Depuis le 28 décembre 2025, une insurrection populaire soulève l’Iran. Le mouvement, commencé comme une protestation contre la vie chère, prends désormais une tournure politique. L’oppression du régime islamique est contestée radicalement par un mouvement de masse.

Les habitants sont sortis dans toutes les villes — au Kurdistan, au Lorestan. Une ville a été libérée et, jusqu’à présent, elle est entre les mains de la population. Des compagnons anarchistes d’Iran participent aux manifestations. Une anarchiste irannienne nous a fait parvenir un texte d’analyse de la situation du mouvement au 6 janvier.

A Critique of Authoritarian Projects

We argue that bread and freedom are fundamentally material and political concepts, and that it is ultimately the economic crisis and the absence of political freedoms that drive the vulnerable and marginalized into struggle. Yet, with the understanding that the “Bread and Freedom” movement cannot reach a horizon of liberation without confronting the internal and external dangers that threaten it, we write this text. We maintain that any movement seeking liberation from the current state and universal access to bread and freedom must also be anti-fascist and anti-authoritarian.

The “Bread and Freedom” movement can advance only by linking poverty and lack of freedom to structures of power—not to puppets of global powers. Access to bread and freedom becomes a meaningful political and emancipatory demand only when it goes beyond replacing governments or leaders, and instead seeks to abolish domination and dismantle hierarchies at their roots. Bread and freedom are inseparable demands; separating them inevitably reproduces authority and class society—whether it takes the form of bread without freedom or freedom without bread.

What must be highlighted is the risk that the “Bread and Freedom” movement may be hijacked by authoritarian opposition forces and monarchist projects. What we are currently witnessing—alongside state repression—is another serious threat to the movement: political co-optation. A clear example is the monarchist project centered on Reza Pahlavi, which—with claims of personal legitimacy and support from Persian-language media aligned with Western governments—seeks to redirect the demands for bread and freedom toward a new authoritarian project and to replace the movement’s goals.

It is evident that within any political system involving Reza Pahlavi, bread becomes nothing more than a promise, and freedom is reduced to a slogan embedded in capitalist relations—a system that guarantees neither bread for all nor the abolition of hierarchies.

An anti-fascist analysis demonstrates that without universal guarantees of bread and freedom, what is unfolding is merely a transfer of power, in which one form of authority is replaced by another. Therefore, Western states’ support for their preferred alternatives must be understood through the lens of geopolitical interests and the neoliberal world order. There is no doubt that the demands for bread and freedom directly contradict capitalist logic; this is why the current movement, rooted in these demands, must either be neutralized by those in power or co-opted by imperialist forces. For the combined demand for bread and freedom is inherently anti-hierarchical and anti-dominant. The greatest threat today is therefore not only repression, but the potential redirection of the movement into yet another authoritarian order masked by a new face.

In the present moment, protests, strikes, and the occupation of workplaces and factories constitute the first forms of direct action. Following the fall of the Islamic Republic, horizontal organizing, collective self-management, and the immediate takeover of centers of power and production by people’s councils must begin.

To conclude, it must be clearly stated that from an anti-fascist standpoint, the risk that the current popular movement for bread and freedom will be hijacked by Western states is entirely real. We—forces committed to freedom, justice and equality—stand firmly against these interventionist and authoritarian projects. At the same time, because the people are present in the streets in their struggle to overthrow the regime, we stand unequivocally with them and defend their autonomous and liberatory actions that may lead to revolution—without interference from any state.

Long live freedom, justice, and equality!

An anarchist woman from iran

En français : https://cnt-ait.info/2026/01/07/pain-liberte-fr

In english : https://cnt-ait.info/2026/01/07/pain-liberte-en

فارسی

پشتیبانی از جنبش «نان و آزادی» در جغرافیای ایران