From being the birthplace of the industrial revolution, Europe has undergone a protracted decline. A part of this has been the erosion of its core industrial base, through a process of deindustrialisation, which gathered momentum following the 2008 crisis, and since COVID-19 has sharply accelerated.

On Monday 22 September, Copenhagen Airport was shut down for four hours. The reason? Unidentified drones were flying overhead. Two days later, it was reported that drones had been observed at other Danish airports – in Aalborg, Esbjerg and Sønderborg, as well as over Skrydstrup Air Base. The Danish Armed Forces announced that drones had been spotted circling a number of military installations. Since then, there have been several reports of unidentified drones across the country.

The period of 1980 to 1981 in Poland was marked by the most intense confrontation between the working class and the Stalinist bureaucracy in history. The working class attempted to take control over the commanding heights over the economy and purge the Stalinists, whose incompetence and betrayal of the ideals of real socialism had brought the country to ruin. It is the task of genuine Communists to retrieve the revolutionary heritage of this period from under a mountain of lies of both capitalists and Stalinists, who disregard the genuine experience of the working class in this period, and slander the revolution itself.

Last week, Sébastien Lecornu resigned as Prime Minister after an unprecedentedly brief stint in power. Just days later, he was reappointed by Macron and tasked with cobbling together a cabinet that could pass his austerity budget.

The general strike on 3 October was a historic leap forward for the Palestine movement and for the class struggle in general. A human tide poured onto streets across Italy: 300,000 in Rome, 150,000 in Milan, Naples, and Bologna, 100,000 in Florence. The list is too long for this article. In total, an estimated 2 million people took to the streets in at least 100 cities. The next day, 500,000 people flooded Rome again for the national demonstration.

Last Thursday, on the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur, a British-Syrian man carried out a knife attack at a synagogue in Manchester, killing one and injuring two. The attacker, Jihad Al-Shamie, was shot dead by police on the scene.

What happened in Italy on Friday 3 October has very few precedents. Think about it. A politicalstrike. A political generalstrike. A political general strike over internationalist solidarity and against imperialism.

Over the weekend, the streets of Spain were flooded with a tide of people, protesting against the Zionist genocide in Gaza. Along with Israel’s assault on the Flotilla, which was aiming to break the blockade of humanitarian aid to the massacred Palestinian population.

Friday, 3 October 2025, will be remembered as a major turning point in the class struggle in Italy. It is the day Italy saw millions participate in a general strike in support of the Palestinian people. The strike was called jointly by the USB union and the CGIL, the biggest trade union confederation in Italy, with its five million members.

On 26 and 27 September, delegates from important dockworkers’ trade unions in Europe and the Mediterranean convened in Genoa to discuss joint action to stop the genocide in Gaza. The meeting took place at a time when, across Europe, workers and young people are in the mood for open struggle against the barbaric massacre of the Palestinian people, and are blaming their own ruling classes for complicity in the genocide.

The planned day of action on 2 October, called by the inter-union committee of trade union confederation leaders, will probably be massive, as so many days of action have been over the last twenty years. During the mass movement against the raising of the retirement age to 64, from January to June 2023, fourteen days of action were organised, some of which mobilised more than 3 million demonstrators. Macron, however, did not budge an inch: the counter-reform was pushed through.

The general strike against the genocide in Gaza on 22 September represented a huge outburst of mass anger which has profound implications beyond the borders of Italy. The idea that mass direct action is needed to stop Israel’s murderous assault on the Palestinians now dominates. At the same time, the Italian mass protest can also be seen as part of a ‘Red September’ of mass uprisings, revolutions and insurrections across the world.

The demonstrations and strike on 22 September marked a decisive turning point for the Palestine movement in Italy. All the anger and disgust accumulated in the face of the increasingly ferocious actions of the state of Israel, all the indignation at the complicity and revolting hypocrisy of the Italian and western governments, finally poured out in demonstrations that spread throughout the country.

We are living in an era of revolution and counter-revolution; of both reaction and radicalisation. In the famous words of Rosa Luxemburg, the future facing humanity is either socialism or barbarism.

The mobilisation on 18 September was massive. It involved more than a million demonstrators, numerous blockades and many strikes in transport, education and other public sector services. As for the hordes of ‘rioters’ prophesied by Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, they did not show up.