The assassination of Georges Floyd has caused a great and legitimate emotion in the USA and throughout the world. It led to numerous demonstrations especially in the USA including in very small cities, bringing together large crowds where Americans of all origins mingle, far beyond what can be considered progressive and anti-racist forces and with a strong youth component.
Though the President of the USA surfs on the violence that he fuels provocatively, he is in political trouble as the reprobation affects large sections of American society. The misery of whole swathes of the population and especially immigrants, African-Americans and downgraded middle classes, combined with the dramatic social consequences of the pandemic accelerating the economic and social crisis, all of this is the fuel of the revolt ignited by the heinous racist assassination that four police officers perpetrated in Minneapolis.
Many important demonstrations of solidarity have taken place abroad and in France where cases of repression and police violence which sometimes led to the death of young people were associated. Everyone also remembers the brutality with which peaceful popular demonstrations were suppressed, using the pretext of the acts of thugs specialized in vandalism in the service of power.
If the question of racism is of course rightly raised, including in our country, it cannot in itself explain the nature of the violence exerted against sections of the population. To understand this nature, it is necessary to be aware that the state, at the service of capital, must constantly lead the class struggle against the wage earners in order to maintain its domination and the exploitation of wage labor. The form and intensity of this struggle are obviously largely dominated by the state of social relations, history and the position that countries occupy in the imperialist system.
From this point of view, the United States, which was formed through a violent colonial conquest, marked by the genocide of indigenous peoples and a development based on slavery, is the fruit of a particularly violent history. The development of industrial capitalism, which saw the emergence of a revolutionary workers 'movement, was particularly repressive and brought class violence to a paroxysm resulting in the physical liquidation of militant workers; let us remember, among others, the executions of Sacco and Vanzetti in 1927 and those of the Rosenbergs in 1953. To contain and curb the working class, the ruling bourgeoisie has developed a control framework by using class collaboration unions and legislation which outlaws any activity challenging capitalism. Racism against African Americans liberated from slavery but kept in a state of domination, and immigrants in general, has always been a means used by the American bourgeoisie to divide workers and assert their power. It took major struggles that were severely repressed for civil rights to be recognized for the entire population. Let us remember the struggles around Martin Luther King assassinated in 1968, Malcom X assassinated in 1965 and so many others. To all these crimes must be added those of US imperialism responsible for millions of deaths in Latin America, Asia and the Middle East and the repression against all the American citizens who courageously stood up and still stand up to demand peace and justice!
If State violence responds to them with such brutality it is because these struggles are carrying, more or less confusedly, the demand for a new world, but for capitalism that is unacceptable. This State violence is not specific to the USA, it applies to all capitalist countries and more precisely those that count in imperialist domination, among them France!
So yes, solidarity with the struggling American people, solidarity with all the peoples who are paving the way for their liberation!