Feminist struggles against the far right and repression

Everywhere in France, on the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women and Gender Minorities, demonstrations were less well attended than in recent years, giving the impression of dispersal of feminist organizations. To this was added, especially in Paris on November 22, the shocking presence of two far-right, femo-nationalist and Zionist cortèges, Nemesis and Nous Vivrons, marching supervised by the police several hundred meters behind the feminist organizations.

The far right is not feminist and the police choose sides

For more than a year, the far right has been trying to insert itself into feminist demonstrations and is using all its resources to do so, in particular by playing on its relations with the Ministry of the Interior. If it succeeds in imposing itself in feminist mobilizations, it will then be able to involve itself in strikes and social struggles and rewrite history in favour of its disgusting ideology, as it is already doing in the public debate.

Faced with these groups that claim to be feminist in order to better disseminate their racist, Islamophobic and identitarian ideology, the feminist movement and the workers’ movement are struggling to provide an effective response.

What happened on November 22 is also a message sent by the French state. In Paris, the police decided to protect the far-right counter-demonstration and beat and assaulted feminist activists. The BRAV-M was deployed: an offensive, virile device, designed to intimidate and disgust. At the end of the procession, the police charged, gassed, clubbed and confiscated the signs and flags of feminist activists.

The police prefecture therefore imposed by force the presence of far-right groups in a march that was supposed to denounce patriarchal, racist, transphobic violence. Worse still, hooded officers then posed in front of an upside-down feminist banner, like a war trophy — a practice borrowed from hooligans and fascist groups.

This police protection of far-right groups must push the entire feminist movement to consider the question of confrontation and the management of our own demonstrations.

Confronting and rebuilding mobilization

This November 22 must be a warning. The police protect fascists, isolate feminists, and try to discipline our struggles through fear. Their deterrent practices exclude the most vulnerable, limit the freedom to demonstrate and seek to impose the presence of racist and colonial organizations in our mobilizations.

In the face of this offensive, it is urgent that we all mobilize against the far right, to defend our demonstrations and our rights, and to rebuild massive, feminist, LGBTI, anti-racist, anti-fascist, solidarity marches, capable of protecting our mobilizations and our demands.

To do this, it will also be necessary to go beyond the institutional discourse which, on the one hand, implements the constitutionalization of abortion and the entry of consent into the law, and on the other hand abolishes subsidies to family planning. We must demand resources commensurate with the needs to profoundly transform society.

Violence against women will never be fought alongside identitaire racists, who reproduce this violence, but in the collective struggle against patriarchy, racism, LGBTphobia, imperialism, capitalism and all forms of domination. Let’s build the response, right now.

24 December 2025

Translated by International Viewpoint from l’Anticapitaliste.