[MONTBELIARD] The Revolution can be non-violent, the press can be deceitful.

Bruno Lemerle, representative of retired workers from the CGT (General Confederation of Labour) in the Pays de Montbéliard, provided a legitimate, intelligent, and necessary response to the media outlet L'Est Républicain. It is true that media coverage of the February 11th demonstration was scandalous, and we have become accustomed to it. We are less accustomed to this media outlet allowing the right of public response to union activists, as was the case on Tuesday, February 14th, 2023. However, this right of response was truncated and modified since the original statement was not published. I also want to address the propagandistic article, worthy of Russian Today, developed by journalists from Crédit Mutuel (L'Est Républicain). This article had the sole purpose of creating division among protesters by relying on a pseudo-confrontation (an attempt to occupy the highway by Yellow Vests). Because, once again, words are important in the class struggle, especially when the powerful local press is openly at war with the working class. First, the word "confrontation" is misused in this case, a confrontation is "an action to battle, fight, or challenge." Here unarmed protesters want to go to a strategic point to make themselves heard, they are prevented by over-trained and over-armed military personnel. This is an "armed and authoritarian blockade" and not a "confrontation." And this is not the only deficiency in the French language that Crédit Mutuel journalists possess. To differentiate (or rather divide) union activists and Yellow Vests, the media uses the word "determination" for the former and "revolution" for the latter. According to L'Est Républicain, a revolution is violent. This is purely false, and it is also a bourgeois propaganda used since the French Revolution of 1789. It may be time for right-wingers to evolve. As a reminder, a revolution is a radical change in the political system. A revolution can be completely non-violent. The Pays de Montbéliard is proof of this during the Revolution of 1793 when the population of Montbéliard chose to join the French Republic by itself at the expense of the German dukes. The latter simply left without fighting. The blunt and pragmatic truth is that a revolution can be peaceful and/or violent; it will depend exclusively on those who hold power. On Tuesday, February 14th, L'Est Républicain praised the equipment of LBD (defense ball launchers) granted by the Montbéliard city hall to the municipal police. From his lofty bourgeois position, Philippe Duvernoy, deputy in charge of security for the city of Montbéliard, declared: "Once we decided to equip our municipal police with lethal weapons (type 38 Special revolvers initially, now Glocks), there was no reason not to do so with non-lethal weapons." Revolvers, Glocks, and now LBDs, the French state represented by the right-wing Montbéliard city hall does not show any signs of appeasement or non-violence. The "funny" or rather cynical thing is the concluding sentence of this article developed by the journalist, one would think that he is doubting what he writes, in fact: "It is now up to the agents to use it with discernment and for good reason." Having spoken several times with the municipal police officers in Montbéliard, I can assure you that the intellectual level and rigor of this militia are clearly not up to the danger of these deadly weapons. Duvernoy and Biguinet (Mayor of Montbéliard, our local Margaret Thatcher) are safe and reassured, their personal guard is now very large and equipped with weapons as expensive as they are dangerous, but the protesters of Montbéliard are much less so: insecurity at work, insecurity of work, international insecurity (wars), energy insecurity, food insecurity, housing insecurity, health insecurity, ... Faced with all these problems, state representatives respond with contempt and ignorance, then mockery and finally violence. Loral Aitken, specialist in the ultra-rich and bourgeois violence."