Around 50 French Antifa Groups Join Protest Network Ahead of Weekend Demonstrations amid Unrest Fears

Some 50 radical Antifa cells within a broader network of nearly 300 groups are mobilizing ahead of this weekend’s demonstrations in France, raising concerns that the protests could descend into disorder and violence, News Media has learned.

Self-described Antifa organizations are coordinating with communist, socialist, far-left and anti-Israel groups on two major initiatives: an “anti-fascist village” in Orléans targeting conservative leader Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, and nationwide Acte II demonstrations intended to repeat the unrest seen last weekend.

A News Media investigation identified 287 organizations in France’s growing protest network. The groups include 50 that explicitly identify as Antifa, 27 communist, socialist, Trotskyist or revolutionary-left organizations, 24 labor unions, and a widening alliance of far-left groups focused on Israel, migrant rights, the environment, feminism, transgender issues and other causes. Although the demonstrations are being presented as a youth-education movement, only 27 of the organizations identified are student or youth groups.

The coordinated activity is unfolding alongside a broader international campaign involving communist, socialist and left-wing groups in Greece, Italy, Spain, India and other countries.

News Media has assembled an ongoing guide to the organizations involved in what some have labeled “Chaos Inc.” The directory will be updated as new groups and activities emerge.

The scale of the effort is a sharp increase from the 54 organizations identified during last weekend’s riots. By early Friday morning in Paris, organizers had listed 649 Acte II actions, including demonstrations at 21 train stations, three ports, two oil depots and one refinery.

News Media reviewed dozens of pages of planning documents and social media posts that indicate organizers have developed a coordinated campaign supported by funding, transportation, logistics and a communications network.

Fundraising drives, transport arrangements, youth outreach, prewritten campaign materials and a centralized information hub point to a mobilization structure that was in place days before protesters were expected to take to the streets. Organizers also anticipated the display of hammer-and-sickle and Palestinian flags.

A French administrative court reportedly overturned a Paris police order banning street protests. The ruling had not been made public, however, and it remained unclear whether it would affect similar orders issued in other cities.

Organizers have already begun preparing additional actions, including Acte III on Oct. 31, a larger strike and blockade campaign on Nov. 5, and a Europe-wide mobilization scheduled for Nov. 20.

In France, the groups identified by the investigation fall primarily into two organizing streams: the Ciao Fachos, or “Good-bye Fascists,” coalition planning the Orléans event, and the Acte II, or “Action 2,” campaign led by the Yellow Vests group that organized last week’s unrest. Participating organizations have signed a roster and a separate list for the Orléans demonstration.

“Macron must leave and make way for the people!” Acte II organizers said in a call urging “Yellow vests, high school students, university students, workers” to join “demonstrations, roundabouts and blockades, everywhere in France.”

Last September, following the killing of conservative leader Charlie Kirk by an alleged leftist gunman, President Donald Trump signed an executive order designating Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization. Trump later issued National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 targeting far-left groups. The memorandum said that “groups and entities that perpetuate this extremism have created a movement that embraces and elevates violence to achieve policy outcomes, including justifying additional assassinations.”

Despite the presence of groups around the world that use Antifa in their names, former FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress in 2020 that Antifa was “not a group or an organization,” but instead “a movement or an ideology.”

In the United States, far-left activists may carry flags bearing the word “ANTIFASCIST,” but they generally do not operate through a single formal national organization called “Antifa.” That decentralized structure has fueled repeated denials that Antifa exists as an organization.

The structure is different in Europe, where activists openly use the Antifa name, antifascist banners and flags bearing the emblems of local chapters. A News Media investigation found that this broader network is helping mobilize activists for another weekend of protests across France.

Last November, the State Department designated four European groups linked to Antifa as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specifically Designated Global Terrorists: Antifa Ost in Germany; the International Revolutionary Front, also known as the Informal Anarchist Federation, in Italy; and Armed Proletarian Justice and Revolutionary Class Self Defense in Greece. The groups were accused of organizing or carrying out bombings, shootings and other politically motivated attacks.

Antifa chapters around the world have built their movement around opposition to what they describe as “fascism.” Critics, however, accuse them of using threats, intimidation, harassment, violence and property destruction, as well as tactics they say can become coercive and dangerous. Critics also argue that the term “fascism,” echoing language used in propaganda from Russia, China and Iran, has increasingly become a broad political label applied to Western democracies.

For example, late last year, Neville Roy Singham, an American-born communist tech tycoon living in China, took to the stage at the Golden Tulip Hotel in Shanghai for a “Global South” conference and critiqued the alleged “fascism” of the United States.

Days ago, News Media reported exclusively that an internal State Department assessment warns that antifascist groups could participate in a “potentially more confrontational protest” this weekend that could “expose further security shortcomings and deepen political tensions.”

Now, the organizations themselves provide a look inside the infrastructure being assembled on the ground.

Free Buses to the “Antifascist Village”

On Friday night, a bus is set to leave Marseille at about 9 p.m. local time for Orléans, in a journey organized by “La Riposte Antifasciste Marseille,” established in October 2023 with a “strategy of massification of anti-fascism.” In its promotion, the pilgrimage leaders tell followers, “Anti-fascism is everyone’s business.” It’s joined by Marseille Unite Communiste Libertaire.

Other organizing materials advertise collective transportation from locations including Paris, Saint-Denis, Stains and Brest.

The logistical preparations provide a more concrete measure of organization than simply finding similar flags or slogans at demonstrations.

On Saturday morning, at 8 a.m., in the city of Bagnolet outside Paris, the Assemblée Antifasciste de Bagnolet, or “Bagnolet Antifascist Assembly” has plans in place to meet at the town hall, Mairie de Bagnolet, on Rue Hoche for a two-hour ride to Orléans. Its online sign-up sheet advertises 50 free seats.

La Marche des Solidarites, or “The March for Solidarity,” an online hub, directs supporters in the Paris region to buses leaving from Saturday morning from Place de la République in Saint-Denis and Stains with #NousToutes and Carré Citoyen.

On Instagram, Saint-Denis Antifa, Carre Citoyen and Marche des Solidarites are sending people to a fundraising page on the Solidaire website, where organizers have raised about $13,300 for expenses for the Saturday action, including the “printing of mobilization materials: leaflets, posters, etc.” and a “truck/sound system for a large procession of the solidarity march.”

The Saint-Denis Antifa also made crêpes last week at the Saint-Denis Hip-Hop Festival to raise money for the protest.

And organizers have centralized the machinery for mobilization online. Adults are facilitating space for high-school students, telling them, “free places are for you.”

The Marche des Solidarités online repository on antiracisme-solidarite.org describes itself as a place containing “all the information to mobilize,” including “calls, signatories, visuals, etc.”

Ciao Fachos has gone further. Its organizing documents call for “tractages, collages, réunions publiques, récoltes de fonds, transports collectifs” — distributing leaflets, putting up posters, holding public meetings, fundraising and organizing collective transportation.

The group also urges activists to prevent National Rally supporters from distributing literature at markets or putting posters on walls.

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The network has also advertised Signal channels, much like far-left activists have done in the U.S., to swap information and coordinate logistics.

A Two-Day Orléans Antifa Operation

The schedule is carefully organized with Antifa groups like Loiret Antifasciste, which is promoting a detailed program. The group’s own declaration describes the objective as larger than opposing a single National Rally convention.

Building a “mouvement antifasciste,” or “antifascist movement,” is a “collective responsibility,” the organization says, calling for a united political front.

For Saturday, organizers advertise:

• 10:30 a.m. — A demonstration beginning near the Cathédrale Sainte-Croix d’Orléans, including a “Ciao Fachos” procession.
• 1 p.m. — An “antifascist village” at Campo Santo with food, political roundtables and other activities, including a plan to “parade together behind a common banner” of “anti-racism” and “anti-fascism.”
• Evening — Food, concerts and accommodations for activists.

On Sunday, Ciao Fachos advertised another demonstration toward CO’Met, the location of the National Rally gathering.

The Association France Palestine Solidarité says its members will participate in a Palestinian contingent during Saturday’s demonstration and operate a stand at the antifascist village until 10 p.m. Protest leaders chose the last protest date of Oct. 17 to memorialize a protest on the same day in 1961 when a protest by Algerian “martyrs” turned deadly in Paris.

Organizations include Urgence Palestine Orléans, AGIR POUR LA PALESTINE, Union juive française pour la paix, migrant-rights organizations including FASTI, Droits Devant!!, Coordination Sans-Papiers 75, La Cimade Aix-en-Provence, Tous Réfugiés, GASPROM-ASTI Nantes, ASTI Orléans, the Association des Travailleurs Maghrébins de France and UJFP, the French Jewish Union for Peace, which is promoting the demonstration.

The CGT Paris, the Paris branch of one of France’s largest labor confederations, is also organizing transportation to the demonstration and published the Loiret Antifaciste coalition’s call for an antifascist movement.

Solidaires 37, the Indre-et-Loire branch of the left-wing labor federation, is organizing pay-what-you-can transportation from Tours.

The coalition lists demonstrate how explicitly antifascist organizations operate inside a considerably larger political coalition.

Antifa Joins ‘Acte II’

The Orléans demonstration isn’t the only place explicit Antifa organizations are mobilizing Saturday.

News Media separately identified antifascist groups attached directly to local Acte II demonstrations.

In Angoulême, Action Antifasciste 16, also known as Action AntiFa16, appears as an official collaborator on an Oct. 24 Acte II announcement alongside NPA Charente, Révolution Permanente Angoulême, Maison des Peuples et de la Paix, Fanfare en lutte d’Angoulême and Organisation de Solidarité Trans Angoulême.

In the city of Caen, the “Caen Antifa Squad” appears as a collaborator on another announcement explicitly advertising “ACTE II — 24 OCTOBRE.”

The presence of Antifa groups provides a connective point between the nationwide Yellow Vest mobilization and the antifascist ecosystem.

One of the figures attempting to bring the different grievances together is Benjamin Ball, editor of the website coordinating the Yellow Vest action map.

“Our role is to make sure that the social anger aggregates,” Ball recently told French media, saying organizers want representatives of different sectors received at the Élysée.

Communists, Socialists and Antifa

French Antifa activism substantially overlaps with anarchist, communist, anticapitalist and revolutionary-socialist networks whose organizations frequently cooperate in demonstrations and campaigns.

The Oct. 24 coalition illustrates those connections.

Union Communiste Libertaire, a libertarian-communist organization advocating revolutionary political change, has joined the mobilization.

The revolutionary socialist Nouveau Parti anticapitaliste, or NPA, is promoting the Orléans demonstration. Its publication “L’Anticapitaliste” reported that dozens of organizations were mobilizing against the RN congress.

La France Insoumise, the French Communist Party, Union pour la Reconstruction Communiste and Le Poing Levé appear in the wider local coalition.

The coalition also includes labor organizations, environmental activists and student groups, such as Fédération Syndicale Étudiante, a left-wing student union already involved in France’s October student revolt, is joining the mobilization.

Extinction Rebellion France is represented through its Île-de-France organization. Its agitators rappelled the Marianne statue and hoisted a vest with an anti-police message, creating the iconic image used for the next phase of activation.

And the coalition includes feminist organizations such as NousToutes, whose current social-media material is promoting transportation to Orléans and mobilization resources.

Labor Unions Move Activists to Orléans with Antifa

Organized labor is providing another piece of the mobilization infrastructure.

Along with CGT Paris and Solidaires 37, the expanded roster includes CNT Fédération Éducation, CNT 49, CNT Education 93, SNETAP-FSU, Solidaires 44, Solidaires 35, SUD Protection Sociale 93 and CGT ArianeGroup Issac, among other labor organizations.

VISA 93, part of the Vigilance et Initiatives Syndicales Antifascistes labor-antifascist network, has promoted union transportation for the demonstration.

Meanwhile, as Antifa and other leftist agitators readied for the weekend, French authorities arrested a 34-year-old man, Hodei Docampo Ciarra, this week in the town of Val d’Issoire (Haute-Vienne). Police suspect him of being one of the rioters who devastated City Hall in Limoges, torching the building.

French police said he was allegedly involved in the “ultra-left.”

They arrested the man, 34, at about 6:15 a.m. as he got out of bed at his parents’ home.