Adieu cambaradas ! (Hi comrades!)
So, I just kinda need to vent/rant about the situation in France and Occitania. Things like the rise of fascism, the chaotic world of French communist and “communist” parties, queer rights and Occitania.
Dunno if it’s the right place for that but here I am. Sorry, that’s a long one <3
So, first, Occitania
Occitania is a cultural region in Western Europe. It covers roughly the southern third of France and small regions in Spain and Italy. Occitania has a language, Occitan, which is closer to Catalan than to French. Multiple dialects are recognized, the most well-known being Gascon, Languedocien/lengadocian and Provençal/provençau. Occitania also has a flag, an anthem, a distinct history and culture and relatively well-defined borders.
Occitania was never an independent country, but it was de facto (semi) autonomous from the Middle Ages (around the 10th century) to the French revolution, though its autonomy started to decline as early as the 13th century.
I could go on and on about my beloved but let’s move on.
Next, communism in France
I live in Provence, so French law applies. Yes, Occitania does have a few political parties with different goals for the region (regionalism, autonomy, federalism, independence) but they are either very weak or part of an alliance with the PS (Parti Socialiste or Socialist Party in English, a social democratic party). I am not aware of any Occitan communist party exiting in the real world, outside of WordPress and Twitter.
So, you might or might not be familiar with the PCF (Parti Communiste Français or French Communist Party). It used to be a Marxist-Leninist party. It always have had some strange, nationalistic bias but it also did a lot for the poor and it used to have some great positions; for example, they defended the memory of Stalin after the Secret Speech. Then the party became “eurocommunist” and never recovered. Nowadays it’s more or less a social democratic party but with a different flavor.
Another oldie is LO (Lutte Ouvrière or Workers’ Struggle). It’s a Trotskyist party. I don’t really have anything interesting about it. It’s just what you’d expect from a Trotskyist organization.
There are a few others like that but the only one that is worth mentioning is RP (Révolution Permanente or Permanent Revolution). They are quite active, at least when it comes to communication, and have had some small results during the last elections in some regions.
On the anti-revisionist side we have the PCRF (Parti Communiste Révolutionnaire Français or French Revolutionary Communist Party). They have some decent support in some regions but nothing too crazy. They’re more of the Hoxhaist type than the Maoist one, I think. At least I don’t remember them being openly pro Gonzalo Thought.
Then we have the PRCF (Pôle de Renaissance Communiste en France or Pole of Communist Revival in France? I have no idea how to translate it sooo). It comes from a split of the PCF. It does preserve some of the weird bias of the old PCF. For example it strongly opposes Corsican autonomy and says that an independent Brittany would be a bad idea. But hey, at least they are still Marxists.
Then we have the OCF (Organisation Communiste de France or Communist Organization of France). It comes from a split (again) of the PRCF. It claims that there are organizational issues in the PRCF. Although it’s hard to tell who’s right and who’s wrong, the answers of the PRCF highlight something that we already saw with its exchanges with the URC (I’ll talk about them after): it does not know how to communicate with other organizations. For example, the PRCF tried to meet with the URC, but in a tweet, and I think in an article as well, they basically said that if they hadn’t already met with the URC, it was all the URC’s fault. I don’t know if that sentence made sense so I’ll say this: the PRCF always blame the other.
Like the PRCF, the OCF seems to have an issue with the idea of a plurinational France or with the idea of the country splitting. Unlike the PRCF, it seems to have an issue with Stalin.
Finally we have the URC (Union pour la Reconstruction Communiste or Union for Communist Reconstruction). I don’t have a lot to say about it though there is one awesome thing about this organization: it wasn’t born from a split but a merge. Two communist organizations merged to give birth to this one. It is not the most active one but it is active and I haven’t seen any major issue with it.
Now, my life
So first, hiiiii! I’m an Occitan trans girl and a Marxist-Leninist and that’s about it if we want to stay relevant.
I’ll try my best to keep things structured, but sorry in advance.
So like, as you would expect from France, minorities are tolerated as long as they’re not standing out. So yes you can freely be a Celt, but please don’t put your children in a school where classes are in Breton. And maybe stop speaking Breton entirely. That’s the vibe. France only wants French people who speak French. What it does in Kanaky, it does the same at home.
This idea is called “one nation, one language”. It promotes the use of French and opposes the use of regional languages like Basque and Alsatian.
Something that is not mentioned enough though is cultural reappropriation. See, since Occitania is just France, then Occitan history is French history. Have you heard of troubadours spreading the language of love across Europe? Well they originated in Occitania and the language in question was Occitan. Yet it’s common to hear, at least in France, that really they were French and that the language they spoke was just an old French and therefore the language of love is French.
You must be aware of the rise of fascism in the West, right? Well obviously France also experience this. Fascists are quickly gaining power, authority and support. You might also be aware of the rise of transphobia in West, particularly in the US and in the UK. Although the main far right party hasn’t said much about queer rights, its supporters did attack people on the street.
Okay so we have three fronts here if you managed to follow me: queer rights, workers’ rights and national minority rights. And like, sure, this is no different than in a lot of other places. But I still have to complain.
What we need is a communist party, a party of the people. That much is obvious. But that’s where things are complicated.
As you saw, we have a bunch of communist parties in France. But if we disregard Trotskyist parties and the like we end up with:
- one that cares about queer rights, including trans rights (URC)
- zero that cares about national minorities (to my knowledge)
And here’s the personal bit:
I would like to say that the priority is workers’ rights, that we can’t make any real progress without ending the bourgeois system and establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat.
But I need HRT (hormone replacement therapy) to live, though I still don’t have access to it.
And also, my language is dying. The youth and the young adults, but also plenty of old people, don’t know the language of our ancestors. I do not speak Occitan, the language of my great grandparents.
I’m not asking for much in my opinion when it comes to Occitania. I want our language and its dialects to survive, I want Occitania to be recognized, I want our regions to be respected rather than being butchered into “administrative regions” and I want our culture and our history to be preserved.
I don’t really care if it’s through regionalism or independence or anything in between. Should a new French government get rid of this stupid “one nation, one language” thing, recognize Occitan as a valid administrative language locally, defines Occitania and restores our regions, makes Occitan one of the languages of our schools and apologizes for disrespecting our culture and history, I would be happy. I don’t need secession. I don’t need full autonomy. I want the memories of our loved ones to be passed down.
I might be too reactionary, too emotive when it comes to Occitania. I know I might, but it would hurt too much to just shut up and accept the death of my nation.
And to all of this I have to add personal problems. Things like school being a pain, or not having access to life saving HRT because of my transphobic family. I’m an adult, but I wouldn’t call myself independent yet. I need help to pay for rather useless schools and I need a roof, so I’m just trying my best to survive in an hostile environment in the hope that I will sooner than later be “free”.
So in conclusion I kinda feel stuck because France sucks.
So yeah, the never ending rambling ends here. If someone read all of this, may you always be happy <3
I’d be happy to have even just a message from y’all comrades.
Adieu cambaradas ! (Bye comrades!)
Have you heard of troubadours spreading the language of love across Europe? Well they originated in Occitania and the language in question was Occitan. Yet it’s common to hear, at least in France, that really they were French and that the language they spoke was just an old French and therefore the language of love is French.
I actually remember this from school, didn’t know they were Occitan and didn’t speak French, thanks for the education!
Thank you for sharing, comrade! I have no suggestions other than to keep your language alive, learn it, teach it.
The Beta “Southern France” v. the Chad Occitània
You’re not wrong for wanting your culture in all its forms to endure in the face of state persecution. It’s sad that Gallicization is pushed from the highest level with little pushback or criticism. Of all the things France does that rightly deserve criticism this is one of the quieter ones and I think that’s a damn shame.
Communist parties especially should be speaking about these issues. National chauvinism is another facet of capitalist oppression as much as heteronormativity, patriarchy, white supremacy, etc. and needs to be treated accordingly.
Sort of related to what you are talking about is the weird attitude I saw some people online had towards the destruction of languages through linguistic replacement (specifically English, but other dominant languages do the same to a lesser degree), and there was this strange colonialist attitude that blamed the government of other governments for not supporting their native language rather than the dominant power that English-speaking powers wield over other countries.
The destruction of humanity’s linguistic diversity is a grave crime to the entire species that goes criminally under-discussed even in Leftist circles.
I kind of hate English for this, since it forces other languages to change (and sometimes break) merely to include English words for the purpose of enhancing capitalism’s exploitation of the working class. You are also right to say that even leftists scarcely talk about linguistic destruction.
I agree. And I’ve seen a lot of americanisation in western Europe which led to people adopting english words or even code switch between english and their native language. We communists in western Europe need to be more puritan about our language since the capitalists use the english language to indoctrinate us
There has to be a balance though, since being super puritan might result in a France situation towards minority languages, which causes a similar problem for those languages. I also think English needs to be replaced as the universal language because it is a vector for neo-colonialist oppression (one of the effects has been pointed out earlier by myself). However, I do wonder what you mean by indoctrinate.
Thank you for writing this, it is very interesting and educational about a point of view/topic that is not often talked about. I don’t have a specific position on the question of Occitan nationalism, but i just want to make a general point here which is that the question of whether or not to support separatism in my view also includes an element of strategic expediency. What i mean by this is simply that i think that as communists we should also consider the effect that separatism and balkanization of larger states has on their ability to sustain themselves as independent entities and their ability to project power in the world.
For instance, a country which may be capable of a considerable degree of self-sufficiency before, if balkanized might result in states are are too small to be able to sustain enough agriculture and industry to exist without becoming dependent on other states. The result can be that these smaller states then become more vulnerable to imperialist subjugation and capture of their political system (it is easier to bribe/threaten smaller countries than big ones), such as happened in the wake of the disintegration of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. I am sure that many of those people who supported the dissolution of these states thought much the same as you do about their culture, but did their formal independence result in their overall conditions improving?
On the other hand, you can also argue that if the chances of an imperial core state, such as the US or UK, becoming socialist are very low and if the role they are likely to continue to play in the world in the future is undoubtedly a malicious one, using their strength to pursue an imperialist agenda, then is it not in the interest of the greater global good for them to disintegrate so that their remnants can no longer do the same damage to the world? Would the world be a better place with a weaker, smaller France? Or is it better for socialists to hold out hope that France can turn socialist and anti-imperialist, in which case a strong France would be preferable?
