringing together more than 15,000 people.
The right‑wing has responded by again claiming that "there will always be violence" between extreme groups. French communists and progressives, however, argue that this barbarian aggression has to be put in relation to the difficult social situation of France, within which the struggles of working people and the popular classes are developing. For several months now, right‑wing groups have been fomenting anti‑social sentiment around France's new equal marriage laws which would allow same‑sex unions.
The murder also takes place in the context of the worst capitalist economic crisis to hit France since the Second World War. Record numbers of workers are jobless or in precarious work, while the "socialist" or social democratic government of President Francois Hollande is not pursuing substantive alternative measures to remedy the situation. On the contrary, Hollande's government continues on the path of the anti‑social policies outlined by the previous Sarkozy administration.
This constitutes a fertile terrain within which far‑right groups are able to "seed" their poisonous discourse, especially among youth, and often smuggling in fascistic ideas with populist-sounding calls for social vindication or even false but revolutionary‑sounding demands. Over the past weeks L'Humanité has documented numerous attacks on the LGBT community such as at Pride events and gay bars in numerous cities including Tours, Lyon, and Toulouse.
At the same time, the far‑right is increasingly present in the corporate media. The right‑wing Front National (FN) has emerged to become arguably the third‑largest political party in France. The FN is now led by the daughter of its founder, Marie Le Pen, who polled just over 6 million votes in the first round of the 2012 presidential election. Despite her more "Republican" image, Le Pen's anti‑immigration party has an especially close friendship with the extreme right.
French communists note that this tragedy is a disturbing reminder of the far‑right's historical role as a kind of "crash rail" or bumper guard for capitalism. Far from promoting any sort of ideology of social progress, the far right's principal goal is to divide working people in order to prevent such "temptations" as socialism. As for those who really fight the system, like young Méric, we see coldly that the far‑right would take no prisoners.
There are long‑standing calls by the Communist Party of France and the Left Front party to ban and disband these fascist organizations. However, many see the proposals by Hollande's Prime Minister Jean‑Marc Ayrault, who suddenly jumped on this bandwagon and called to "cut into pieces all the far‑right groups," as shamefully opportunist and cynical.
The policies of Hollande's pro‑employer government, after all, actually help reinforce the current difficult situation from which the far‑right groups are profiting. And Hollande could potentially use this threat as a pretext to justify a national‑union government to impose austerity plans invoked by Brussels.
In reality, the opposite direction is needed to fight fascism. In 1944, after the liberation of France from Nazi occupation and the collaborationist Vichy regime, the goal of the Resistance National Committee was to rebuild French society on a new basis which would prevent any proliferation of fascism. Ultimately, as the communists have said for a long time, the solution is to bring down the capitalist system which was also complicit in Méric's death, and build a socialist France
No pasaran!
(Adrien Welsh is a student in Paris and a member of the international commission of the YCL Canada.)
(The above article is from the June 16-30, 2013, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)