Tithi Bhattacharya: In the aftermath of the Fascists gaining a foothold in France it is important to remember the words of the Communard, Benoit Malon, revealing, as he does, the relationship between colonialism, the ferocity of state terror against the Commune and the dreams of the multiracial internationalists who fought for the Paris Commune:
“French military leaders have for forty years developed in French soldiers the ferocity needed to accomplish what the peoples’ executioners call the reestablishment of order, which destines the beautiful and unhappy Arab race to the most repellent persecution and the most odious extermination. In fact, when they have been burning down Algerian villages for years, and massacring tribes, soldiers are apt to bloody the streets of our cities…All the Versaillais generals went to that school.” —Benoit Malon, 1871.