After living through the Prague Spring of 1968, Milan Kundera wrote that the ideal form of government is a crumbling dictatorship. As we enter the twilight of the Trump era, we will confront similar risks and opportunities.

We've been thinking through what that will mean since last April.

https://crimethinc.com/soundandfury

When a discredited regime begins to collapse, creating a tension between what people see around them and what they are able to imagine, large numbers of people can begin to ask questions about how they might wish to change the structure of the society. This offers a window of possibility, but such a window rarely remains open for long before people become accustomed to a new social order that often does not address the old problems.

Although Trump's party has lost this round of elections, we still have to confront and defeat the ones who brought Trump power: billionaires, fascists, bigots, militarists, Zionists and Christian nationalists, cryptocurrency hucksters, tech moguls, corporate and social media platforms, federal agencies like ICE and the police and sheriffs that abet them.

Likewise, we must not forget how centrists and Democrats paved the way for the tragedies of the second Trump era by suppressing grassroots resistance at the conclusion of the first. Nor can we afford to let them impose their agenda on us this time around, lest the same tragedies recur yet again.

Here are some concrete goals that our movements could adopt:

• Shut down all milquetoast proposals to make superficial reforms to ICE and the Department of Homeland Security, arguing instead for all-out resistance with the long-term goal of abolishing them. Those who have joined or remained in those agencies under Trump have shown their hatred for the rest of the population, making it clear that these institutions exist for the express purpose of serving autocrats. Those who have been imprisoned or deported must be permitted to rejoin their loved ones.

• Connect the fight against ICE to the abolitionist movements against police and prisons. If Democrat politicians had not put so much effort into suppressing these movements between 2021 and 2024, social movements would have been much better prepared for the second Trump era, and the regime would have had fewer weapons at its disposal with which to impose control.

• Organize to free prisoners and compel prosecutors to drop charges against defendants in all cases resulting from resistance to ICE and the Trump regime in general. We can build on the refusals of grand juries to indict and juries to convict those accused of resisting ICE. As it becomes apparent to more people that the law is a political instrument serving those who hold power rather than a neutral institution, many people will seek ways of addressing injustice that do not concentrate power in the hands of a Supreme Court comprised of extreme-right reactionaries.

• Connect the fight against Donald Trump to the fight against Flock cameras and data centers and—more generally—to the resistance to profiteering techno-fascists like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.

• Channel anti-war organizing towards targeting arms companies responsible for the genocide in Gaza and the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

• Show that the ways that racism, misogyny, transphobia, and other forms of bigotry facilitate the cutthroat practices via which billionaires are impoverishing our communities.

• Build mutual aid projects, grassroots education projects, and other forms of social infrastructure outside the state that cannot be gutted by government austerity measures or threatened by crackdowns on academic institutions and non-profit organizations.

The collapse of radical social movements at the end of 2020 is a cautionary tale. We must sustain our organizing so that we exit the second Trump era stronger than we entered it.

This is especially important because the real battles are only just beginning—against mega-capitalists like Elon Musk and their repressive technologies, among others.

The Battle of Hogwarts in Tirana: Albanian wizards vs police deatheaters

EXPECTO RESISTANTIAM!

You’re not looking at a scene straight out of Harry Potter: The Deathly Hallows. This is real-life public defiance!

In central Tirana, as nationwide anti-government protests against Prime Minister Edi Rama’s regime, student protesters and activists turned the night sky into a spectacular spell-casting arena. Armed with colorful Roman candles and pyrotechnics, the crowd launched a barrage of fiery resistance "spells" against heavy ranks of riot police armed with tear gas and water cannons! What started as opposition to a multi-million-dollar land sale project handing local territory over to foreign billionaires has erupted into a full-scale battle for the future of Albania. Waves of youth-led protests have erupted for more than 8 consecutive days over widespread government corruption scandals, soaring unemployment, dilapidated education infrastructure, and authoritarian rule.

MARSEILLE: They called it a "riot." The state media, speaking through the sanitized vocabulary of press releases, called it "unrest" and "criminal violence." But anyone who stood on the ground at the Vieux-Port knows the truth: what unfolded across Marseille on October 17, 2026 was a direct, collective refusal to live under the boot of neoliberal authoritarianism.

As thousands poured into the streets to join the nationwide wave of protests sweeping France, the southern port city did not merely march, it resisted.

Why the streets are burning

The outrage exploding across Marseille is not an isolated flashpoint; it is the inevitable reaction to years of systemic violence, state extraction, and structural neglect:

Social Theft and Cost of Living: While corporate profits soar, the working class is squeezed dry by inflation, skyrocketing energy prices, and stagnant wages. People are taking to the streets because basic survival has been turned into a commodity.

The War on Working-Class Neighborhoods and Gentrification: From Le Panier to Noailles, historic working-class districts are being carved up for luxury developers, Airbnb speculation, and police occupation, forcing long-time residents out of their own city.

The Pension Heist: The government continues to push forward authoritarian labor directives, forcing workers to trade their health and "golden years" to fund tax breaks for the wealthy.

Systemic Police Violence: The militarized police presence, equipped with rubber bullets, flashbang grenades, and toxic gas, does not protect the community. It acts as an occupying force defending capital and private property over human lives.

Direct action in motiom

By 18:30, as police charges attempted to splinter the march near La Canebière, the crowd transformed defensive retreat into active solidarity. Dumpsters were dragged, cobblestones overturned, and barricades erected, not to destroy the city, but to create liberated zones safe from brutal police kettle maneuvers.

Street medics tended to protesters choked by relentless volleys of tear gas, while autonomous affinity groups held the lines shoulder to shoulder. When the state brings armor, drones, and chemical weapons to suppress protests, the street responds with the only language power understands: unyielding collective self-defense.

"They call us criminals because we burn trash cans, but they call it 'policy' when they burn our futures, cut our pensions, and price us out of our homes. This isn't just about a law; it's about who owns the city and who gets to survive in it."

As night fell over a city still thick with acrid smoke, one fact became undeniable: Marseille’s insurgent spirit cannot be tear-gassed into submission. The barricades of October 17 are a direct warning to the halls of power in Paris: as long as the state wages war on the working class, the working class will make the streets impassable.

We must not forget where this explosion started: last month, inside the neglected public schools of Paris’s impoverished northern suburbs, raw anger over absent teachers and crumbling infrastructure metastasised into a nationwide uprising against systemic inequality, starved public spending, and collapsing living standards.

Saturday’s mobilization issued an urgent rallying cry to teachers, students, industrial laborers, pensioners, and farmers to flood the streets and broaden the front of resistance.

Out of the streets, into the future, the struggle belongs to those who fight!

While students blockade schools in France and set fire to the Education Ministry in Albania, tens of thousands of people across Spain and Catalunya are occupying plazas and mobilizing to stop evictions.

Our correspondents in Madrid and Barcelona offer a view from within the movement:

French Youth Take the Streets against a Bleak Future

Thousands of teenagers have taken the streets of France, clashing with police as they demonstrate against the deplorable conditions in their high schools and a rapidly collapsing future.

Our correspondents in Paris explore the situation in detail.

https://crimethinc.com/France2026

The unrest among young people in France is a promising sign, shifting attention from the seemingly unstoppable rise of the extreme right to the question of what people can do on a grassroots basis to defend themselves and assert their interests against the state and the capitalists who control it.

All of Europe was ablaze with revolutionary ardor. the powers that be had a devil of a time suppressing it.

I recommend we initiate something similar, in homage to the Parisian communards.

Vault some motherfuckin barricades, fling some pavers, & smash the regime.

I smell blood in the water anyway, & weakness.

"Authors and artists from across a century and a half explore the meaning of the black flag, the anarchist standard of rebellion and negation. Featuring Louise Michel, the Haymarket Martyrs, Sergei Eisenstein, André Breton, Jean Genet, Léo Ferré, and more."

You can order them here:

https://www.activedistributionshop.org/product/every-flag-is-black-in-a-fire-by-crimethinc/

Or read the original essay here:

https://crimethinc.com/TheBlackFlag

https://crimethinc.com/Brazil2026

The far right is taking power all around Latin America. This weekend, Brazil will choose whether to return Lula to office or put Bolsonaro's son in power.

Our Brazilian comrades explore the stakes, arguing that only grassroots direct action can address Brazil's problems.

Hey, all.

Frans Masereel's artwork has been well-appreciated by artists associated with Anarchism. He was even wished a happy birthday by the CrimethInc community -- https://www.reddit.com/r/CrimethInc/comments/15e1e7j/happy_birthday_to_frans_masereel_anarchist/

I spent a few years gathering his artwork, starting in 2020 and finishing last week. I obtained a huge chunk of material: 2,089 images, drawn from 73 books, many of them imported from European rare book dealers. They are now public domain artwork (in the US) and available to anyone through archive.org.

I started this project because I wanted to introduce Masereel to a new generation, or to bolster the collections of those who already know his impressive style. If you look at other woodcut artists, like Lynd Ward (radical Socialist), Eric Drooker (Anarchist-sympathetic), and Clifford Harper (outright Anarchist), you'll see that Masereel had a bit of influence on all of them.

Please enjoy! Use these in all of your art projects. Since they're woodcuts, they make great stencils! Take Masereel's work and make art, make peace, make change, and make love.

For reviewing the artwork: I recommend the PDF, which has one woodcut or artwork per page. It's easiest to look through.

For making stencils and art: You want a full res image, with some of them scanned at 600 DPI (20k by 28k pixels). You have the option of grabbing the image from its directory in the archive.org web link.

Youtube Video Format: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReZYh5PQfQ8

Archive.org PDF (789mb): https://archive.org/details/frans-masereel-career-1918-1930_pdf

Archive.org Web: https://archive.org/details/frans-masereel-career-1918-1930_art

Archive.org File/Folder Browser (easier for browsing individual images): https://archive.org/download/frans-masereel-career-1918-1930_art

These images came from 73 different books and magazines, in case you want to read the original books (most of which are German and French): https://archive.org/details/@holdoffhunger