Nearly 1,000 people were arrested Saturday as nationwide protests resumed, French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez told reporters.

The unrest has spread beyond France, with violent clashes breaking out in Rome and Albania's capital of Tiranë, where demonstrators set government buildings on fire. 

President Donald Trump also weighed in Saturday, pointing to the turmoil in France as a warning about what he said could happen in the United States under left-wing leadership.

Earlier in the day, police officers preemptively searched protesters and arrested people suspected of carrying potential weapons, including fireworks and ball bearings, Reuters reported.

Nuñez did not specify where the arrests were made. 

AMERICANS WARNED ABOUT PARIS TRAVEL AFTER VIOLENCE, LOOTING AND TEAR GAS-FILLED STREETS

In Paris, where police estimated 110,000 people marched, officers conducted more than 3,000 checks and arrested 65 people, the BBC reported.

The French Interior Ministry said about 410,000 people participated in protests nationwide, while union organizers estimated attendance at 800,000. In Paris, union organizers put turnout at 250,000, compared with the police estimate of 110,000, according to CBS News.

"Violent individuals have no place in the marches," the Paris Police Department said in a social media post. "The objective is clear: to prevent troublemakers from joining the procession, and to ensure the safety of the demonstrators."

Central Paris resembled a city under lockdown as shopkeepers boarded up storefronts, museums closed and more than 20 metro stations suspended service.

FRANCE’S TEEN RIOTS TAKE EXPLOSIVE NEW TURN AS GOVERNMENT POINTS FINGER AT HARD LEFT

In other cities — including Clermont-Ferrand, Grenoble, Lille and Nice — police have resorted to firing tear gas to break up unruly crowds, Reuters reported.

Also in Nice, police used a water cannon to disperse a group of demonstrators who refused to pull back. And in Marseille and Lyon, there have been clashes between police officers and hooded youths.

The unrest also reached Italy on Saturday, where police deployed a water cannon against protesters in Rome as demonstrations over rising living costs and war turned violent. Reuters footage showed riot police confronting demonstrators before a water cannon vehicle approached and sprayed water toward the crowd.

Violence was also reported in Turin and Bologna, where demonstrators confronted police, while protests in Milan remained largely peaceful, according to Reuters. Italian authorities increased security after widespread rioting and looting the previous weekend.

In Albania, riot police fired water cannons at protesters in Tirana, where some demonstrators set government buildings ablaze and threw projectiles at officers. High school and university students have been demanding lower tuition fees, greater investment in education and an end to corruption in the education system.

Some protesters have joined a broader anti-government movement calling for the resignation of Socialist Prime Minister Edi Rama. Rama said Saturday that his government was preparing a response to students' demands and called for dialogue, while warning that violent protesters would face penalties, according to The Associated Press.

Trump pointed to the unrest in France while speaking to reporters Saturday after casting his early-voting ballot for the 2026 midterm elections in West Palm Beach, Florida. The president criticized the country's previous leadership and argued that similar unrest could unfold in the U.S. under left-wing leadership.

"Just two years ago, we were laughed at. We were a stupid country. We were a country led by idiots and morons and bad people and radical left people. ... Just take a look at France because that's what they'd like to have for our country, and I don't let that happen."

Some 70,000 police officers have been deployed across France to clamp down on agitators and prevent the kind of unrest seen during recent demonstrations, when cars were torched and the city hall building in Limoges was set on fire.

Last weekend, more than 2,700 people were arrested during protests that later turned into riots and looting sprees.

The nationwide marches were meant to reflect broader dissatisfaction with the French government, with protesters taking to the streets to air a range of different grievances.

The protests began weeks earlier and were led by high school and university students. 

They were frustrated with teacher shortages and poor conditions at schools, including overcrowded classrooms and dilapidated buildings.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP

The movement gained momentum when major labor unions joined the demonstrations, broadening the protests to include opposition to the government's austerity policies and concerns over wages, pensions and the overall cost of living.

At least 800,000 people demonstrate nationwide as police make 135 arrests. A protester suffers multiple finger amputations.

Massive protests against the administration of President Emmanuel Macron proceeded peacefully for much of Saturday in several French cities.

RELATED:

Melenchon Urges Macron to Meet Protesters’ Demands Before Leaving Office

Police brutality, however, changed the atmosphere of the day as security forces began cracking down on demonstrators. By 1 p.m., French police had made 135 arrests amid beatings of citizens.

At least 800,000 people demonstrated across France on Oct. 24. However, tensions erupted in Paris and Marseille “during the dispersal of demonstrations,” TF1 Info reported.

The Haute-Garonne prefecture reported that a young man suffered a serious hand injury at the end of a demonstration in the Arenes neighborhood.

The text reads, “In Bordeaux, protesters raise their hands to show they pose no threat; the police charge at them and brutally gas them. Across France, the grassroots movement has gained further momentum. Massive crowds have taken to the streets to demand a price freeze, the repeal of the Parcoursup system, wage increases, and the inclusion in the budget of the 10 billion euros requested by high school and university students to address their demands.”

The protester was evacuated by firefighters after several of his fingers were amputated. Videos show that a grenade thrown by police caused the young man’s injuries. Authorities said they would conduct an investigation to determine what happened.

At a news briefing, Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said 136 public order incidents had been recorded nationwide during Saturday’s demonstrations, which have drawn tens of thousands of French people into public spaces across the country so far.

“In Nantes, a police officer chokes a young man and slams his head against a wall, while his partner threatens to fire a less-lethal rubber-ball launcher at residents protesting… the Macron administration continues its repression through police brutality,” L’insoumission reported.

The text reads, “In Grenoble, police brutality has struck once again. The Isere prefect will have to answer for her actions, having altered the route of the demonstration and imposed curfews in Grenoble. Now, the police force under the ‘Minister of Violence’—Laurent Nuñez—is deploying tear gas and sowing chaos at a sanctioned demonstration. This government of incompetents is in its death throes.”

The security forces’ aggression against citizens occurred despite several cities authorizing demonstrations for Saturday, including Lille, Strasbourg, Mulhouse, Grenoble, Marseille, Toulouse, Amiens and Paris.

In Lyon, where demonstrations have been banned across a large part of the city center, law enforcement officers dispersed small gatherings using tear gas grenades.

On Friday, Nunez said that 70,000 police officers and gendarmes would be deployed nationwide for the demonstrations. Soldiers from the French army’s Operation Sentinelle would also be mobilized during the protests.

teleSUR/ JF

Source: Xinhua – TF1 Info

Almost 1,000 arrested as police charge crowd in Paris and teargas used to stop protesters reaching other city centres

Hundreds of thousands marched in cities across France on Saturday in largely peaceful protests to support schoolchildren’s demands for more teachers and repairs to dilapidated buildings, as Emmanuel Macron faces a social and political crisis in his final months as president.

The prosecutor’s office in the southern city of Nice said on Sunday that 59 people had been taken into police custody, including 11 suspected of belonging to extreme-right groups. They were alleged to have gathered with the intent of committing violence. Some were arrested in two vehicles with masks, gloves, gas sprays and truncheons, the prosecutor’s office said in a statement to public broadcaster FranceInfo.

Housing campaigners are taking to the streets of Lisbon today (Saturday, October 24), marching from Marquês de Pombal to Rossio Square to demand urgent measures to tackle Portugal’s worsening housing

The post Housing protests continue as demonstrators march through Lisbon appeared first on Portugal Resident.

Mayor Guerin attributes the incidents to activists from the Millevaches Plateau, which is home to anti-capitalist communities.

On Saturday, Prosecutor Emilie Abrantes confirmed that two men had been remanded in custody over their alleged involvement in the fire at Limoges City Hall during unrest accompanying protests against the rising cost of living in France.

RELATED:

France Deploys 70,000 Officers Ahead of Protest Rallies

The suspects, ages 34 and 66, are under investigation in a judicial proceeding opened on several charges, including attempted murder of a police officer and destruction of the municipal building. Abrantes, however, did not specify the exact charges attributed to each man.

The first suspect, a 34-year-old man from the Creuse department, was arrested on Tuesday in Bussière-Boffy, in the Haute-Vienne department, with support from RAID, France’s elite police unit.

The construction industry temporary worker and environmental advocate is listed in police records for his alleged links to far-left organizations. He was convicted of an incident involving violence against an officer during an earlier demonstration in Creuse. The second suspect, 66, was arrested on Thursday in Gentioux-Pigerolles, a town in the same department.

On Oct. 17, an arson attack severely damaged Limoges City Hall, a historic building inaugurated in 1883. Videos show individuals breaking windows and forcing open the entrance to the municipal building before entering and setting fire to its interior.

Limoges Mayor Guillaume Guerin described the 34-year-old suspect as the likely mastermind behind the operation and accused far-left factions of being behind the act.

He specifically accused activists based on the Millevaches Plateau, a rural area of about 10,000 inhabitants located between the departments of Corrèze, Creuse and Haute-Vienne.

The area has been known for decades for attracting environmentalist, anarchist, and anti-capitalist communities. The region has been the scene of other acts of sabotage claimed in the past, including the burning of vehicles belonging to electricity company Enedis in Limoges in 2020 and the destruction of a telecommunications antenna in Haute-Vienne in 2021.

In April, the courts convicted the father of the younger of the two men jailed over the Limoges City Hall fire for those acts. The man, about 70, is known for his ties to anarchist circles and his past as a Basque independence activist in the 1980s.

teleSUR/ JF

Source: EFE

France mobilizes 70,000 police and gendarmes amid fears of renewed unrest, while authorities restrict demonstrations and tighten security.

France has deployed 70,000 police officers and gendarmes ahead of nationwide demonstrations on Saturday, with authorities warning of a heightened risk of unrest after vandalism and looting damaged about 3,000 businesses the previous week.

RELATED: France Reports 855 Arrests in Paris After Protests

Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu warned late Friday that the threat remained high, particularly from radical far-left groups and criminal elements operating alongside demonstrations called by trade unions, students and the Yellow Vest movement.

Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez announced a large-scale security operation to prevent further violence and looting.

“We will show no mercy to looters and troublemakers,” Nuñez declared. He has faced criticism from the left over police tactics and from the right for failing to prevent the previous week’s unrest.

Authorities have banned gatherings in numerous cities and restricted the routes of other demonstrations on security grounds, prompting criticism from trade unions and human rights organizations.

In major cities, trade union demonstrations were authorized on Saturday only in Paris, Marseille, Strasbourg, Lille, Mulhouse, Grenoble, Toulouse and Amiens.

In Paris, a last-minute change to the union march’s route sparked a dispute between police officials and organizers. Authorities cited the heightened threat following a racist attack on the outskirts of the capital the previous day as they redirected the march from Place de la Nation to Place d’Italie, keeping it away from the city center.

Several museums in the capital, including the Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay, will remain closed, as will the nearby Palace of Versailles. A nighttime curfew in the areas around Place de la République and Les Halles will also remain in force until Monday.

Banks and businesses in central Paris were boarding up shopfronts and windows late Friday and early Saturday in anticipation of possible vandalism, according to observations by Spanish news agency EFE.

Security concerns also extend to Orléans, about 130 kilometers (81 miles) south of Paris, where the far-right National Rally (RN) is holding a congress to formally launch Marine Le Pen’s presidential candidacy, roughly six months before the election.

Authorities estimated that 11,000 people took part in a counter-demonstration in Orléans on Saturday against Le Pen’s party. Organized in opposition to racism, fascism and imperialism, the march proceeded peacefully in a festive atmosphere, according to EFE.

Protesters chanted slogans including “Macron resign, Le Pen to prison” and sang the French national anthem, La Marseillaise, as well as the Spanish-language protest song “The People United Will Never Be Defeated.”

Authorities deployed about 3,000 officers in Orléans to prevent clashes between demonstrators and attendees at the RN congress. The local prefecture authorized Saturday’s march but banned a separate demonstration planned for Sunday.

The security measures reflect the authorities’ efforts to prevent further disorder while allowing some demonstrations to proceed. Restrictions on public gatherings and the deployment of thousands of officers have shaped preparations for Saturday’s rallies across France.

Prime Minister Andrej Babiš’s government has advanced legislation replacing independent funding for Czech public broadcasters with state budget allocations, despite protests, warnings from European media organisations and concerns that the changes could expose journalists to political interference.

The Czech government has taken a further step towards fundamentally restructuring the country’s public broadcasting system, pushing controversial legislation through its first parliamentary reading after an extraordinary overnight session that triggered demonstrations and clashes with police in Prague.

In the early hours of Saturday, 24 October, the Chamber of Deputies advanced a government proposal abolishing licence fees for Czech Television (ČT) and Czech Radio (ČRo), replacing them with direct financing from the state budget. Opposition attempts to reject the legislation or return it for revision failed.

The decision represents another stage in the confrontation between Prime Minister Andrej Babiš’s governing coalition and organisations defending independent public broadcasting. Critics argue that the proposed financial arrangements could give successive governments greater leverage over the country’s principal public service media institutions.

Police intervene as protesters confront parliament

Hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside parliament on Prague’s Malostranské Square on Friday, protesting against the legislation and the government’s decision to accelerate its parliamentary consideration.

According to the Czech News Agency’s account of the demonstrations, several dozen protesters attempted to force their way into the parliamentary building. Officers from a special police unit prevented their entry.

Police spokeswoman Eva Kropáčová confirmed that the situation was brought under control without arrests. Demonstrators also confronted SPD parliamentarian Jaroslav Foldyna, requiring police intervention.

Inside parliament, the governing coalition of ANO, Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) and the Motorists party imposed limits on parliamentary debate and scheduled the decisive vote for 4.36am.

Of the 177 MPs present, 81 supported rejecting the proposal. The opposition subsequently pledged to continue resisting the legislation during its remaining parliamentary stages.

Financial dependence and political influence

The central controversy concerns the proposed transfer of financial responsibility for public broadcasters from licence-fee payers to the state.

Under the government’s plan, Czech Television would receive approximately CZK 5.74 billion annually, while Czech Radio would receive CZK 2.07 billion.

Combined funding would amount to approximately CZK 7.8 billion, representing a reduction of around CZK 1.4 billion, or 15 per cent, compared with existing licence-fee revenues.

Culture Minister Oto Klempíř, who developed the proposal, maintains that budget financing is an established European model. The government argues that abolishing the combined CZK 205 monthly household charge would reduce costs for consumers without compromising editorial independence.

However, the dispute extends beyond the immediate financial reductions.

Under the existing system, licence fees provide broadcasters with revenue that is substantially separated from annual government spending decisions. Financing through the state budget introduces a different relationship between broadcasters and political authorities.

Even where allocations are established by legislation, future parliamentary majorities can amend the law governing those payments.

A particularly significant development emerged on Saturday when an examination of the government’s own legislative documentation showed that its regulatory impact assessment had identified direct budget financing as the riskiest funding option.

The accompanying documents explicitly acknowledge the possibility of increased dependence on the state and political pressure without adequate safeguards.

European organisations warn of consequences

The controversy has attracted criticism from international organisations responsible for defending independent journalism.

In a joint statement issued on 23 October, the European Broadcasting Union, Reporters Without Borders, International Press Institute and other organisations warned that the accelerated parliamentary process was incompatible with the thorough scrutiny required for such legislation.

They highlighted the proposed funding reductions and questioned whether the new arrangements would sufficiently protect the broadcasters’ operational and editorial independence.

Their objections have a specific legal foundation.

Article 5 of the European Media Freedom Act requires EU member states to provide public service broadcasters with adequate, sustainable and predictable financing, based on transparent and objective criteria.

Budget financing is not prohibited under EU legislation. However, financial arrangements must contain safeguards against political interference.

As EU Today previously examined, the European Media Freedom Act establishes legally binding obligations intended to prevent governments from undermining independent journalism through institutional or financial pressure.

The Czech proposal therefore raises questions about whether its safeguards and funding provisions satisfy those requirements.

Journalists prepare further industrial action

Employees of Czech Television and Czech Radio have announced a nationwide strike for Tuesday, 3 November, organised by the Veřejnoprávně initiative.

The industrial action follows an earlier warning strike in June, when journalists and other broadcasting employees protested against the government’s plans.

A further public demonstration is scheduled for Sunday, 25 October, in Prague’s Old Town Square.

The confrontation also reflects the broader political divisions that have emerged since Babiš returned to government in December 2025.

Opposition politicians have drawn comparisons with political intervention in public broadcasting elsewhere in Central Europe, particularly Hungary and Slovakia.

The government rejects accusations that it intends to nationalise public broadcasters or interfere with their editorial decisions.

For the moment, the legislation remains subject to parliamentary scrutiny and has not become law. Its passage would nevertheless change the financial relationship between the Czech state and two of the country’s most established news institutions.

The central question is whether future governments would acquire additional means of influencing broadcasters through their budgets, even without exercising direct control over individual editorial decisions.

Italy’s diesel protests reveal class contradictions: productive petty bourgeoisie crushed by costs, metropolitan subproletariat exploding in rage.

Join us on Telegram, X, and VK.

Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su

Diesel fuel as an indicator of class struggle

Over the past three weeks, Italy has laid bare—all at once and unfiltered—its fundamental social reality. On one side are truck drivers, farmers, fishermen, steelworkers, and a mass of young people who cannot even put a name to their own anger. On the other is an institutional apparatus that, instead of asking why the real people of the country have taken to the streets, convenes high-level meetings on public order and prepares yet another decree. Anyone familiar with the principles of historical materialism knows that situations like these should not be interpreted through the lens of crime reporting. They should be seen as moments when class contradictions—suppressed for years beneath the surface of managed consensus—become visible to the naked eye.

This article does not intend to provide a chronicle of the clashes, which have already been extensively covered. Instead, it aims to lay out the facts and ask what they reveal about the nature of the Italian state at this stage, about the social composition of those protesting, and about the structural inability of the ruling bloc to offer a response that is not repressive.

It all begins, as is often the case, with a budget item. Decree-Law No. 162 of September 17, 2026, had provided for a temporary reduction in the excise tax on diesel fuel until October 5; once that deadline passed, the government did not extend it. The average price has returned to nearly 2.50 euros per liter. For a small Calabrian truck owner who owns just one truck and works as a subcontractor for large retailers, that figure determines whether the month ends in the black or in the red.

The first spontaneous protests broke out in Calabria in early October. Then came Puglia, starting October 11, followed by Basilicata, Sicily, Campania, Molise, and finally Lazio, with picket lines at ports and blockades on the main thoroughfares. Truck drivers were joined by farmers, then by fishing communities. In front of the fish market in Termoli, a banner appeared featuring a skeleton and the words “You’ve reduced us to the bone”; in San Benedetto del Tronto, fishing boats remained in port. In supermarkets across Abruzzo, Molise, Puglia, Campania, and Calabria, the shelves emptied, and people rushed to stock up as they hadn’t since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Let’s pause to consider who these people are, because the sociology of the protest matters more than the slogans. We are not dealing with the classic industrial proletariat, the one found in large Fordist concentrations. We are dealing with a productive petty bourgeoisie in the process of proletarianization: the small business owner, the independent farmer, the fisherman with his own boat. Marx had precisely described—in Chapter 1 of the Manifesto—the fate of these intermediate strata, crushed between big capital, which absorbs them, and the wage-labor condition into which they ultimately plunge. The trucker blocking the highway today is formally an entrepreneur. In substance, his business is a disguised wage: the client dictates his rates, energy costs dictate his expenses, the state levies the excise tax, and he bears the risk. He is self-employed only in the sense that no one guarantees him anything.

In this sense, diesel fuel is more than just a fuel. It is the point where global oil rent—now spiraling out of control due to the Hormuz crisis—travels down the logistics chain until it is offloaded onto those at the very end. Financial capital speculating on futures, large retailers who refuse to renegotiate transport contracts, and the state collecting excise taxes: three forms of appropriation of value produced by others, all converging on the same social body.

The Second Front: The metropolitan subproletariat

On October 17, the protest changed in nature and geography. A hashtag that appeared out of nowhere on social media, “Italia in piazza,” called for demonstrations against the high cost of living, gas prices, and the tax burden. In Milan, Piazza Duomo became a battlefield; in Turin, a Feltrinelli bookstore was ransacked; in Bologna, clashes broke out in front of the train station involving water cannons and tear gas; the following day, in Milan alone, 271 people were taken to the police station, and as many as 220 were minors—among those detained were 12-year-olds, most of whom were second-generation Italians.

On the same day, in Rome, the CGIL’s national march and two other demonstrations against the high cost of living brought some 25,000 people into the streets without any incidents. This contrast must be kept in mind, because it disproves the government’s favorite myth of a single, violent protest. There are at least two distinct movements: one organized, with union roots and specific demands, and one disorganized, very young, urban, and lacking political leadership.

The second movement is the most interesting from a theoretical standpoint, and the most dangerous from a political standpoint. Marx had a term for the uprooted masses lacking class consciousness who, in times of crisis, can be mobilized by anyone who offers them a role: Lumpenproletariat. Using that word today does not mean insulting those young people. It means recognizing their objective position: children of the suburbs of Milan and Turin, often from immigrant families, excluded from the labor market even before entering it, raised in a world of conspicuous consumption that is never within their reach. It is a cognitive dissonance between imagination and reality, and the risk that this violence will be co-opted for reactionary purposes, as happened with the masses of unemployed and war veterans in the 1920s and 1930s.

The lesson of the 18th Brumaire also holds true in reverse. The underclass has no program of its own, and precisely for this reason it can become raw material for any project: that of those who want to set things ablaze, but also that of those who need an internal enemy to justify austerity measures. It is no coincidence that the government has chosen to speak almost exclusively about them, and almost never about the truck drivers in Gioia Tauro or the workers of the former Ilva plant who, in those same weeks, were striking in Taranto and Genoa to find out if they would still have a factory.

The state as a business committee

Il Manifesto defines modern state power as the committee that administers the common affairs of the bourgeois class. This formulation has often been dismissed as overly simplistic. The last two weeks offer an almost textbook-like illustration of it.

On October 18, following the clashes, the Prime Minister convened a summit on public order to evaluate further measures against those who exploit legitimate demonstrations. The October 19 summit resulted in the announcement of a decree-law that preempts measures from the security bill stalled in the Senate: deferred arrest for group vandalism, harsher penalties for roadblocks, and the strengthening of the “Strade Sicure” initiative in Milan with more military personnel. The League has called for the inclusion of preventive detention for minors as well. This would mark the eighth security package in four years.

Consider the sequence of events. A government that could not find the resources to extend the excise tax discount managed, in forty-eight hours, to find the resources to send the military onto the streets of Milan. An administration that, since March, has been issuing fuel decrees with two- or three-week deadlines—renewed only when the industry threatens a strike—is instead enacting emergency and permanent legislation on repression. Even the 300-million tax credit for the trucking industry, approved in May, still lacked an implementing decree by the end of June, to the point that industry associations were asking for it to be released. Social support arrives late, just in time, and in dribs and drabs; criminal legislation arrives immediately, and is designed to stay.

This does not stem from the malice of individual ministers, and those who think in terms of class need not demonize anyone. It stems from the role the state plays in a peripheral Western social formation, caught between European budget constraints and Atlantic rearmament commitments. We have military spending that will approach 45 billion in 2026 and austerity measures totaling approximately 23 billion. Caught in this vise, the state cannot redistribute wealth without breaking with its external guarantors, and so it does the only thing left to it: it manages the conflict as a matter of public order. Engels wrote this in The Origin of the Family: the state arises where class antagonisms become irreconcilable, as a power that claims to stand above society and that distances itself from it more and more.

The farce of contradictions

While the substance of the institutional response is consistent, its surface is a catalog of absurdities. It is worth listing them, because that is where the crisis of hegemony is most clearly visible.

The first concerns the diagnosis. Justice Minister Nordio spoke of probable criminal infiltration within the truckers’ blockades. Interior Minister Piantedosi, when questioned about the young people in Milan, admitted that there was still no evidence they were being manipulated. Two ministers from the same government: one sees organized crime behind the trucks, the other finds no orchestration behind the looting. Each chooses the interpretation that serves to delegitimize the crowd before them, and neither of them asks how much a full tank of gas costs.

The second issue concerns the passing of the buck. Milan Mayor Sala complained about an inadequate number of officers on the streets; Piantedosi responded by accusing him of being a representative of a “radical chic” left unable to condemn the violent protesters without exception. A group of mayors observed, with unintentional clarity, that pointing fingers at one another won’t lower gas prices. It is a perfect snapshot of a political class in which the majority and the opposition argue over the number of police needed, without either side questioning the system that fuels the anger.

The third issue concerns language. Meloni wrote that protesting against the high cost of living is a civil right, while sending a police officer to the hospital is the work of hooligans. Tajani called it unacceptable for the opposition to fan the flames. On October 22, Tajani himself welcomed the lifting of the strikes by the major trucking organizations, explaining that strikes do not lower diesel prices and only harm citizens and businesses. The right to protest is thus recognized in the abstract but denied in any concrete form that might produce results. You can protest, as long as the protest doesn’t disturb anyone; but a protest that doesn’t disturb anyone is a protest that no one hears. It is the old paradox of formal democracy that Marxist criticism has always denounced: equal freedoms on paper, unequal power relations in reality.

The fourth contradiction is the most serious. The government invokes the rule of law while drafting regulations—such as the preventive detention of 12-year-olds—that even its own commentators deem at risk of being unconstitutional. The state that demands that young people in the suburbs respect the rules is the same one that, to defend itself against them, is willing to violate its own.

The crisis is systemic

Gramsci, in his Quaderni, offered the most frequently cited definition of crisis: the old is dying and the new cannot be born, and during this interregnum the most varied pathological phenomena occur (readers are invited to consult Quaderni, Q. 3, 34). It is difficult to find a more accurate image for Italy in October 2026. The old social contract, founded on household savings, small businesses, and family-centered welfare, no longer holds. There is no new historical bloc. In between lie the pathological phenomena: youth gangs filming themselves as they ransack a jewelry store, ministers accusing one another, and a barrage of decrees.

Lenin, in the second chapter of The Failure of the Second International, way back in 1915, added that a crisis becomes revolutionary when those at the bottom no longer want to live as before and those at the top can no longer govern as before. The first condition is beginning to manifest itself in Italy. The second is evident in the paralysis of an executive branch that oscillates between last-minute extensions and punitive measures. The third element—the decisive one—is missing: a political force capable of transforming discontent into a program. The mass parties have been reduced to opinion-making groups and personal fiefdoms; the parliamentary left is demanding more police officers in Milan; the confederal unions have called for a general strike on November 20—five weeks after the clashes—and tend to meekly comply with government diktats just to keep their now-entrenched privileges intact. Meanwhile, in Milan, an “October 17 Movement” has emerged thatannounces demonstrations every Saturday until the government falls. Without roots, without organization, without theory, it is unlikely to go far. But its very emergence shows just how vast the void left behind is.

Herein lies the crux of the matter. I have argued elsewhere that the struggle today is not horizontal—between the right and the left—but vertical, between the people and the elites, and that those who reduce the conflict to a horizontal plane do so because they do not want people to understand where the problem lies. The events of October confirm this. The government has done everything in its power to transform a vertical conflict—over the cost of living and income distribution—into a horizontal one: Italians versus second-generation immigrants, law-abiding citizens versus hooligans, the productive North versus the South that blocks the roads. The slogan that appeared on the roadblocks, “The South Is Italy Too,” is the simplest response to this maneuver.

A class analysis that stops at national borders would be incomplete. The price of diesel in Cosenza depends on the Strait of Hormuz, and the Strait of Hormuz is closed or choked off because of a war that Italy did not decide on but supported as part of its Atlantic alignment. As early as March, the first fuel decree was justified by the international crisis linked to the war in Iran. Since then, the government has tried to keep up with rising prices through temporary discounts, while continuing to commit to rearmament goals and European austerity.

It is the old Leninist thesis on imperialism, updated to a condition of subordination. A country that does not control its own energy policy or its own foreign policy ends up passing on the costs of other people’s wars to the working classes. Sanctions against Russia have already driven up utility bills; the war in the Gulf is now driving up fuel prices. The bill always lands at the same address: the truck driver, the fisherman, the suburban family watching their grocery cart empty. While defense industry stocks rise, the real country grinds to a halt.

This is why Italy’s social crisis cannot be resolved with yet another extension of the fuel tax. It can be resolved—if at all—by breaking the constraints that make redistribution impossible: the European budget constraint in its current form, the military spending target, and the automatic alignment with wars that Italy endures without having any interest in them. Peace, energy sovereignty, and social justice are not three separate demands. They are the same demand viewed from three angles.

Who is asking for mercy, and from whom?

There is one image that stands out from these past weeks, and it is the skeleton on the banner in Termoli. It is not an image of revolt. It is an image of supplication: a people exposing their emaciated bodies and asking to be seen. The institutions have responded to this plea with the language of the criminal code, with mutual accusations between ministers and mayors, and with a tally of those arrested.

It must be stated clearly, because clarity is a duty of analysis: the devastation of a bookstore or the looting of a jewelry store is not class struggle. They are a symptom of a society that has ceased to offer its young people any sense of belonging, and the left, by romanticizing them, commits the same error as the right, which merely criminalizes them. Both fail to ask themselves how to transform that anger into consciousness. But it is equally clear that a state capable of responding to need only through force has lost its function as a social organism and has been reduced to an apparatus for defending those in power.

Italian history is all too familiar with these developments. Major social crises without political direction have always ended up shifting to the right, with an order imposed from above on the ruins of a fragmented movement. The alternative exists only if someone resumes the patient work that Gramsci called the “construction of hegemony”: organizing truck drivers and young people in the suburbs, fishermen and workers in Taranto, within a single vision that addresses wages, energy, peace, and sovereignty. This is not a task for talk shows or executive orders.

It is a political task in the oldest sense of the term, and institutional Italy, for now, has shown that it does not even want to acknowledge it.

• France and other countries across Europe are weathering another weekend of protests.
• In Paris, major tourist landmarks and storefronts shuttered for the day.
• The French interior ministry upped its police presence and deployed 70,000 personnel to the streets.

As France grapples with another weekend of cost-of-living protests, some of its most famous streets and landmarks are boarded up.

On Saturday, protesters took to the streets in major cities across France, including Paris and Marseille.

Though police in riot gear deployed tear gas and water cannons to disperse the demonstrations, the looting and rioting seen during last week's protests did not materialize.

In a statement, French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said that as of 7:30 p.m. local time, authorities had made about 1,000 arrests.

Hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets in France on Saturday.

Last weekend, student-led cost-of-living protests devolved in some places into violent riots and looting.

This weekend, the interior ministry increased its police presence, deploying some 70,000 officers across the country on Saturday. The protests drew support from various groups and organizations, including the gilets jaunes, or yellow vests.

On Saturday morning, military officers and a multipurpose intervention vehicle could be seen positioned outside Paris' National Assembly building.

Police deploy water cannons, tear gas in Marseille

In Marseille, police deployed tear gas and water cannons to break up protests. Videos from the scene showed lines of police charging protesters.

Paris gets violent

In the French capital on Saturday, thousands of officers largely prevented looting by keeping protesters to a predetermined parade route.

Videos showed demonstrations descending into melees as officers attempted to disperse crowds with tear gas and batons.

Shops on Paris' iconic Champs-Élysées were boarded up.

Luxury stores including Dior, Louis Vuitton, Cartier, and Moncler all have stores on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées.

Some 1,500 businesses were targeted in last weekend's vandalism, said Alexandre Bompard, the CEO of Carrefour, one of France's largest supermarket chains.

French business leaders widely condemned the looting that happened on October 17.

Business leaders, including Thierry Guibert, CEO of Lacoste, and Nicolas Houzé, executive chairman of Galeries Lafayette, all spoke out in the aftermath of last weekend's damage.

"We cannot allow violence to destroy what generations have put so much energy into building," Guibert wrote on X.

In central Paris, some shop owners boarded up their businesses as a precautionary measure.

Among the areas targeted in last weekend's violence in Paris were the Marais shopping district and the Place de la République.

Speaking to Business Insider's correspondent, Nathan Rennolds, last weekend, one shopkeeper in Paris said looters had "taken everything."

Major Paris tourist attractions, including the Louvre, have closed.

In a notice on its website, the Louvre says the museum would be closed on Saturday and all reservations would be reimbursed. The Louvre closed its doors earlier this week after student protests blocked the entrances.

The Grand Palais and Musée d'Orsay are also closed for the day.

In an update issued on Thursday, the US Embassy in France warned Americans to avoid demonstrations and said curfews across the country, including in some Paris neighborhoods, might continue. It also advised Americans in Paris for the NFL game on Sunday, October 25, to exercise caution.

Protests turned out across Europe on Saturday.

Protests are also expected in countries including Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Albania. Police in Tirana, Albania's capital, deployed tear gas against anti-government student protesters on Saturday.

French authorities have imposed extensive restrictions on demonstrations following last weekend’s violence. Courts have overturned some bans, while unions have accepted a last-minute change to the Paris protest route.

French police used tear gas to disperse demonstrators in Lyon on Saturday morning, 24 October, as 70,000 police officers and gendarmes were deployed nationwide to prevent a repetition of the violence and looting that accompanied last weekend’s mass protests.

In Paris, trade unions agreed to a revised demonstration route after the administrative court rejected their challenge to a last-minute police order. The march will proceed from Porte d’Italie to Porte de Vincennes, rather than between Bastille and Nation as originally agreed, with the procession scheduled to begin at 2pm.

Elsewhere, emergency judicial decisions have complicated the government’s security arrangements. Courts have suspended restrictions in Limoges and several municipalities around Marseille, while other cities remain subject to extensive bans on public gatherings.

The developments follow last weekend’s nationwide unrest, when approximately 550,000 people demonstrated against rising living costs, deteriorating public services and conditions in French schools. Violence erupted in several cities, leaving businesses looted, public buildings damaged and police officers injured.

Security operation on an unprecedented scale

Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez has ordered the deployment of 10,000 additional officers compared with 17 October. The operation includes specialist police units, armoured vehicles, helicopters and water cannon.

According to the government’s official security instructions, prefects must examine proposed demonstration routes, assess the reliability of organisers and take preventive measures where there is evidence of a risk to public order.

The authorities are particularly concerned about organised groups exploiting otherwise peaceful demonstrations to attack commercial premises and government buildings.

Security services expect between 400,000 and 500,000 people to participate in Saturday’s mobilisation. The government has warned that calls for renewed violence and looting have circulated online.

The previous weekend’s disturbances resulted in thousands of arrests. Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin said 217 people had already received prison sentences, with approximately half described as first-time offenders.

Courts challenge sweeping restrictions

The government’s measures have prompted an increasingly contentious legal dispute over the constitutional protection of public demonstrations.

The French Human Rights League has challenged restrictions in several cities, including Brest, Quimper, Caen, Marseille, Lille and Montpellier. It argues that extensive prohibitions interfere with freedom of assembly, expression and movement.

In Marseille, negotiations between local authorities and trade unions resulted in permission for a demonstration along an agreed route through the city. A separate administrative court decision subsequently suspended parts of the wider departmental ban, allowing gatherings in Gardanne, Istres, Martigues, Miramas and Tarascon.

The administrative court in Limoges also suspended restrictions on gatherings of more than ten people in the city centre and overturned an associated curfew.

In Lyon, however, restrictions remained in force across a large central area. Police dispersed approximately 150 demonstrators near Lyon III University shortly before 11am after participants blocked traffic close to the prohibited perimeter.

Macron faces a constitutional and political challenge

President Emmanuel Macron has argued that protecting public order must take priority following the destruction witnessed on 17 October.

His suggestion on Thursday that demonstrations not organised by recognised trade unions should generally be prohibited prompted legal challenges from opposition parties and civil liberties organisations.

In a ruling delivered on 23 October, the Conseil d’État rejected challenges to Macron’s remarks, finding that they did not themselves constitute a binding nationwide prohibition. The court nevertheless reaffirmed that prefects must assess individual demonstrations according to the circumstances and risks involved.

The ruling leaves local restrictions subject to judicial scrutiny rather than providing the government with unrestricted authority to prohibit protests.

Meanwhile, the movement’s original demands remain unresolved. What began with secondary-school students protesting against staff shortages, overcrowding and educational conditions has expanded into a broader mobilisation involving trade unions, university students and Yellow Vest campaigners.

Macron met representatives of secondary-school students on Friday, but participants subsequently called for demonstrations to continue until concrete proposals were presented.

Growing pressure ahead of the presidential election

The renewed mobilisation comes six months before France’s presidential election, in which Macron cannot seek a third consecutive term.

Political tensions are also evident in Orléans, where thousands of demonstrators gathered on Saturday to oppose the National Rally’s weekend party congress. Authorities deployed additional security personnel and restricted the location of the protest.

For the government, the immediate objective is to prevent another outbreak of large-scale violence. For unions and civil liberties organisations, the dispute increasingly concerns the conditions under which public protest may legitimately be restricted.

As EU Today reported ahead of Saturday’s demonstrations, the central legal question is whether prohibitions are proportionate to identifiable security risks.

The courts have now begun answering that question differently across France, leaving the authorities to enforce a patchwork of restrictions as the country’s social and political confrontation continues.

The months-long protests in Albania have reached a new escalation, with university students strengthening their mobilization since mid-October.

Concerns about study expenses, poor employment prospects, and low wages have added impetus to a movement that has demanded the resignation of Prime Minister Edi Rama and urgent action on the widespread corruption weighing on the country.

“Students have brought the Flamingo Revolution into a new phase,” wrote the Solidarity Albania platform. “In a capital where living costs devour 170% of the median net wage, public universities are starved to force youth into economic exile.”

“When a generation rises for its basic rights, the only legitimate response is total solidarity,” they added.

“Tirana’s struggle stands shoulder-to-shoulder with student strikes in France and India, and with liberation struggles in Palestine, Sudan, and the Congo, and elsewhere.”

Police violence brings comparisons to protests in France

Mass mobilizations against elite tourism projects, the devastation of Albania’s natural resources, and corruption have been ongoing since May this year – evolving in what was dubbed the Flamingo Revolution. 

For the past months, demonstrations have continued on a daily basis, Enriko Peçuli from the progressive party Lëvizja Bashkë told BreakThrough News. “Some days you saw more people on the streets, sometimes a bit less, but gatherings continued basically every night: the energy was there.”

On October 13, when the latest upsurge began, “you could sense in the city that something was going to happen,” Peçuli adds. When students assembled in large numbers near the Ministry of Education and part of the building caught fire, police violence erupted, Peçuli says – and has continued for ten days in a row.

Read more: Protests banned and curfews declared ahead of next major mobilization in France

The authorities’ violent response has drawn comparisons to the institutional response to youth mobilizations in France, yet it represents a new element in local mobilizations. During other significant demonstrations, including the student protests in 2018, it was not as pronounced, Peçuli says – possibly indicating Rama’s worsening position. 

Ever since the beginning of the protests, the prime minister has tried to deflect responsibility and avoided the protesters’ core demand: his resignation.

When the Flamingo Revolution started, Peçuli describes, Rama tried to blame it on foreign powers. He has named the governments of Greece, Iran, and Russia as culprits for the mobilizations. “It’s only gotten worse with time,” the activist points out. “He’s becoming more and more arrogant, he uses a language of violence.”

“Rage is pushing people into the streets”

After the escalation of the past days, Rama attempted – in a way – to establish dialogue with the students. This was resolutely rejected, as Peçuli notes that protesters will not agree to anything less than the government’s resignation.

“It’s spontaneous rage pushing people into the streets,” he said, nodding to the events’ decentralized character that some have credited for at least part of the demonstrations’ longevity.

“We don’t have trade unions or big student movements [like the ones in France], society is generally not organized in the same way,” Peçuli points out – but there’s no sign of backing down. 

“Rama might have offered dialogue, but it’s difficult to take that seriously after the past 10 days. After you’ve sanctioned breaking people’s heads, your right to call for dialogue is a bit limited.”

Thousands of protesters marched to the headquarters of the Election Commission of India (ECI) in Delhi and to other government offices in several cities across India on Friday, October 23, as part of the ongoing nationwide demonstrations against alleged electoral fraud and manipulations.

Protesters in Delhi carrying the national flag shouted slogans against the election fraud and the attacks on people’s right to vote, right to protest, and basic democracy in the country. They were stopped by the security forces deployed in large numbers who had barricaded all the routes leading to the ECI office hours before the protests began. Some of the protesters were also detained.

Similar protests were held across different parts of the country on Friday and earlier this week. The protests in Delhi were called by People Against SIR, a group of over 300 organizations formed recently to coordinate ongoing protests. The group includes major trade and farmers unions, student and youth movements, and other sections of civil society. 

A large number of farmers also participated in the protests which have been ongoing since the beginning of the month and are expected to intensify in the coming days as all opposition parties and civil society groups have already called for a large demonstration in Delhi on November 1 over the failure of the government to respond to their demands so far.

The march on Friday was converted to a public meeting after it was stopped by the security forces. Several people addressed the protesters, pointing out the complete disregard to the basic rights of citizens by the Narendra Modi-led government.

Some of them also questioned the legitimacy of the ultra-right-wing government, claiming it was a result of a stolen mandate.

Undeclared emergency

The Narendra Modi government has imposed an undeclared emergency in the country by making it an offense to wave the national flag, arresting activists, and letting the police and pro-regime thugs repeatedly attack protesters, women and journalists, People Against SIR said in a press release on Thursday.

The failure of the constitutional institutions, including the Supreme Court of India to intervene against the blatant misuse of state power and their failure to protect the basic rights of the people confirms the state of democracy in the country, it underlined.

Two leaders of the CJP were sent to seven days of judicial custody after they tried to unfurl the national flag in central Delhi last week in an attempt to resist the government’s clampdown on the protesters.

Hundreds of people, mostly young activists, have been detained, and beaten by the security forces since the beginning of the protests. Several of the women protesters and journalists have complained about police and pro-government thugs molesting and beating them during the protests.

The government has repeatedly used sections of the law to restrict movement and barricaded the central parts of the capital city for weeks now.

India cannot be allowed to become a police state

The protesters decried the restrictions imposed by the government against protests in the capital and other places, calling it a violation of the right to peaceful protest. They announced that they will not let India become a “police state.”

The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) is an ongoing process initiated by the ECI to revise the electoral rolls in the country. The opposition has alleged that the process was illegal and was initiated with the intention to manipulate elections to benefit the ruling ultra-right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has been in power since 2014.

Several reports in the local newspapers have also claimed the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar violated established legal procedures and made changes in the SIR process arbitrarily on several occasions to benefit the ruling party.

Over 130 million voters, around 14% of all registered electorates in the country as per the 2024 data, have been removed from India’s decentralized electoral rolls since the process began last year. In some states a quarter to half of all electorates were removed.

The number is significant especially given the fact that in India’s First Past the Post system, the victory margins in elections are often very small.

Some have claimed that many of the voters removed from the roll were from religious minority communities or sections of the working class which have generally voted against the BJP. 

One of the major demands of the ongoing protests is the removal of the SIR process altogether. Protesters have also demanded the removal of the sitting CEC and for legal action to be taken against him, as well as the re-inclusion of all the people whose names have been removed from the electoral rolls.