Comments on: Did the Red Warriors Come Out to Play?

Question: Did the Red Warriors Come Out to Play?

myelin sheath — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 13:17:03 -0800

Do you know anything about the French antifascist gang called the Red Warriors?

This picture came up on Tumblr with this description:

"Members of the Red Warriors, an antifascist gang in France, 1985. Red Warriors used violent force to remove Neo Nazi gangs from France and provide safe spaces for immigrants during the rise of white nationalism and an outbreak of violent crime against people of colour. They formed a squat called "L.U.S.I.N.E" and were considered the most effect gang to counter nazi violence, working to instill fear in their opposition. "

The story sounds pretty interesting, but my Google-fu is completely failing me for finding any more information--or confirmation, for that matter. I have a feeling that a working knowledge of French would be very helpful in this search.

So, how true is this? Are there any resources where I could read more about this? Thanks!

By: Admiral Haddock

Admiral Haddock — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 13:36:07 -0800

The image led to a French documentary called Antifa--Chasseurs de skins from a couple of hits on Polish movie sites (here)

You can watch the doc on Youtube here.

By: hoyland

hoyland — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 14:57:30 -0800

I'm not able to find anything in English, but there's a Red Warriors page in French Wikipedia. Basically, they were leftist skinheads (apparently called 'Redskins'--English and French wiki) who seeminlgy provided security at punk concerts to protect against neo-nazi skinheads.

Googling for 'lusine' got me something called L'Usine in Geneva, which is some sort of concert venue run as a collective (or jointly by several collectives). It appears to be left wing (well, duh, perhaps, it's a collective), but I can't get from there to the Red Warriors, at least not without spending more time trying to read French than I have right now. It may just be that its google rank is obliterating the right hits, though.