Should We Accuse Sarkozy and the Government of All Things Evil, Or Should We Dare to Radically Criticize the State?

After having used racism, capitalism has now decided to play its trump card to divide the masses : Sarkozy.

The people’s rebellion is turned into something all about Sarkozy.
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The shantytowns of the 1970s, the construction of the housing estates, the spread of the suburbs, the creation of well-fortified “rural-urban” bourgeois areas, all of this has been forgotten…

Also forgotten is the revolutionary mood of the past several years, which was powerfully expressed on the cultural level by the film “Ma 6-T ca crack-er” and its soundtrack…

Instead, the only cause of the rebellion is Sarkozy, the powerful wizard who need only utter the words “Karcher” and “trash” to summon up trouble!

It goes without saying that this is ridiculous.

Of course Sarkozy has attracted fierce hatred to himself, but this hatred is class hatred, one had better not turn it into an election strategy!

In the United States the same thing happened with Bush [translators note : the “Anyone But Bush” campaign], and now as if by chance Benoît Hamon, a Socialist deputy in the European Parliament, has called Sarkozy “the French Bush.”

The war in Iraq is supposed to be “his” fault, Bush himself is supposed to be an “idiot,” a “madman,” a “fascist” or “human scum” as Maradona recently said.

The only thing is, just as football is not just a matter of individuals, neither is history a matter of “great men.”

It is the masses who make history, and history is the history of class struggle.

Who needs to talk about Sarkozy, apart from those who wish to defend him and those who wish to replace him?

Who needs Sarkozy, except for those who count on elections, who want to make him out to be a boogeyman and thereby give themselves some legitimacy in the people’s eyes?

People’s power is not a matter of getting rid of Sarkozy the Minister of the Interior, but rather of getting rid of the entire State.

Please note that the above text about the past week’s riots in Clichy-Sous-Bois come from the website of the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist Maoist) in France and translated by yours truly. I have a “fast and loose” translation philosophy, meaning that when there is a choice between readability and the original phraseology i tend to favour the former, provided that the meaning stays the same. The original document can be seen in French.

Please also note that i am translating this as i have not been able to find any radical accounts of the riots or the police racism that provoked them in English… i do not necessarily agree with the PCMLM’s point of view, nor do they necessarily agree with mine. Si quelqu’un a un meilleur texte à suggérer, svp envoyez-moi le!

For background to the riots, including a timeline, check out the Wikipedia entry.

Categories: clichy-sous-bois, france, maoism, revolution, riot, translation,