This speech by Houria Bouteldja took place during the closing plenary session of Historical Materialism entitled « Marxist Strategies at the End of Liberal Order » at SOAS University in London on November 9, 2025.

 

I will start by getting straight to the point. In my opinion, there is no way to fight fascism today without challenging the main institution that not only provides all the conditions for the rise of fascism, but also acts as its accelerator. I am referring to the European Union. As Fanon advised us more than 60 years ago, we must leave Europe. To this, I would add that there are two ways to leave: reactionary or revolutionary. Needless to say, Brexit was a reactionary exit and is precisely the example not to follow. I therefore propose to consider a proposal based on the French case, which would be a left-wing, decolonial and, why not, revolutionary exit.

Over the last twenty years or so in France, we have seen the emergence of a new anti-racist political consciousness. We have moved from what is known as moral anti-racism, which is a version of state-promoted or ‘republican’ anti-racism, to political anti-racism. What defines moral anti-racism is that it designates the far right as the main enemy. And as a secondary enemy, individuals who most often come from white working-class backgrounds because they don’t like black people or Muslims. According to moral anti-racists, these individuals need to be re-educated because they have a false consciousness that undermines their class consciousness. Political anti-racism totally rejects this conception of racism.  For us, racism does not emanate from the far right but from the modern, capitalist, colonial and imperialist state. According to this conception, not only is the far right not the place where racism is produced, but it is itself the product of what I call the integral racial state.

Indeed, as David Theo Goldberg teaches us with his concept of the racial state, all the advanced capitalist states of Western Europe and North America, including Australia, which make up what we know as the West, are all racial states founded on the genocide of so-called inferior peoples, on their despoliation and exploitation. For Goldberg, race is, like class, the foundation of modern states. And as Gramsci teaches us, the capitalist state is integral in the sense that it cannot be reduced to its institutions, its police and its bureaucracy. Political society (including left-wing parties and trade unions) as well as civil society are an integral part of the state. On the basis of these two conceptions of the State, the racial State and the integral State, my idea of the integral racial State allows us to render moral anti-racism obsolete once and for all, because it allows us to better understand the structural and systemic nature of racism. If racism cannot be fought by a moralist method, it is because it is the product of a racial pact between the State, dominated by its bourgeoisie, political society and civil society.

In other words, while it must be acknowledged that there is a class struggle within the capitalist states, it is counter-revolutionary because the left-wing political society which defends the interests of the proletariat is linked to the imperialist order via an organic bond with the capitalist state. By abandoning internationalism in favour of proletarian chauvinism, the communist and trade union organisations in France have largely contributed to the constitution of the integral racial state. By accepting the sharing out of imperialist rents, first for the benefit of the bourgeoisie but also for the benefit of the white proletariat, the organisations which claim to defend the workers have produced a counter-revolutionary class struggle.

This reading applies to anti-fascism. There is a moral anti-fascism that we must fight against. This expression is used to designate a Western political system which limits fascism to the Far right. In these conditions, moral antifascism means support for the current institutions, born out of the victory of 1945, and its ultimate horizon is the elections.

In the wonderful world of moral antifascists, since the end of the Second World War we have been following a constant move towards progress, where the extension of the global market goes hand in hand with hopes for peace and the advancement of minority rights.

The proof, if any were needed, of the absurdity of this discourse is the genocidal war still under way in Gaza, entirely made possible by Western arms supplies, first and foremost from the United States and Germany, but France is also taking part in it. Since October 7, the leaders of most Western liberal democracies have come out to claim Israel’s right to defend itself. Entire sections of the media in these countries, and by far the majority, have put themselves at the service of Israeli propaganda. Perhaps the monstruous nature of moral antifascism in its final stages lies in this: it is in the name of the memory of the genocide of the Jews of Europe that the ongoing genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza is justified. It is in the name of the memory of the Shoah that the capitalist West is once again assuming its genocidal face.

The clash in Gaza signifies the end of moral and republican anti-fascism and lays bare the latent fascism of the French state that has never disappeared since 1945.

This is why we need to replace moral anti-fascism with political anti-fascism. Consequently, to fight fascism, we need to define our main enemy: the agent of fascisation. In other words, the modern state and the bourgeois bloc. Fighting the far-right is a vital duty, but concentrating all our efforts on it is a political and strategic error.

I’ve just explained why it’s a political mistake. The state is the main enemy that not only produces the far right but also exploits it for its own ends. And worse than that, the existence of the far right is in fact the State’s good conscience. It allows it to act as a shield against fascism. As the pace of privatisation accelerates, as the institutions of welfare are dismantled one by one and as the space for compromise with the bourgeoisie shrinks, the place of the far right in French politics is changing. Described as an absolute outsider to the acceptable political game, the far right in reality plays a dual role: as a purveyor of fascist ideas, its rise also justifies the introduction of racist and liberticidal measures. By paving the way for it while constantly dissociating itself from it, the moral anti-fascism of the ruling capitalist bloc helps to ensure the spread of its ideas while giving them a subversive veneer.

The far-right’s electoral successes that follow give the various governments the best possible excuse to implement a whole range of the far right’s agenda. Since the 2004 law on the veil up to the recent one on separatism, we have been experiencing a continuing racist and authoritarian acceleration for nearly two decades, focused on accumulation of Islamophobic, anti-crime and anti-terrorist laws. To this we should add repeated dissolutions of antiracist and Muslim organisations, the incorporation of emergency measures into common law, imperialist interventions around the world and the warmongering of those who want to rearm us. All this is obviously fuelled by far-right ideologues, but we would be fooling ourselves to make them the absolute champions of reaction. The Right had no difficulty in passing the law on the veil, which was supported by a large part of the left. It was in the name of the fight against terrorism that the Socialists promulgated the state of Emergency, which resulted in thousands of arbitrary searches in working-class neighbourhoods before having an impact on the social movement. It is the ruling bloc that promotes racism, not the far right, which has never been in power.

But why is focusing the struggle on the far-right a strategic error?

The elites never cease to justify their racist acceleration by invoking the racism that is allegedly rife among the white working classes. It is not certain that it is as simple as that. One way of reducing the importance of this schematism is to note that there is no mass fascist movement in the country despite the racist outpouring in the media and the political class.

Today’s fascists differ from those of the 1930s in that they are currently incapable of investing in and/or competing with the social movement. We are therefore a long way from mass politics and the fear aroused by black shirts or militias capable of committing pogroms and fomenting coups. The mass nature of fascism today has more to do with a form of a passive wave spread through social networks and the influence exerted by ideological apparatuses.

It is therefore important and even essential to separate fascist political organisations and their activists from their voters. While there is no doubt that fascist organisations are radical enemies, the same cannot be said of their voters, who number in the millions. At the last elections, 10 million of them voted for the far right. I said earlier that racism is a joint-production. The bourgeois bloc produces racism, political society produces racism, civil society produces racism because everyone benefits from it. But just because these three bodies are all interested in the racial order it does not mean that each has an equivalent interest in it. For my part, I think that of the three bodies, the bourgeois bloc has the greatest interest in racial division, in particular because it is a counter-revolutionary guarantee, but also because it is the bourgeoisie which draws the greatest benefit from it. Firstly, material profit: racism is the condition for over-exploitation. Non-white workers are more profitable than white workers. Secondly, political profit: the racial divide and the resulting conflict of interests between white and non-white workers prevents any form of proletarian unity. But if it is true that the white working classes benefit from racism, whiteness being a moral as well as a material wage, their interest is lower. But above all, the interest of whiteness can be replaced by the interest of popular unity, the unity of the proletariat and the white and non-white subaltern classes. In short, the bourgeoisie has a total interest in maintaining the racial order, while the white workers have an important but partial interest in it. Confronted to this contradiction the white proletariat is left with two options:

Fascism or revolution.

It is precisely the possibility of this choice that offers a strategic opportunity. White proletarians may have an immediate interest in fascism and racial preference but we know that they have an interest in revolution in the medium and long term because the ruling bloc and the far right will end up betraying them simply because they will never implement a social solution and because they serve the interests of capital. That’s why we urgently need to politicise anti-fascism and convince ourselves that it’s possible. Indeed, the revolt of the Yellow Vests in France, has shown us that this fraction of the French proletariat, despite being very strongly affected by racism, sexism and homophobia, was not dominated by these affects at the time of this incredible insurrection. On the contrary, during their revolt, they named the government and President Macron as their main enemy. What’s more, because they understood who their enemy was, the French police did not hesitate to brutally repress them. They then understood what they had in common with the Blacks and Muslims of France. In short, to put it another way, this experience showed that some French proletarians were not completely prisoners of the racial state. This is a sign of great hope. That’s why, even though we know the extent to which racism structures social relations in France, we also know that this is not inescapable. That’s why we need an anti-fascist strategy aimed at the white working classes, who it would be foolish to abandon at a time when the fascists are going to such lengths to keep them on their side, particularly by fuelling Islamophobic sentiment in the population. Indeed, the bourgeoisie, which has the most acute class consciousness, has no confidence in the loyalty of the white working classes. This is why Islamophobia is an indispensable tool. It allows a lasting separation between the two most important fractions of the French proletariat.

We have to be clear. Good feelings are not going to save us. The white proletariat will not turn to anti-fascism naturally or simply because fascism and racism are forms of false consciousness. They will go where they consider that their interests are being defended. That’s why the radical and decolonial left must take the lead on what is identified by a large part of this proletariat as a problem. I have named the European Union. Let me explain. All the polls since 2005 show that the French popular classes reject Europe. As it happens, it was the left that politicised the “no” vote in the 2005 referendum on the European Constitution. What happened? The no vote won. But the most important lesson is that this victory was made possible by left-wing and far-right voters under the leadership of the left. It’s clear that it’s possible to bring back far-right voters to a left-wing programme. This is the kind of dynamic that needs to be put in place.

But that will not be enough to develop hegemony. Before thinking about a program, we need an idea, one that will cement the unity of the popular bloc. I agree with my friends Panagiotis Sotiris and Stathis Kouvelakis that it is important, even crucial, to reinvest the idea of nation, which should not be abandoned to the bourgeois state and the far right.  We must reinvest it in the form of a “national popular” bloc, as Gramsci suggests, or a “people’s nation,” as Poulantzas suggests, who explains that the nation is not simply a product or a need of the bourgeoisie, but also a product of class struggle. It is also because the nation is a popular asset that the white working classes in particular are attached to it. Admittedly, this has a reactionary dimension, but also a progressive one. Ownership of the nation is therefore a question of the balance of power and also a question of class struggle. Throughout French history, the idea of a revolutionary homeland has been part of the revolutionary tradition.

The bourgeois bloc and the far right ended up turning it into a racist and imperialist reference. But the story is not over. The proposal of France Insoumise, of “New France,” is precisely to recover the revolutionary definition of “people nation” by introducing an anti-racist social program. We must encourage this idea, which is currently only reformist, because the full sovereignty of the “new people” of France will only be achieved if the racial pact, which, I repeat, is an organic link with the bourgeoisie, is broken. Withdrawal from Europe is a decisive step towards this break, but a return to the nation-state will not be an end in itself, because we must never lose sight of the need for internationalism. To achieve this, we must continue to build this nation-people by deepening class contradictions and reducing racial divisions. I don’t have time to elaborate here, but it is clear that the nation-people I have in mind is a “new people” in the sense that it will be multicultural, multiconfessional, and internationalist. For me, there is no contradiction between being a nation-people and internationalism. As everyone knows, there is nation in the word internationalism.

So the real question is: what kind of people are we talking about? I am not naive, and I know that in our context, the possibility of fascism is more than likely because the peoples of Europe are being won over by fascism. I also know that the concepts of people and nation are fictitious. That in a way, they do not exist. But it is precisely because they are human inventions that utopia is possible. It is therefore up to us to invent these new peoples, otherwise what is the point of politics?

 

Houria Bouteldja