Archive of Algeria

Sixty years ago this month, French police massacred an estimated two hundred Algerians in Paris during a peaceful demonstration in support of an independent Algeria. At the FLN's request, Renault factory workers and leftist activists Clara and Henri Benoits attended the demonstration as observers. They recount what they witnessed in this fascinating interview.

Houria Bouteldja and Youssef Boussoumah, co-founders of the Parti des Indigènes de la République in France, detail the party's history, the French anti-racist and anti-imperialist movement, and their own experiences engaging in anti-racist politics over the last fifteen years. 

The 1968 revolts in France live in popular memory as the country's most significant political moment in the twentieth century. In this extensive interview, Grey Anderson urges us to turn our attention instead a decade earlier to 1958 and the fall of the Fourth Republic. Anderson argues that the Fourth Republic's demise was a coup that allowed de Gaulle to seize power and crush his oppostion.

Protests in Algeria have been building since the start of the year. The protests, that have already forced former president Abdelaziz Bouteflika to step down after 20 years, have lately been facing increasingly hostile repression from police and security services. In this interview with imprisoned student leader Yani Aïdali, he discusses the nature of the student movement, and the possibility of its generating a national-level co-ordination.

The Hirak movement in Algeria continues to build momentum, bringing the streets of Algiers to a standstill. In this interview, Nedjib Sidi Moussa, doctor of Political Science at Université Panthéon-Sorbonne, discusses the composition of the movement, and highlights its limits and horizon.

How did a young American woman, born to a secular, working-class New York Jewish family and raised during the Depression, end up in Algiers during a heady period of revolutionary fervor?

“Non, non, non: stay upright on your own two feet and keep moving forward to goals of your own," said Frantz Fanon to Elaine Mokhtefi in Algiers.