A ghost is haunting Europe¹

"The uprisings are coming, they are already here. More are on the way, there is no doubt about it. They deserve an appropriate theory. A theory of uprising is at the same time a theory of crisis. This applies both in the colloquial sense and at the local level, in the moments marked by shattered glass and burning barricades, in which the uprising is seen as an interruption of a desperate situation: impoverishment at the limit, the crisis of a community or city, interrupted for a few hours or days. The internal and structural meaning of the "Insurrection, to paraphrase Frantz Fanon, can only be recognized as such if we know the historical movement that gives it its form and substance. We must therefore advance to further levels at which the increasing cases of insurrection are inextricably linked to the ongoing and systemic crisis of capitalism. Furthermore, insurrection as a special form of struggle illuminates the character of the crisis, makes it thinkable again and opens up a perspective on its unfolding."

"After all, historical materialism is a theory of transformation, which cannot mean affirming every historical turn or stage of development. But a Marxism that can only recognize the tendency of reality as a deviation is not Marxism at all. The meaning of the uprising has changed dramatically; it cannot be understood without naming the determinations and forces that give it its new role and by which it is driven inexorably forward, into the future, while it is still in the 17th and 20th centuries “What is fundamentally necessary is a decidedly materialistic theory of insurrection for communists, so to speak.”

Joshua Clover²

prolog

After the French youth revolt spread to Italy and there were riots in various cities, the Italian government sent paratrooper units to Milan last weekend, where the situation was completely out of control for the cops, there were hours of street fighting and extensive looting the weekend before last. While the soldiers armed with assault rifles patrol the sealed-off city center of Milan, riots are breaking out again in other Italian cities despite increased deployment of police units. Last Friday, several hundred thousand people across the country took part in demonstrations against the war and the consequences of the social crisis, the rank-and-file unions called for strikes, including the blockade of the port of Genoa, renewed clashes in several cities, in Rome for hours, there also building of barricades and hours of fighting with the cops.

Calls to “join the French protests” on October 31st have been circulating in Germany for days, and while funny videos of people posing in front of the displays of a Rolex store are circulating online, the typical German organizational fetish initially gives little hope. Committees and posts are founded and then immediately say goodbye, everyone thinks they have to distance themselves from something, especially “from the violence”, the usual left-wing suspects try to ride the (for now viral) wave and the media hype is not even clear at second glance. After all, WELT, which is well connected to the security apparatus, counters the general hysteria with voices from the security authorities that “there is no evidence of any major riots,” but the luxury shops on Kurfürstendamm in Berlin still work a night shift and the pictures of the shops boarded up with plywood panels go around the world. In Paris, the courts finally confirmed the forced relocation of the trade union demonstration planned for October 31st to the outskirts, which would be roughly the same as if the annual May 1st demonstration in Berlin were only allowed to take a route in Spandau.

Act One

On the afternoon of October 31st, just around 4,000 people gathered at the Brandenburg Gate for the “GenZregelt” rally. 80% are middle-class students and the usual left-wing constant protesters. Almost all of them are white, you don't see a lot of young people and their outfits are more likely to be associated with the typical Berlin protest scene. A few aging grandees of the Autonomists also pay their respects and “the Blues” also stops by. Every boring May 1 demo of the DGB exudes more charm. Curtain up and down.

Act Two

50.00 – 100,000 people at the ‘GenZregelt’ demonstrations. In Hamburg and Stuttgart, several thousand people clashed with the cops during the demonstrations and water cannons were used. In Karlsruhe, a meeting is broken up using cavalry squadrons. There are also clashes during the demonstrations in Cologne and Leipzig. After the desolation at the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin first smokes a few Red Bulls and then meets up at Rosenthaler Platz in Mitte in the early evening. After an unusually short waiting time for Berlin standards, we quickly run towards Prenzlauer Berg. No loudspeaker truck, no solid blocks, but young people everywhere who are up for it, and the migrant surplus proletariat is also clearly represented. We zigzag through the partly dark side street at a monkey's pace, no one can see through, not even the cops, who are desperately trying to support a front block that doesn't actually exist. Always pyrotechnics and “the whole of Berlin hates the police”, countless opportunities on the route are left behind, today doesn’t seem to be the day for it. In the end, the Berlin cops have a plan again and stop the demonstration at a tactically good location for them. A bright main street with few side streets and little public traffic, a tram gets lost in the chaos and is sprayed all over it, pyrotechnics and bottles fly at the cops, who repeatedly beat the crowd. Lots of injuries and arrests, but it's Halloween and somehow the young people don't want to miss out on the fun and so the chaos continues into the next round.Only after an hour something like disillusionment sets in and most people seep out of the cauldron into the Berlin night.

Act Three

In France, over half a million people took part in the nationwide demonstrations, some of which took place despite official bans. Despite the massive repression – alone on October 31st. around 800 arrests, widespread tear gas again – and use of water cannons in several cities – There were almost as many people on the streets this weekend as last weekend. Once again there were barricades built and attacks on the cops in many cities, especially in Rennes, Lyon, Toulouse and Marseille. In Paris, there were violent fights with the cops at the end of the demonstration, and a unit of the gendarmerie was pelted with Molotovs in front of running media cameras. Later in the evening, barricades were built and police were attacked by mobile groups in downtown Paris, while the cops completely destroyed a large, peaceful Halloween party of thousands of young people at the foot of the Eiffel Tower with tear gas. In the late evening hours, decentralized construction of barricades and stress with the security forces, especially in Lyon and Marseille. In Lyon this weekend, the fascists tried to attack scattered demonstrators in a larger group, but were then chased through the streets themselves. The Interior Minister is now celebrating himself for his strategy of overriding the right to demonstrate in practically all major French city centers. “The state of emergency has become the structure of governance” – Giorgio Agamben. Le Pen calls for more toughness, LFI more participation and Gen Z: “We still have a few grams of life left and we will give everything”³

Act Four

It's not just Kreuzberg nights that are long, hence the other events (incomplete [4]) of the evening in Berlin: In the Märkischesviertel, a large group of young people gathers at a shopping center and throws pyrotechnics at emergency services, later a Molotov flies into an emergency vehicle, and a little later the cops arrest two 14-year-olds (!) who are supposedly carrying gasoline in plastic bottles. At around 11 p.m., a sturdy barricade made of e-scooters, construction site materials and burning garbage cans will be erected on Huttenstrasse; barricades have been erected on the same street on New Year's Eve in recent years. In the western city, garbage cans are set on fire in the streets in various places; on Tauentzien, the western extension of Kurfürstendamm, a group tries to break into a shop with traffic signs. In Kreuzberg, garbage cans are also set on fire in several places after midnight, and a large chipboard is thrown at a police vehicle in the High Deck settlement, one of the scenes of the serious riots on New Year's Eve 22/23. A group of clothing stores near Alexanderplatz are successfully broken into and various items of clothing are redistributed. All of this despite a massive police presence throughout the city, especially with units of the operational units in the large-scale settlements, which had already been the scene of riots on New Year's Eve 22/23.

Meanwhile, the demonstration in Hamburg has come to an end, but hundreds have settled in St. Georg, barricades are being built again and again, the emergency services are being pelted with bottles and stones, and it takes several hours before the cops can calm the situation. There is also stress on Halloween evening in Duisburg, Halle and Duisburg, in Cologne rental bikes are thrown at the cops, and later Molotovs are confiscated. Switzerland will also be joining in the Halloween spectacle in the evening. There is a bang in Bern and Zurich, and in Zurich the cops lose control of the situation for hours despite water cannons and rubber bullets. Burning barricades and looting in district four, the NZZ writes: "Riots with announcement - but hardly any arrests in Zurich. The left-wing extremists' Halloween tactics have worked."

But let's come back to Germany. In Frankfurt, state power is experiencing its meltdown. Around 2,000 people take partial control of the world-famous Auf der Zeil shopping mile for a long time. Burning barricades, the cops are covered in everything, including Molotovs, stores are looted, a weapons store is broken into. Only after midnight did the state succeed in restoring its monopoly on the use of force. In the end, the SEK is sent out in full gear, with rapid-fire rifles at the ready to conceal the state's powerlessness. G20 Hamburg sends greetings.

epilogue

The stroke of the butterfly. What began as a blockade at a high school in the outskirts of Paris has become a youth uprising. A youth who sees the forests of the south of the continent go up in flames during their summer vacation finally and consciously understands that this is their future. Irrevocable. Real and metamorphic. No 'social advancement', no 'retirement' at the end of an exhausting working life, just a world of war, destruction, rubble, smoke, brutal defensive battles. Gaza has not become the symbol of this generation because there is omnipresent anti-Semitism (even if it exists in some places and it has to be addressed and combated), but because that is their question for the future: How humanity is possible in a world made of rubble...? And of course the avant-garde is there to address this for good reasons To reintroduce terminology that has fallen out of fashion into the discourse for reasons, that part that leads the uprisings of our era, that fights most decisively, that makes the most sacrifices for this fight, the youthful surplus proletariat, read in migrant terms, as they say today. They no longer wait until an AI makes their bullshit jobs obsolete, they don't have the option of the petty-bourgeois big city bubbles, the social downgrade as a result of the AI revolution by fleeing into their own parents' possessions They are born poor and they will die poor, like their parents, so many of them have sacrificed themselves so that their children will not be like that. Ziad Benna and Bouna Traoré 2005, Nahel 2023.And, and, and... Every time the anger and lack of prospects exploded, every time society waited until the smoke had cleared and then just carried on. But now there will be no further. The rift through which social antagonism is being put back on the agenda is too deep. Agenda item ONE: class struggle. No identitarian drivel, no bullshit bingo around ideological references. Just the bare minimum: Who owns what? Who is responsible for the fact that our world is about to go to the dogs? The uprising after Nahel's murder was still called revenge. Now it's about more. Hysterical strength. A person is able to lift an entire car alone with their child trapped underneath. Corona, or rather the measures taken, were our opponents' general staff exercise for a general and permanent state of emergency regime with which they are trying to keep the business running while they are waging wars in our faces because they simply cannot get their exploitation crisis solved. The revolt that is sweeping through Europe this fall is our general staff exercise for the ‘coming uprising’.

As Clover rightly said, and one would have to add as Quadrelli added in much more detail and concretely, it is about formulating and disseminating a materialist theory of insurrection. This is our job as “insurgent thinkers.” In the actual social explosions, we are just marginal figures anyway, with no real practical significance, and often even rather undesirable because we don't “belong,” “come from the wrong area,” or simply look stupid. That's okay. But as I wrote in my 'Fragments of October 17th' [5], the uprisings and revolts of the last two decades, which were generated in a break with the historical left, were not able to develop a "revolutionary theory" on their own that developed concrete ideas about how this system can finally be plunged into the abyss of history before it takes us all away. It is not about leading anything or instructing anyone, it is about making useful fundamental suggestions on the basis of which the uprising can be generalized and its social base broadened in order to transform it into a revolutionary uprising. What we are currently experiencing is an overlapping of social segments and milieus. Surplus, remnants of the 'Palestine Movement', remnants of the militant left and anarchist bubbles and groups, the new K-groups, ... A hodgepodge, that's okay at first, but nothing more. Without theoretical support, this will all quickly fall apart again. And yes, the theory has fallen into disrepute, and rightly so, one might add. But it is like the class struggle; in the end it is indispensable and nothing fundamental can be achieved without it. Time is running out.There are irreversible biological processes, or rather it will take a very, very long time to repair at least part of what capitalist civilization has destroyed. But sometimes high pressure isn't such a bad thing. Sometimes it takes this irreducible thing to mobilize the enormous forces with which one can tilt seemingly hopeless historical processes in one's favor. That's what it's about. Not less. Thank you, dear youth, for reminding us what fighting really means.

Sebastian Lotzer, Berlin Kreuzberg – November 1, 2026

Footnotes

1 The 'Communist Manifesto' by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (1848) begins with this sentence.

2 From: ‘A Theory of Insurrection’ – Joshua Clover. Published in the anthology 'Riot – What was going on in Hamburg? Theory and Practice of Collective Action’ (for the G20 Summit 2017). LAIKA // NON Derivate 2018. The underlining is highlighted in italics in the original.

3 Generation Niketout¹ – German translation of bonus tracks.

https://kontrapolis.info/18839/

4 According to the PM of the Berlin police

5 Smells Like Teen Spirit – S. Lotzer

https://lotzerswelt.de/2026/10/18/smells-like-teens-spirit-fragmente-zum...

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web address: https://kontrapolis.info/18868/author/group: Sebastian Lotzerfeed date: Monday, November 2, 2026 - 08:55