This is Popular Front, a podcast focused on the niche details of Modern Warfare and underreported

conflict with me Jake Hanrahan. Today we're speaking to journalist Sebastian Bourdon. He's going to be talking to us about his time

spent within the anti-fascist movements in France. He spent a lot of time talking to them

reporting from various different groups and he's going to explain to us how

anti-fascist action in France has become more

consolidated and more organized since the killing of Clement Merrick 10 years

ago this June.

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You've written this book right it's coming out soon

it's about how the Antifar movement in France kind of

changed and was brought into the limelight, if you like, France after the the brutal murder of Clement Merrick if you can

let's start off by kind of going back a decade to when that happened and maybe explain you know what it was like before then and

how that that death really changed things up until now. So Klimo was killed in

2013 but I guess to understand what the whole history, we have to go back in time a bit more. Klimo Meriq was a member of a group called Actioni fascist

anti-fascist action Paris in Bonuio, so suburbs.

And this group was founded in the late 2000s in Paris. It was at first a very quite small group that was quite new in its approach of anti-fascism because anti-fascism over the 80s, 90s in France was very linked to various subcultures such as the

pong scene, some red some Redskins and all that. And what was new about the

actions fascist Paris-Bagnu is that they were very inspired by this anti-fascist action, the label which actually came from Germany and it's linked with the whole autonomous culture from Germany.

And by bringing this label to France and its whole culture, they actually

made quite a big change and renewal into the anti-fechesia scene which at that time in late 2000s was not that active anymore in France and they started to bring together Minutants from very different backgrounds altogether into this anti-fascist movement, anti-ficious group, which at that time was mostly focused in actually like streets

...