It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Monday, October 19, 2026
Italy
Paris calls? Rome answers! Sunday 18 October 2026, by Eliana Como
Paris calls? Rome answers! This was the announcement made by Maurizio Landini, General Secretary of the CGIL, from the podium in Piazza del Popolo at the end of a major national march. It will be a day of natural solidarity with the students, just as is currently happening in France.
Paris calls? Rome answers! We are truly delighted that today’s magnificent Via Maestra [1] march, on Saturday 17 October, concluded with the announcement that the CGIL [2] will call a general strike for 20 November, alongside the European student movements who, on that day, will down tools and take to the streets in many cities to protest against rearmament, austerity and war. For us, this is a convergence that is as natural as it is necessary, centred on the slogans that students are also championing in our country.
Between now and 20 November, we have the time needed to organise the general strike in workplaces and across the country: any other mobilisation we take part in between now and then will help to spread a climate of revolt and hope – that very atmosphere we began to breathe during yesterday’s student marches.
Any emphasis on violence, in relation to this autumn, is misleading and deceptive: young people demanding a future for all are not violent. As in Paris, it is police repression that is extremely violent; it is an act of violence to prevent the olive harvest in the West Bank; it is also an act of violence that was perpetrated yesterday against the ANPI [3] in Rome, which was excluded from the commemoration of the 1943 raids [4] by those who claim to transform the memory of the deportation into an alibi for colonial and genocidal policies and who, for this reason, ally themselves with the political and moral heirs of those who carried out the deportations.
If you like this article or have found it useful, please consider donating towards the work of International Viewpoint. Simply follow this link: Donate then enter an amount of your choice. One-off donations are very welcome. But regular donations by standing order are also vital to our continuing functioning. See the last paragraph of this article for our bank account details and take out a standing order. Thanks.
Footnotes
[1] An alliance launched in 2023 by the CGIL alongside more than a hundred associations, centred on the defence and implementation of the Italian Constitution; it was this alliance that called for the national demonstration on 17 October 2026 in Piazza del Popolo, Rome.
[2] Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro, Italy’s main trade union confederation, led since 2019 by Maurizio Landini.
[3] Associazione Nazionale Partigiani d’Italia, the National Association of Italian Partisans, which emerged from the Resistance.
[4] the raid in the Rome ghetto on 16 October 1943, during which more than a thousand Roman Jews were deported to Auschwitz; only a handful returned.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni called for a security meeting on Monday to address the violence, which resembled some scenes of chaos and looting in Paris.
Youths and police clashed for a second day in Milan on Sunday, where mostly black-clad assailants hurled bottles, ransacked stores and destroyed property around the central Duomo plaza.
Police in the northern city have arrested more than 200 people since Saturday, according to Ansa news agency.
The Milan clashes began on Saturday on the sidelines of a sanctioned cost-of-living demonstration.
Similar troubles took place in the northern cities of Bologna and Turin following other protests.
On Sunday, police used tear gas and water cannon to disperse groups in the Milan square, and video images showed young people, many wearing masks, throwing objects at police cars.
"Italia in Piazza" protesters clash with police in Milan, 17 October, 2026 AP Photo
A supermarket on a shopping street leading off the Duomo plaza was ransacked, rubbish bins overturned and scooters and bicycles vandalised.
The mayor of Milan, Giuseppe Sala, said that he had witnessed "smashed shop windows, looted stores, and frightened citizens".
"What happened here is what we are seeing in many cities around the world," he told Ansa.
"I’m very worried because it’s a new phenomenon, which also originates from an international scenario and therefore feeds itself."
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni called for a security meeting on Monday to address the violence, which resembled some scenes of chaos and looting in Paris.
On Saturday, Meloni called the vandals "thugs who exploit demonstrations to spread chaos, attack those who guarantee security, and hold entire cities hostage".
"To demonstrate is a right. To lay our cities to waste is not," she wrote on X.
Belgium
To defend our future, against austerity and repression: everyone in the streets alongside the youth!
After a scorching and deadly summer for the working classes, the mobilizations for decent, free and democratic education that began in June are back in full force!
In June, the government of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation forced through its reforms to dismantle education: increased working hours for teachers in upper secondary education, increased tuition fees for higher education, and cuts to budgets for school infrastructure (just a few weeks after heat waves that turned classrooms into veritable ovens).
Youth at the heart of the movement and the target of repression
The Degryse government hoped that summer would quell the mobilization, but for several days now, actions have been multiplying and intensifying throughout Wallonia and Brussels. At the heart of this movement: a sacrificed, forgotten, and scorned youth who refuse to have their future stolen from them. Faced with an increasingly elitist education system that is desperately under-resourced, and with ever-widening inequalities, the government persists in its austerity measures. Secondary school students are on the front lines of this struggle and are showing us the way! They are demanding decent conditions for learning and studying, with adequate equipment, but also better working conditions for their teachers and more staff. They are also denouncing the price increases, particularly for public transport passes and tuition fees, in the face of already widespread precarity, especially among young people.
The level of repression was extremely high during the June protests, particularly against young people of colour and those from working-class neighbourhoods, but the escalation in recent days has become increasingly brutal and alarming. Several dozen arrests had already been made across Wallonia by the middle of last week, including several judicial arrests and one young person placed in a juvenile detention centre. On Tuesday, the mayor of Dinant banned a gathering organized by students, and on Thursday, the mayor of Liège went even further by prohibiting any gathering of more than three people: serious anti-democratic attacks! At the October 9th demonstration, the repression accelerated even further: more than a hundred arrests and an astonishing use of tear gas and water cannons! A criminal police force acting with the tacit approval of the mayor of Brussels, Philippe Close.
Meanwhile, the right-wing government, with Bernard Quintin and Georges-Louis Bouchez at the forefront, is attempting to silence and discredit the movement, with an obsession about the “rioters.” This narrative obscures the underlying causes of the mobilizations and focuses far more on the material damage than on the fierce repression against the protesters , who are often minors . In this respect, we regret that the mainstream media often treat the movement through such a sensationalist lens, relegating the students’ demands to the background. The violence the movement may resort to is merely a response to the radical offensive of the right-wing government. The real rioters are those who dismantle sectors essential to society, imposing precariousness and repression!
Structure the movement in order to endure and strengthen it
Right-wing governments are counting on repression and on exhausting the movement to force their way through. To sustain itself and grow stronger, the youth movement should develop its own tools for discussion and decision-making, completely independent of existing structures (unions, left-wing parties, student unions like the CEF and the FEF). Such spaces would serve as forums for formulating demands and for strategic debates (on the role of violence in the movement, building links with other social and political forces, etc.). This structure would prevent the recent social unrest from quickly subsiding, for example, during school holidays. This grassroots self-organization will be key to keeping the movement alive and democratic.
The movement will also need the support of the unions. The demonstration on October 9th was symbolic of the potential of such an alliance and the road that still lies ahead: on the one hand, young people were present en masse at the demonstration, making it one of the youngest union mobilizations in recent years. On the other hand, the union and youth blocs formed two separate marches, and the unions rushed to the Gare du Midi train station, leaving the young people at the mercy of police repression. The struggle of young people is that of the entire working class, and it is crucial that union leaderships provide support and solidarity to the whole movement!
To defend a just, egalitarian, and democratic society, we demand:
• The complete withdrawal of the education reforms; • The release of all young detainees and the dropping of charges; • The resignation of the political figures responsible,, at all levels of power; • The disarmament and defunding of the police and the establishment of genuine citizens’ control; • Massive refinancing of education and healthcare!
From rising food prices and unaffordable housing to stagnant purchasing power and strained public services, demonstrations across Europe highlight growing frustration over living standards.
Thousands of people took to the streets across Europe over the weekend to protest against rising living costs, unaffordable housing, low wages and pressure on public services. While the grievances varied from country to country, the demonstrations highlight growing frustration over household budgets.
The cost to the establishments will run to "several hundreds of millions of euros", Alexandre Bompard, president of the Retail and Trade Federation, told LCI television, adding it was too early to give an exact figure.
Relate
Limoges city hall went up in flames, as did the iconic tourist office on Place Bellecour in Lyon. Vandals also forced their way into town halls in Marseille, Lille, and Angers, whilst in Bordeaux, the prefect's residence was ransacked.
In Belgium, police clashed with demonstrators in Brussels and Liège during cost-of-living protests. High-school students had also demonstrated in recent weeks against rising education costs, joining students in France protesting over school conditions and teacher shortages.
Sharing the same sentiment as the mayor of Limoges and other politicians, Belgian interior minister Bernard Quintin said on Saturday that the situation was "no longer simply a protest," calling it "pure and simple violence."
Related
In Portugal, trade unions and housing-rights groups called for higher wages, better pensions, improved public services and action on housing affordability. Organisers pointed to rising rents, mortgage costs and everyday expenses as mounting pressures on household budgets.
Italy also saw demonstrations over economic conditions and rising prices. Clashes in Milan, Turin and Bologna left people injured, while dozens were detained in Milan.
Relate
Why are Europeans angry?
Rising food, housing and energy costs have left many households struggling to make their incomes stretch further. Even when inflation slows, prices generally remain higher than they were before, leaving consumers with less room in their budgets.
Housing is a particular concern for renters and younger people in many cities. Low-paid workers face pressure from essential expenses, while concerns over education and other public services have added to discontent in some countries.
Relat
Eurostat data analysed by Euronews Business shows that EU food and non-alcoholic beverage prices rose by 34% between August 2021 and August 2026. The amount of food a gross monthly minimum wage could buy fell by 6% in Malta, 5% in Spain and 4% in France, while it increased in most of the countries studied. The comparison excludes taxes, rent and other household expenses, however, and does not capture the full cost-of-living squeeze.
Relate
The protests do not represent a single Europe-wide movement, and their demands differ. However, they highlight the pressure on household finances and the growing challenge of ensuring wages keep pace with the cost of essentials.
Students shut down French high schools in the face of class and racial oppression
Beginning in the marginalized banlieues, France’s high school revolt has become national in scope, taking on economic and racial oppression as well as police brutality.
Some three years ago, France experienced another nationwide uprising across its impoverished and ethnically oppressed banlieues and poorer city neighborhoods. On June 27, 2023, police gunned down Nahel Merzouk, a seventeen-year-old of Algerian descent who had refused to stop for questioning. As Nahel lay dead, the banlieues and other marginalized communities exploded, with teens and preteens in the lead. By the time the dust had settled five days later, 250 police stations and outposts had been attacked, 700 police injured, much property had been destroyed, and 3,000 youths had been arrested, many of them to be prosecuted mercilessly and jailed. For the French dominant classes, the mainstream media, the politicians, and the trade union bureaucrats, 2023 was seen as an irrational outburst of little long-term political or social import, something to be swept under the rug and forgotten. Little or nothing was done to address the underlying issues, least of all the country’s rampant police brutality and racial profiling.
In some ways, the September–October 2026 youth uprising has been a repeat of 2023. The communities where the current uprising originated are essentially the same as in 2023, and confrontations with the police, or rather vicious police violence against the youth, show that little has changed. The dominant rhetoric among politicians and the corporate media continues to characterize those in revolt as “savages” and the like.
But 2026 is more than a larger version of 2023. First, this year’s uprising’s size, scope, and staying power have been greater. In the first week, it spread across high schools in poor and marginalized areas of the Paris region. As it did so, it became no longer only a spontaneous revolt, but also a movement making very concrete demands.
Second, it has also spread from the banlieues and poorer city districts to more advantaged, even privileged high schools. It also involved parents, university students, and trade unions. All of this has helped break down the isolation of the banlieues, even if only for a time. Moreover, it has put into action the kinds of social forces that, if acting together, could really uproot the system.
Third, partly as a result of these wider solidarities, the movement has been more organized and more political, and has expressed clear and comprehensive demands. This was facilitated by the fact that the uprising was centered in the schools, a more structured venue than an urban community, making its participants, even in the banlieues, less isolated and less vulnerable to demonization as street thugs, “savages,” and so on.
Fourth, a greater number of key political figures have openly backed the youth than in 2023.
Finally, all this has forced the center-right government to make a few small concessions, even though its main response has been demonization and repression.
Because of these wider valences, 2026 is sometimes compared — both in the French media and globally — to the mass student-worker uprisings that were the high-water mark of the revolutionary year 1968, when ten million workers went on strike in the wake of university and workplace occupations. The comparison is surely an exaggeration. Nonetheless, 2026 is indeed a sign of wide and deep unrest of a type that cannot easily be contained by political regimes—like that of the neoliberal Emmanuel Macron in France—that represent a capitalism of austerity and whose support is plummeting. For the two sides of that conjuncture are a surge toward new leftwing political parties like La France Insoumise (LFI), and on the other side, toward the neofascist Rassemblement National (RN).
In a number of extensively reported cases, police brutalized young students, among them a fifteen-year-old boy whose hand was torn off by a police “stun grenade.” This device is severely restricted or banned outright in many other European countries. After two weeks, the police announced that they had detained at least briefly some 6,877 people, 86 percent of them minors. Clearly, the goal of such a wide dragnet was to use fear to discourage participation.4
Still wider solidarities emerged on October 6, when hundreds of thousands, perhaps even half a million people, took to the streets across France in support of the high schoolers. Some were university students and other older adults, many of whom wore white armbands as a sign that they were there to protect the country’s youth from the police — if necessary, by interposing themselves. Parents and other adults were doing the same outside many high schools. In Saint-Denis, another marginalized Paris suburb, Mayor Bally Bagayoko, a Black activist recently elected as a candidate for LFI, joined student demonstrators in an attempt to shield them from police attack.
At universities, including the prestigious Sciences Po in Paris, where Palestine solidarity demonstrations over the past few years have faced surveillance and repression, students also engaged in solidarity actions. After taking over a nearby street, however, Sciences Po students were beaten back by a violent police attack.
Grievances and demands
Almost everywhere, students mentioned a multiplicity of issues. In Lille, seventeen-year-old Fanny (who prudently wanted to be quoted only by her first name) singled out “bad conditions in which to study, overcrowded classrooms, and buildings in need of repair.” But Fanny also went deeper, calling out “the climate catastrophe, artificial intelligence that is gobbling up jobs, and the risk that the RN will win the elections,” referring to Marine Le Pen’s neofascist party.5
On October 8, a declaration from the Coordination Antifasciste also noted the “carceral atmosphere in the high schools.”
Others referred to racial and ethnic exclusion and oppression. An in-depth account of the protests in the Paris banlieue of Saint-Denis was published by Christophe Ayad, a journalist who has long distinguished himself by his coverage of both Middle East conflicts and France’s immigrant communities. As Ayad reported, student speakers at an October 4 rally asked, “Why do we have fewer chances than those from Paris?” Others declared, “There is a segregation dividing Paris and the suburbs due to Parcoursup” — a much-criticized online university selection system — “which is totally arbitrary. These inequalities are not normal!” Student speakers also decried media narratives that separated the banlieues from the rest of Paris and demonized banlieue students of color as the source of all violence: “There are the whites on one side, the Blacks and the Arabs on the other,” one said, adding, “When a student is non-white, police violence increases tenfold.” Other student protestors noted anti-Muslim discrimination: “Muslims are treated as enemies.” Still others raised wider, more political slogans, like support for Palestine. While expressing deep alienation, the students also referred to themselves as “the new France,” thus pointing to the more multiethnic and inclusive future society they envision. Mayor Bagayoko received huge applause when he told a crowd, “You honor the Republic; you honor its values; your demands are legitimate.”6
Everywhere, the slogans reflected the anger, but also the imagination and verve, of a new generation. Referring to the militarized CRS riot police, students chanted, “You were sent an SOS and we received your CRS.” Adopting directly — and in English — a slogan associated with US Black Lives Matter movement, others chanted “ACAB” (All cops are bastards). One handmade sign read “ACAB” and “July 1830,” referring to the revolution that ended Restoration attempts re-establish France’s absolute monarchy.7
What has been achieved
While the specific gains so far are very small, promises to hire three thousand teachers and to suspend layoffs of teachers, this movement’s mere existence and persistence is itself a kind of victory in the face the far-right surge that has been gripping Western Europe, including France. This is particularly significant at a time when both social media and traditional TV and other mass media are increasingly under the control of rightwing oligarchs. The militancy and creativity of the youth have broken through those barriers, just as they have of late in India with the Cockroach Janta Party.
The fact that such a militant and large-scale movement took place not in the Global South, but in Western Europe, illustrates the truly international scope of the struggle for human emancipation today.
The French high school uprising of 2026 also shows, in a most dramatic manner, that the ballot box is far from the only way to enact social change, or at least to put it on the agenda. Taking to the streets and occupying key institutions is also a model, and a more radical one.
Finally, the French youth revolt of 2026 has crossed barriers of race and class that have so often been used by dominant classes, from the days of slavery to today’s racialized capitalism, to keep oppressed sectors apart from each other and from critical intellectuals, thwarting the kind of cross-fertilization that is needed to truly challenge the system. What we have witnessed in France this year is not only an agenda of “unite and fight.” What has emerged is a movement in which the most oppressed sectors of society — youth of color, descendants of immigrants, and children of the working class — have taken the lead.
Basile Copin is a law student at Nanterre University and co-organiser of the “Jeunes Insoumis” (La France Insoumise Youth Group) of Pantin and Aubervilliers- Seine Saint Denis.
There are reports that this is a movement from below, originating in working-class high schools in the Paris suburbs. Is that correct? How did it start? What sparked it?
Protests had already broken out earlier in the overseas territories (Mayotte, French Guiana, the Antilles, etc.), but they had been ignored — there was no mention in the media, which now claims that the protests began in September. The erosion of the national education system, and of public services more generally, affects residents of the overseas territories more severely. They have less money to live on, problems accessing essential services such as water, inadequate infrastructure and greater social inequalities: unemployment is two to three times higher than in metropolitan France. They are also more severely affected by climate change. One of the main triggers is the increasing impoverishment of families living in areas that already lack the resources needed to guarantee decent living conditions.
How did it spread and become a national protest movement?
Through social media, many Parisian secondary schools joined the movement ‘in solidarity with the 93’. This refers to the department of Seine-Saint-Denis, a largely working-class area in the northeastern suburbs of Paris where blockades have been particularly widespread. The movement then spread throughout the country. Many other movements quickly expressed their support for the secondary-school students, beginning with university students, who had already mobilised at the start of the month to protest against the risk of universities being privatised.
In my view, media coverage and government repression raised awareness among some people who had traditionally shown little solidarity with young people from working-class neighbourhoods. Many university campuses were closed, including institutions that have historically been reluctant to protest, such as the private Institut Catholique de Paris. Better-resourced Parisian secondary schools, including some private ones, also organised blockades. Public-sector trade unions, including those representing teachers and firefighters, also joined the movement. The firefighters had mobilised at the same time after having had to confront months of record summer heat and fires with ever fewer resources. Former prime minister Gabriel Attal had notably cancelled an order for two new Canadair firefighting aircraft.
This is therefore an unprecedented mobilisation, bringing together a wide range of people exasperated by the deterioration of French public services. A major Yellow Vests mobilisation has also been called for 17 October.
What are the demands of the movement and are they evolving as the protest grows?
There are a wide range of demands, but most concern the underfunding of national education and public services, a consequence of the accelerating liberalisation of the country over several decades. Secondary schools have suffered funding cuts for several years. Urgent repairs cannot be carried out, particularly in the poorest areas on the outskirts of Paris. Buildings are poorly insulated (making indoor temperatures almost unbearable in summer and winter), and there are either not enough toilets, or they are not always available.
Where the uprisings began, secondary-school students are demanding the resources they need to study in decent conditions, particularly the effective replacement of teachers who are absent. In the vast majority of secondary schools, most pupils are missing at least one teacher because of inadequate staffing. Even when teachers are absent for long periods (as much as several months), they are not replaced, except in the years leading up to examinations. Teachers are only recruited from within their own educational district, which means that sometimes there are fewer applicants than vacancies. In Seine-Saint-Denis, a pupil loses an average of between 12 and 18 months of learning over the course of their schooling; that’s above the average for French pupils. Because of the increasing impoverishment of society, nearly one in four children have to skip at least one meal a day. School meals are supposed to be affordable, but the dilapidated state of schools in the suburbs makes these meals unfit to eat, with food sometimes contaminated by parasites or insects.
Access to water is also a very important demand because a considerable number of schools, especially in overseas territories, lack access to drinking water. Some schools are even contaminated, with faecal matter found in tap water. Finally, students are demanding decent premises: for example, many secondary schools and universities have mould in their buildings, which is extremely dangerous for respiratory health; cracked ceilings collapse onto pupils or staff; there are sometimes rats; and prefabricated classrooms intended as temporary solutions have remained in place for 20 years. University students are also demanding more affordable access to housing.
How is it organised? There are always challenges for such movements, with tension between horizontal and vertical forms of organising. Is a form of national organisation emerging or is this still a collection of local organisations?
What is notable about the emergence of this movement is that it was organised by the secondary-school students themselves. They organised independently and succeeded in coordinating their actions. Some, after ending their own blockade, went to support students at neighbouring schools or in nearby towns.
This large-scale mobilisation naturally drew organisations and trade unions into the struggle, while ensuring that they did not impose a top-down organisational structure. Social media also enabled young people throughout France to come together and create large-scale movements nationally, rather than limiting mobilisation to the local level. For example, a call to ‘retake the Bastille’ emerged on social media, leading to one of the largest gatherings on Thursday 8 October. This is a reference to the storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789, during the French Revolution, commemorated on France’s national day.
There are some suggestions that this is broader than just about issues of schools; it is a mobilisation also against the rise of the right – a youth response to that, in the light of elections coming next year. How far is that the case?
Reactions have varied: some young people are terrified of an institution that is supposed to protect them but instead chooses to repress them, while a whole section of the population is outraged. They include elected members of the radical left, but also parents, teachers and lawyers mobilising to defend the children.
There are reports that university students, parents, and also workers are becoming mobilised. To what extent is this true?
Large numbers of activists, parents and workers have mobilised alongside the young people. Some have formed human chains in front of the pupils to act as a barrier against the security forces. This is very important: the mobilisation has grown and is supported by a much broader section of the population than university and secondary-school students alone.
This unprecedented mobilisation presents an opportunity to put intersectionality and the convergence of struggles and demands across society into practice, as people express concern about the country’s future. Although many elected representatives and trade unions are present alongside the young people, they leave the young people at the front of the demonstrations, to emphasise the desire for change expressed by Gen Z and those who are even younger.
We have heard that, unlike other youth uprisings (including ours here in 2015), political party representatives are being welcomed rather than being treated with suspicion as opportunists. Is that the case? If so, why?
Many movements and political parties have joined the movement, but it is important to distinguish between them on the basis of what they say and what they do. The vast majority of parties that have joined are on the Left or identified with the Left. But there are significant differences in how they act. On one side are movements such as La France Insoumise, whose elected representatives have put themselves on the front line to protect young protesters from police violence. This movement is committed to responding to secondary-school students’ demands and investing heavily in education. As a result, its representatives and activists are welcomed by secondary-school students and young people.
On the other side is a significant section of ‘social democracy’, represented in particular by the Socialist Party, which has long demonstrated that it is neither social nor democratic. Its elected representatives promise support for young people in struggle, but their record when in power paradoxically demonstrates the opposite. Former president François Hollande, from the Socialist Party, was responsible for the largest cuts to funding for French public schools (before Emmanuel Macron) and facilitated Macron’s rise to power by appointing him economy minister. The right and far right have not even deigned to pretend to listen to the young people, preferring to call them ‘thugs’ and ‘layabouts’ on television. There is therefore only one bulwark left against the destruction of public education in France, which is why the radical left enjoys so much support among young people today.
Of course, as activists from far away, as soon as we hear of a student uprising in France, we think of May 68. We are probably dreaming. To what extent is there any resemblance?
There are strong parallels with the events of May 1968. Although the current movement has not yet reached the scale of that uprising, it is one of the largest youth mobilisations since then. The French government has expressed fears about the movement continuing, and some people are describing the days ahead as ‘the return of theYellow Vests’, the mass movement that brought the country to a standstill in 2018 and 2019, with a first mobilisation planned for 17 October
.png)
