On October 17, do you think it’s important to take action but are afraid of losing an eye? Do you want the movement to do more damage to the system than routine protests? Drawing inspiration from recent history and asymmetric conflict strategies, here are a few ideas for collective action that could make the movement much more effective than downtown marches!
Preliminary Notes
Why are we—Anti-Tech Revolution, an international resistance movement against high technology (including AI and digital technology in particular) and the industrial systems that produce them (by exploiting nature and humans)—taking an interest in this struggle that began a few weeks ago among high school students in France?
Because this “Gen Z”—the generation that old fools claimed was “lost because it was raised on smartphones” (and so on)—has, over the past month, actually proven capable of teaching us all a lesson in radicalism. Throughout history, materialist thinkers have theorized that those who experience exploitation firsthand are also the most likely to spearhead revolts. In the West, the most technologically advanced continent (where continuous “progress” stems directly from the organized maintenance of other continents’ technological backwardness), it may therefore be those who have experienced the misery of connected life since childhood—those who have never known life without smartphones, yet are therefore capable of dreaming of it[1]—who could provide the initial impetus for a revolt with potentially global repercussions. From Nepal in 2025 to France in 2026, recent popular uprisings at least prompt us to seriously consider this possibility. So let’s hope that, like Neo in *The Matrix*, disgust with industrial life will lead this new generation to fall in love with a freedom they’ve never known and, in their quest for emancipation, to push their confrontation with the guardians of the technological system ever further. Here, then, are a few ideas, along with a call to all the Morpheuses still alive: young people need your tactical advice, if not your practical support. Do not abandon them to their fate; join the struggle, for it is through this struggle that hope is built. It is up to the rest of us, in France and around the world, to follow in the footsteps of the youth on October 17.
Finally, note that for the analysis that follows, we have drawn not only on our readings but also—and above all—on our on-the-ground experiences from past years, with the Yellow Vests, in the climate movement, in the pension reform movement and its highway blockades, right up to the dismal leftist leadership that led to the humiliating “Let’s Block Everything” campaign. As a reminder, in response to our call to intensify the struggle on September 18–19, 2025, the “radical” influencer Léo Commune refused to take a public stance out of fear of leftist cancel culture, and the media outlets Contre-Attaque, Cerveaux Non Disponibles, and Canard Réfractaire preferred to amplify the “We Don’t Want This Anymore” call from the Paduteam Stalinists, resulting in the dismal failure of their attempt on Sunday, September 21, 2025, to revive a cut-rate version of “Nuit debout.” In order to make our advice as clear as possible, but also to support our recommendations with a rational demonstration, we have chosen to adopt the DOSTOA strategic methodology: Diagnosis (1), Objective (2), Strategy (3), Tactics (4), Organization (5), Adaptation (6). Enjoy the read, and good luck with the struggle.
1) Diagnostic attempt: remembering where we came from to better understand how to move forward
France, September 2026: After a scorching summer and terrifying mega-fires, a geopolitical crisis surrounding the Strait of Hormuz has caused fuel prices to skyrocket (now well above the “€1.50 per liter” that sparked the Yellow Vests uprising in 2018), while AI researchers themselves are fueling media panic about the existential dangers of this new technology, and after, finally, the massacre—broadcast live on our screens—of an entire people in Palestine, young people are issuing calls on social media. “You talk too much: October 17, 2026.”
Then, in late September 2026, more and more high schools in the suburbs were blockaded. Within a few weeks, far from losing steam, the movement spread like wildfire across the country—including the overseas territories—and even as far as Italy and Germany, where rallies were also planned for October 17. While some high school students called for dialogue and nonviolence—supported by school administrators—others did not hesitate to engage in confrontations or vandalize infrastructure. An unprecedented police crackdown then descended upon them, but failed to break their resolve. By late September, reports indicated that 350 high schools had been blockaded and 650 young people had been arrested. But the protests continued to grow: by early October, the number of high schools involved had risen to 1,000 (with 450,000 protesters on October 6), and the Ministry of the Interior then revealed that more than 5,000 people had been placed in police custody since the movement began, while major riots broke out in the city of Liège, Belgium[2]. October 17 thus marked the climax of this impressive escalation[3].
“When we talk about ‘blockades’ in high schools, we’re already engaging in a form of reduction and simplification of the practices of high school student revolt. There are acts of sabotage (doors set on fire, gates knocked down, “e-blockades” against remote learning) and acts of revenge (against the school hierarchy and the police outside), acts of urban guerrilla warfare (barricades), and wildcat strikes (walkouts during recess and blockades during off-hours), and finally, something akin to a game aimed at ridiculing authority (slogans about Macron and their teacher, dressing up as superheroes to contrast with the uniforms of oppressors).”
Excerpt from an article by @grcpaname available here (in french)
Before this surprising movement, however, the state of social struggle in France was far from glorious. The Yellow Vests and the riots over Nahel were followed by the lockdown and then the pension reform movement—with its sporadic strikes infiltrated by the unions, and its millions of people mobilized for several months straight to no avail. And in September 2025—a year earlier—there was the horror of “Bloquons Tout,” a grassroots call to action against the Bayrou Budget, directly infiltrated by left-wing leaders. A call to action that, instead of sparking a revolt directly modeled after the one in Nepal (where Gen Z overthrew its government), would slowly die out on September 21 under the combined blows of the unions and leftists.
And yet, amid this stagnation, young people seem determined to keep fighting for their living conditions. That’s because these living conditions aren’t exactly rosy: buildings that are too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter, classrooms without desks, infirmaries without nurses. A life on TikTok to forget the anxiety of the present. And the promise of an even bleaker future: war, crisis, exploitation in an “Uberized” workforce, monitored by algorithms, deprived of any access to nature. Without articulating it, they all know deep down that school is not their salvation, but rather the grinder that robs them of their childhood dreams so as to better mold them into the standardized human—broken by industrial exploitation and technological alienation, a human who is nothing more than a cog in the machine. Let’s bet that these young people aren’t fighting for school, but only to improve their conditions of confinement within it. It’s now up to the movement to give them enough of a taste of freedom (through self-organization) so that they never want to go back, and above all, so that they are never again forced to return.
2) Questioning Our Goal: From Outrage to Revolution
The first trap is that of indignation. To be indignant, rather than to revolt. The indignant person does not take an active role in solving their own problems; they are merely a witness, someone who asks the state to solve them for them. They believe the state will solve them, or worse, they pretend to criticize the state—or this or that government—only to better validate it by claiming that some other government (which is still the state) would be better suited to solving the problems. Whether out of stupidity or class interest, they overlook the fact that the state has never been anything other than the institution designed to preserve the political status quo (the system’s superstructure) in the face of freedom-destroying technological development, its unjust economic distribution (the system’s infrastructure, “capitalism”), and the various social classes that benefit from it—the bourgeoisie, technocrats, but also… managers (a critical analysis of this “managerial class”—often overlooked in social criticism but nonetheless playing a decisive role in stifling struggles—will be presented in the third part of this article).
All these actors, who benefit from the current system, will then be the first to stoke outrage (when they aren’t openly pro-system): in the face of social anger, certain members of the bourgeoisie (the wealthy, business owners, bankers, etc.) will suddenly discover they are philanthropists and claim to be redistributing a portion of their profits—stolen from workers—while certain technocrats (scientists, engineers, etc.) will discover they are humanists and claim that nuclear power was invented primarily to heat working-class neighborhoods, and certain leaders (politicians, bureaucrats, teachers, cultural figures, etc.) finally, will discover they are “insurgents” and claim to “give a voice to minorities”—when in truth they seek to better subject them to their “inclusive” yoke within the system.
We’re not falling for that. This system is rotten to the core. It destroys human freedom just as it destroys the wild, and today it even undermines humanity’s very ability to live on Earth. Everyone knows this. Only those who benefit from this situation deny it, accusing one another in order to muddy the waters: the bourgeoisie say it’s the fault of lazy managers, the technocrats say it’s the fault of incompetent bourgeoisie, the managers—from the height of their complete ignorance of the technical necessities that allow them to live like parasites within the indecent Western infrastructure—say that if they “self-managed” the system, everything would be better (thanks, but no one here wants to relive the industrialist dictatorships that were the USSR or Mao’s China).
No, deep down, we—young people, unskilled workers, peasants, Indigenous peoples, and defenders of nature—all know what we need: a revolution.
No begging, no waiting, no changing governments, no more desks in the concrete rabbit hutch that serves as our classroom. Just stop everything. Stop everything, reflect, and start over differently. This is the first solution—and it is also the inevitable answer to the greatest trap that will be set for us: to truly ask ourselves what we want, individually and collectively, and how we want to live out the remaining years we have on this earth. From there, we must define a clear goal for what drives us into the streets. Then defend it at all costs against the compromises our exploiters will try to make us accept. We want nothing less than freedom, and that freedom will not come through golden chains or a benevolent state, but rather through the outright shutdown of the system.
But this freedom cannot be won or preserved without a global expansion of the struggle. We must therefore start locally—from our living conditions, our high schools, and our cities—to build a movement that will resonate internationally. To this end, we have two advantages that our predecessors did not have. On the one hand, by spanning the entire planet, industrial infrastructure has created relatively similar conditions from one megacity to another. The defense of the living conditions of urban dwellers in one country can therefore easily resonate with urban dwellers in another country. On the other hand, the global interconnection of social media now facilitates the international spread of protests, practices, and slogans. From this perspective, the movement that began in France has already started to go global. We must now strengthen it further here so that it continues to inspire those elsewhere who are seeking to draw strength from it.
Finally, it is worth noting here that, in addition to the proactive efforts of certain social classes to steer the movement toward a harmless stance of indignation, the technological infrastructure that shapes our daily lives could just as easily trap us within it. We (ATR) have already read the pertinent critiques of the proliferation of digital technology in social struggles, which point out that the habit of filming turns everyone into a mini-policeman in the service of the system (since every video can then be used against the person being filmed to incriminate them). But here we wish to take the critique of digital technology even further, beyond its purely policing dimension, and question its broader social consequences. .. Who here has never lost themselves scrolling through images of riots or police violence? Who here has never lost track of themselves in the multitude of analyses and viewpoints flourishing every day on social media? Who here has never been so overwhelmed by information and commitments that they could no longer think or even move? The digital world exists as a parasite on real society. It is its distorting, spectacular mirror, where everything is more beautiful and/or more shocking. But this mirror drains the energy that powers it directly from real life, like a tick. The more time we spend watching sports videos, the less athletic we are. The more time we spend watching videos about seduction, the fewer real friends we have. The more “likes” we have, the more deeply alone we are.
The same logic applies to social movements: the more their online presence grows, the greater the risk that they will become nothing more than a hollow shell in real life. Everyone tweets, but no one speaks anymore. Everyone scrolls, but no one debates anymore. Everyone is filming, yet no one is taking action. Digital technology puts us in the position of “outraged” spectators at the very moment when we should most be active participants in the revolt: too much news? It’s impossible to think clearly and come up with a strategic plan. Too much buzz? It’s impossible to put down the phone and take to the streets. Of course, politicians, left-wing influencers, and other leaders are actively fueling this phenomenon: their quest for popularity and votes drives them to drain real-world social energy and convert it into digital notoriety for their own gain. But they aren’t the only ones to blame: caught up in our connected world, each of us can falter and give in to the urge to “capture an incredible moment” or “stay informed” amid the endless stream of algorithms. The isolated individual can do little in the face of the parasitism of their own digital reflection. It is here that we will mention for the first time the “group,” the best antidote (through the real human collective) to digital hypnosis. It is by organizing on a human scale—with people with whom the struggle compels us to share our most intimate selves through a web of mutual dependencies—that we can gain the strength to confront the digital world and navigate it as a space for organization, without succumbing to it as an end in itself. To move beyond mere outrage—and beyond mistrust of the authorities who profit from it— we must raise awareness of the dangers inherent in our relationship with the digital realm and constantly engage in collective self-analysis to determine how best to use it for the benefit of the real, revolutionary struggle—so that it does not, on the contrary, drain the real struggle of its vitality and transform it into virtual outrage.
3) Improving Our Strategy: From Leadership to Gridlock
“We’re not here to burn trash cans [...] We notified the police earlier; we told them they could count on us to prevent any form of violence. We are pacifists, and we hope everyone will do the same.[...] The people who are setting things on fire and smashing things in no way represent the movement. […] All political parties must unite for the sake of young people, because they are patriots, and therefore they support a stable future for this country; thus, they have a duty to change the situation we face every day.”
Elwan, a high school student who became a star of the left after a widely publicized interview in October 2026.
An underground conflict is brewing within the high school movement and intensifying as October 17 approaches. It is a struggle between social classes with conflicting interests. On one side are precarious workers and their children, who do not seek media attention but take direct action against the system in the streets; on the other side are managerial-level workers, seeking economic and political recognition of their social role (notably through the electoral prospects of LFI).
We must proactively take a stand alongside the rebels to push back against the management and enable a more massive popular rallying behind a social movement free from leftist overtones. This was the case with the success of the “apolitical” Yellow Vests: it is up to us to ensure that the October 17 movement rejects partisan politics in the same way, and instead reconnects with the quest for popular autonomy that the movement has directly embodied.
To do this, we must first understand who the leadership classes are, and what they will attempt to do (and are already attempting) with this young movement.
“To understand the current situation, we need to take a step back in time and analyze the conditions under which these middle-management classes emerged and developed during the 1980s. By analyzing the historical context of their emergence, we can better understand their role and their political subjectivity. When the Socialists came to power in 1981, the Keynesian-Fordist model of production was in crisis. This model was based on the central role of the working class in the production process and the gradual imposition of so-called “scientific” work organization in factories. Starting in the late 1970s, signs that this model was running out of steam began to multiply, and the first factory closures forced political elites to find a way out of the crisis by forging a new productive model. They then gradually shifted their focus toward the development of a high-tech industry, producing goods with high added value and requiring a highly skilled workforce.
Logically, as the industrial workforce disintegrates, the management and retraining of the working class take on crucial importance. Consequently, budgets allocated to education, social work, integration, and cultural mediation are rising sharply, leading to the gradual emergence of a new managerial class situated outside the productive sphere (in contrast, therefore, to traditional managerial classes such as engineers, foremen, and managers): specialized educators, teachers, cultural mediators, social workers, and the nonprofit sector became a pillar of the new social order taking shape. Indeed, these groups managed to make themselves indispensable in the 1980s for two reasons. On the one hand, they helped manage the social effects of deindustrialization, mass unemployment, and the decline of the working-class world. Furthermore, they are the backbone of a political and social project aimed at replacing the old factory working class with a new one—better educated, better paid, and more compliant, having been socialized by these new professionals in leadership roles. This project also holds the promise of a new social compromise: in exchange for their political marginalization, workers are offered new prospects for social advancement through education.
But in reality, these management professionals are quickly tasked with the menial job of directing the young workforce toward jobs in the new service sectors—unskilled positions paid at the minimum wage. Their role as intermediaries between capital and the workforce forms the basis of their political activity: they seek to make themselves indispensable by presenting the welfare state (that is, in effect, themselves) as a shield against market forces and as a vehicle for integration. As we shall see, this political activity will become increasingly insistent as the restructuring of class relations renders them increasingly superfluous.
Although numerically and politically powerful in the 1980s and 1990s, the managerial classes began to experience a significant decline starting in the 2000s. Their rise, as we have seen, can be explained by the dual need to manage the transition away from the Keynesian-Fordist model and to build a new social order based on education. But at the turn of the 2000s, this project came up against the reality of class relations. Capitalists, in fact, had a greater need for unskilled workers in the service sector and fewer skilled workers in industry: discourses on the importance of education, the need for reindustrialization, or the promises of digital technology were increasingly out of step with reality. In this context, the management of the workforce has increasingly shifted away from support and toward coercion and control. Political elites, constrained by the new productive order being imposed upon them, initiated—beginning in the late 2000s—a restructuring movement in the social management sectors, involving budget cuts and the imposition of new work methods. The loss of centrality of the managerial classes in the management of social relations has led to their gradual dismantling by the state. Consequently, in these sectors—and particularly in what constitutes their original core, namely public education and cultural outreach—we are seeing a decline in staff numbers, a reduction in financial resources, and a gradual distancing from the center of political power.
This results, at both the national and local levels, in a weakening of management’s bargaining power with policymakers: teachers’ unions are looked down upon, local governments are cutting subsidies to nonprofit organizations year after year, and protests from the cultural sector are blithely ignored. More broadly, the political standing that artists, teachers, and nonprofit activists had managed to secure in the 1980s is gradually eroding and disappearing. The middle-class professional groups therefore denounce the lack of financial resources allocated to them but, above all, feel a palpable indifference on the part of political authorities toward them. It is in this context that citizen-led movements centered on the need for democracy have emerged, such as Nuit Debout in 2016 or the visceral reaction to the use of Article 49.3 to push through the pension reform in 2023. The development of a project for democratic renewal, driven by this social group, is a tool that will enable them to reclaim the political centrality they have lost.
Criticism of the Fifth Republic’s shortcomings or of the increased administrative strictness toward associations can thus be analyzed as a response to their economic and political marginalization—despite the fact that they had succeeded in securing a central place in the productive order that emerged in the 1980s. [...]
Thus, what took place around September 10, 2025 (#BloquonsTout) in assemblies and in the streets is nothing more than the expression of a class struggle: that of the managerial classes to regain political hegemony. This struggle is also necessarily waged against other class segments that share neither the same interests nor the same aspirations.
Conversely, far from being limited to the mere defense of the welfare state, the class struggles waged by workers in de-skilled sectors involve broader issues, which we can only briefly touch upon in this conclusion. Let us briefly note, then, that the emergence of a new unskilled labor force in the service sector—while it has helped lower the overall price of labor—has created at least as many contradictions for capital as it has resolved. As for the managerial classes, as we have seen, the trend is clear: their evident decline is set to continue. As for low-skilled workers, the situation is more complex. Capital seeks both to de-skill labor—by creating a mass of interchangeable workers confined to performing repetitive tasks in the service sector—in order to drive down the overall price of labor. On the other hand, it must ensure the availability of this labor force, which rejects its condition. It is this contradiction that applies specifically to de-skilled workers, and not merely within the company: it also affects schools, neighborhoods, and families. Yet these spaces of confrontation themselves generate frictions that, in turn, require regulatory intervention by the state. Such is the nature of the class struggle; it does not need to declare itself as such to exert a subterranean influence on social balances. It is within the context of this development that open and significant class struggles emerge. Thus, the Yellow Vests movement and the riots following Nahel’s death mark the development of new antagonisms driven by the unskilled segments of the workforce.
Therefore, we must acknowledge the incompatibility between the struggles of the managerial class and those of unskilled workers. In our view, this incompatibility requires us to make a choice: either continue to believe that we can have it both ways by dreaming of a hypothetical interclass convergence, or acknowledge the fundamental antagonism between two lines of development in the class struggle. ”
Excerpt from an analysis by the french media outlet “Sans Trève” that we have reproduced here.
Once we understand what the managerial class is and what it is trying to promote within this (currently interclassist) movement that began with high school students, our task will be to develop and strive to spread and reinforce a widespread distrust of its representatives and their attempts to seize power (disguised under their usual leftist pretexts: “horizontal” assemblies, “inclusive” speaking opportunities, “benevolent” struggles...).
Rallying as many young and not-so-young people as possible to the revolutionary goal rather than to the practice of outrage will be a good start; removing leaders from any position of power or media exposure will be an appropriate next step; but ultimately, we must offer the movement a credible strategic alternative, so that the revolution is not merely an empty slogan. To achieve this, as an alternative to the ideal of leadership and outrage, we can propose the strategy of gridlock (meaning: the gridlocking of flows, aimed at causing a cascading failure of industrial infrastructure).
“Social movements typically pursue a strategy of war of attrition. What is a war of attrition? It is a slow and protracted struggle aimed at weakening the enemy until it collapses on its own. In our context, this translates into a defensive reaction to the attacks of industrial capitalism: we oppose one destructive project at a time. This strategy fails. Our occasional victories against this or that reform do not truly weaken the institutions that foster industrial exploitation; at best, we merely slow down the pace at which it grows stronger.[…] A war of attrition is an absurd strategy from our standpoint: we must shift our focus to gain strategic effectiveness. […]
The system’s war against the planet, against the majority of human beings, and against future generations rests on the techno-industrial infrastructure (and thus the energy that powers it). To move beyond a strategy of attrition, we must think in terms of systems, flows, nodes, and above all, bottlenecks. We must understand how oil, coal, and gas are extracted, transported, processed, distributed, and burned. We must understand where the system is vulnerable and where we can intervene for maximum impact.
In practical terms, we don’t need to dismantle every factory, destroy every bulldozer, or tear down every road. We just need to paralyze what allows them to function: their infrastructure. Industrial systems can withstand the loss of one or two components without suffering further damage and can quickly resolve the resulting problems. But these systems are designed for efficiency (to produce a lot, quickly), not resilience (to withstand shocks). When a sufficient number of critical components fail simultaneously, the failures ripple through the system—like a series of dominoes—causing more and more elements to shut down. The impacts increase exponentially, and the longest-lasting disruptions persist. “Under the right circumstances, a cascade of failures can bring the entire system to a standstill.”
Excerpt from a french article in “Vert Resistance” that we have reproduced here.
Thus, the quest to create a bottleneck in the system’s flow could be a far more promising strategy than the current one of the left taking the lead in the social movement while waiting for elections. It would then be up to all those in revolt to understand that symbolic actions cannot be an end in themselves. That while gathering in large numbers at a symbolically important location may help mobilize people at first, the element of surprise is quickly lost. That the authorities can therefore easily crack down on us there. That the basic lessons of asymmetric conflicts are to maintain the initiative for one’s own side and thus avoid getting bogged down in predictable routines.
But also to understand that if the system is very powerful, it is because it must produce enormously, on a just-in-time basis, and that it is therefore far less resilient than it is powerful[4]. That this, therefore, is where we must focus our efforts for a strategy seeking to build the capacity for a revolutionary movement.
4) Tactical Conclusions: From the Symbolic to the Material
But then, if our political goal shifts from statist indignation to revolution, and if our strategy for achieving it rejects top-down control in favor of self-organization aimed at clogging the system’s flows, what tactics can concretely bring about this clogging?
Our task here, therefore, is to seek modes of action that aim (indirectly) to test the system’s resilience rather than directly confronting its power. Our asymmetric strategy could then consist of seeking to clog the system’s most fragile flows (see the CARVER matrix below as a tool for identifying these flows) through legal actions (or those drawn from the union’s repertoire of actions)—but actions that are numerous and unexpected... What would happen on the 17th if, all across France, small, self-organized groups each took it upon themselves to disrupt a single flow all day long? Fifteen pedestrians repeatedly crossing at the same traffic light? Fifteen cars driving at 1 mile per hour over there? Fifteen high school students handing out flyers at the roundabouts at every entrance to the ring road, causing traffic jams? All while wearing Yellow Vests as a distinguishing mark among themselves, but also in the eyes of the public! And all this without confrontation or any intent to break the law: if you’re chased away from one place? Leave without resisting and start over somewhere else! But keep going all day long without stopping, until the system is so overwhelmed that it can’t come and dislodge you from the roundabout, where you’ll spend the evening in meetings planning what comes next.
⚠ Since ATR is a legal movement, we are presenting here only legal avenues or actions drawn from the labor union playbook. It should be noted, however, that these principles of strategic and tactical organization are applicable to any type of asymmetric conflict, and that in situations different from those of the past (such as the Nazi occupation of 1939–1945), resistance fighters were able to successfully adapt them to other forms of action. While this is intended to underscore the historical validity of these principles, we strongly advise our readers against acting outside the legal framework.
The boulevards of Paris are designed to allow the police and surveillance cameras to control crowds. In 2019, it was by converging on Paris every Saturday that the Yellow Vests ultimately got crushed. Let’s avoid large, predictable gatherings of this kind, and instead remember the tactics that made the Yellow Vests so successful in their early days. We too often believe that the crowd is our strength, but on the contrary, it makes us passive and controllable. On the 17th, put on a yellow vest and bring your friends to cause a small, peaceful disruption to traffic by handing out flyers. If many of us do this, if many of us join those doing it all across France, and if in the evening all these new groups hold local assemblies to discuss next steps, then we will have laid the first foundation stone of a movement that truly threatens the system—because it is both elusive and effectively targets its material fragility. For the revolution.
Below are two tactical tools essential to the success of October 17:
1) The map of proposed actions for the 17th (as you’ll see, there are many other possible actions besides downtown demonstrations; it’s up to each of us to be creative in adding to this map over the next few days): https://17octobregiletjaune.net/carte
2) The CARVER matrix helps in the collective determination of the most promising targets for activist groups (excerpt from the same Vert Resistance article—to be used in ATR’s legal action playbook):
“Unlike the current situation, where activists select gathering places based on symbolic considerations, the cascade failure [congestion] strategy requires a precise choice of targets. Precisely (!), the CARVER matrix—a tool developed several decades ago by people who know a thing or two about strategy—allows for better target selection:
- Criticality: How important is the element to the system?
- Accessibility: Is it easy to reach the element?
- Recoverability: How quickly and easily can the system resume its functions after the element has been damaged?
- Vulnerability: Is it easy to damage the element using available tactics and tools?
- Impact: What undesirable side effects might result?
- Recognizability: Is it easy to identify the target under adverse conditions, such as a dark, rainy night?
Most protesters, both legal and illegal, have so far chosen accessible and vulnerable targets. But these targets are neither critical nor difficult to replace. Activists who want to be effective should think in terms of the CARVER matrix criteria with the goal of triggering a cascade of failures. In this way, they would understand that it is better to disrupt the power grid than to protest in the city center. They would understand that certain weak points are not necessarily where we think they are. Finally, they would understand that it is possible to change the course of history. ”
5) Rethinking our practical organization: the gang rather than the crowd
“Gangs of high school students from working-class neighborhoods constitute the true force at work both within and against the current youth movement. In a sense, this force is less part of the high school student movement than it is a continuation of the revolt for Nahel. It has no demands, no representatives; it does not conform to the codes of the left and rejects bourgeois politeness. It wants revenge. [...] It is to the extent that we reconnect with our gang instincts that our actions will be welcomed and have an impact, both offensively and tactically (distribution of masks, saline solution, anti-repression flyers, lawyers’ names, food, sound and light equipment). By acting in this way, we hope to sustain the time we’ve carved out for gathering, discussion, and conspiracy.”
Excerpt from an article by @grcpaname available here.
The modern crowd, in the age of liberal hegemony and industrial atomization, no longer has much that is alive about it. One need only observe dispassionately how hundreds of Pokémon Go players can move side by side without truly being together to understand how the combination of individualistic psychology, smartphones, and the new technological urban environment now produces nothing but zombies—crowds incapable (with a few rare exceptions) of getting excited and/or resisting.
But all is not lost: in the most recent powerful protests in France—the Yellow Vests and the uprising for Nahel—other forms of collective organization seem to have emerged as more promising alternatives for social struggle. One example that comes to mind here is the “gang.” Whether it consists of Yellow Vests organized through their Facebook group to take over a roundabout or storm a shopping mall, or of young people from neighborhoods coordinating via TikTok and Snapchat to launch an offensive in front of a city hall.
When you think of the Yellow Vests, you think of the riots in front of the Arc de Triomphe. But think again—don’t you see anything else? Don’t you see groups of people storming into that train station, pulling out their vests, chanting, and disappearing? Then reappearing at that roundabout? Don’t you see spontaneous groups in these unorganized processions crisscrossing city centers?
And beyond the practical example, the theoretical demonstration also supports the model: with a thousand protesters in your city, which would you prefer—a crowd of a thousand people in the city center, or twenty groups of fifty people moving spontaneously and randomly throughout the city, several of them near the entrances to the ring road? Which do you think would be easier for the authorities to suppress? Which do you think would be easier to circumvent economically in order to continue business as usual?
Here again, the group stands out.
This group doesn’t wait for thousands of people to take action, but whose members feel driven by a shared sense of purpose and solidarity that allows them to take action while relying solely on themselves. This group, organized on a human scale, genuinely seeks to make its presence felt in the territory it occupies—whether through a roundabout or a sustained blockade. This group, coordinating with others, can tear through a city center with multiple, unpredictable processions. Finally, this group—a form that existed in the peasant revolts or among the bandits and pirates of the past—is reemerging today in the face of evolving political and technological contexts: excessive oversight in spaces of struggle, infrastructure (now “smart”) that makes it impossible to subvert large gatherings into offensive dynamics, and, finally, the widespread adoption of smartphones, which—despite their flaws and dangers (mentioned above)—also enable large-scale coordination via social media or encrypted messaging apps, allowing groups to work toward common goals within the same territory.
In short, the movement is making a comeback, and we all stand to gain by reclaiming it, because social conflict is becoming increasingly asymmetrical, as we face a state and corporate interests armed with ever-greater resources to control and crush us, and while, even within our own movements, the intrusion of their technologies and rhetoric tends to crush—even before any action is taken—any inclination toward protest. It is here, then, that the model of the gang—with its guerrilla tactics, its ability to appear and disappear easily, and its need to maintain the initiative—offers some practical solutions. The gang is resilient enough to be driven out and quickly start over elsewhere, unlike the crowd (more powerful but less resilient), which will remain fixated on a single goal until it is broken up and permanently dispersed, having lost its sense of power. The gang is also more resilient over time, held together by the human bonds between its members, unlike a crowd, whose sheer size tends to erode personal solidarity, replacing it with impersonal principles that are fragile in the face of excessive repression.
Finally, the group is harder for professional politicians to control; its format naturally prevents them from delivering flattering speeches to a massive audience that’s there solely to listen to and applaud the populist rhetoric they’re fed, accompanied by a CGT sausage patty or a “composition-flavored” Zbeulinette apple juice in collaboration with EELV. And besides, those in charge know this; they may even have realized it before we did, given the time they spend criticizing this form of protest, portraying its participants as “rioters” or “outsiders to the movement,” because for them, only the crowd represents the herd that will go to the polls to vote for them; only the crowd serves as a walking billboard for them to film themselves in front of. Thus, to evade control and repression, the “gang” seems to be one of the most promising models in the struggles of recent years—and therefore holds promise for the current struggle.
Especially since the centrality of the “gang” model does not prevent the organization of local spaces or assemblies bringing together multiple gangs. On the contrary, it actually reinforces this dynamic. Otherwise, all too often, assemblies are venues for leftist spectacle where no one has the courage to propose real action beyond symbolic statements. Who remembers that “unanimous vote on the motion to support the postal workers,” only to find the next morning on the picket line that three out of the three hundred who had voted in unison the night before were actually there?
Rather than gathering strangers into an assembly to ask them to take some action with people they don’t know, bring together groups (already formed through joint action on the ground) in local assemblies centered on their areas of activity, and you will surely find the best prospects here for militant mobilization in support of your assembly’s conclusions. If it is not the people who create the uprising but rather the uprising that creates its people, then it seems likely that the first step in creating this people is the formation of sustainable and coordinated action groups within their respective territories.
6) Repression and Adaptation: Looking Beyond the 17th
If our combined efforts ultimately turn the 17th into a true day of revolutionary mobilization (involving a material struggle of forces against the system), let us keep in mind that this will not be the end, but merely one more step on the perilous path that lies ahead. As we must continue to intensify the struggle on a national and international scale, a few new pitfalls may present themselves to us. Recent history allows us to identify them, and the practice of strategic adaptation—of our tactics and modes of organization—enables us to try to anticipate how to resist them.
First, let us anticipate that we will have to do without the unions, or at least strive to encourage the most militant rank-and-file union members to break away from them in the current struggle. To this end, organizing direct actions through groups gathered in local assemblies seems to be the most viable approach, both in terms of its prospects for concrete success and its dynamic of concrete openness to local supporters.
“The unions can’t stand the idea of October 17, which reminds them too much of the Yellow Vests. They have to pretend to rally behind the movement so they can better take control of it, both through their monopoly on negotiations and by setting the timeline. If the inter-union coalition called for a rally on October 6 alongside high school students, it was to defuse the call for October 17, which it hopes to downplay as an interim date ahead of its mobilization on November 5.”
Excerpt from an article by @grcpaname available here.
A second obstacle could be Macron’s (or any government that succeeds him, even a left-wing one) reuse of the censorship measures tested against TikTok during the riots in Kanaky. Under the pretext of protecting young people, state authoritarianism had then instantly and effectively deprived them of their primary means of virtual communication. Here, too, the urgency of moving beyond symbolism and mass rallies resonates strongly: for the mobilization to thrive and grow stronger, the combination of organized groups in the physical world—composed of individuals who know one another (and can come together in local assemblies)—seems to offer solid protection against the imposed disconnection that a desperate state might attempt to trigger.
“On May 15, 2024, as New Caledonia was the scene of intense social unrest amid the forced passage of a reform to the New Caledonian electoral college, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal announced—along with the declaration of a state of emergency—a ban on TikTok throughout the territory of New Caledonia. Like the Human Rights League and New Caledonian residents, La Quadrature du Net filed an emergency motion challenging this decision [to no avail, since the Council of State ultimately upheld its validity.]”
Excerpt from an article by the french group La Quadrature du Net, available here.
One final obstacle could be, ultimately, the return of lockdown measures—tried and tested during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authorities may simply try to dust off the protocol from their closets if young people become too disruptive. At least, that is what is currently happening in the city of Liège, Belgium, where, in the face of growing riots, the mayor has banned all gatherings of more than three people until October 17. Similarly, rather than electioneering outrage or symbolic mass gatherings, local self-organization into groups and assemblies seems best suited to keep the struggle alive in the face of such authoritarian developments.
“The mayor of Liège, Willy Demeyer (PS), announced Wednesday that, effective Thursday at 6 a.m., with certain exceptions, gatherings of more than three people will be prohibited within the municipality. The ban applies to public streets and public places until 11:59 p.m. on October 16, unless it is lifted early or extended. Exceptions are provided for, notably for members of the same household, minors accompanied by a responsible adult, previously authorized events, professional activities, and direct travel to schools, stores, or restaurants and bars.”
Excerpt from an article in the Belgian newspaper Le Soir, available here.
Faced with these various challenges and threats, our conclusion can only be to go all out on the 17th—and not to go home that day without first setting another date to continue the movement with your group, your local assembly, or even just the neighbors you met during the action. And that meeting should be soon—ideally the very next day (the 18th), or at the very least early in the following week: too many people are risking a great deal for us to treat this movement lightly. For the public to continue joining us, we must show them signs that the movement is likely to gain momentum; we can’t start dragging our feet and wait until the end of the holidays to resume blockades according to the union’s schedule.
“The revolution won’t be televised,” they used to say. So it’s time to take that to heart: social media is a tool for bringing us together. Let’s break free as soon as possible from our dependence on screens, unions, and political parties, and starting on the 18th, let’s begin organizing on a human scale to intensify the struggle in the real world, come what may.
WHAT ARE THE KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS ARTICLE?
- Remember that we’re not fighting for more tables, but to bring down an inhumane system
- Aim for revolution; reject leftist outrage
- Confront the leaders; prevent them from seizing power
- Be wary of social media; individually and collectively, support one another as a group to focus on action in the streets rather than its virtual media coverage
- Move away from the strategy of massive/symbolic mobilization and find ways to (legally) clog the system’s fragile flow
- Avoid illegal actions and prioritize legal but unpredictable actions in small groups (for example, distributing flyers to drivers entering cities, etc.) To do this, use the CARVER matrix and the map of actions from the 17th: https://17octobregiletjaune.net/carte
- Stop relying on crowds and instead organize into multiple groups
- Always try to stay one step ahead of the system; think about what it will do to quell the revolt and what we’ll need to do to prevent it
