French student protests

[Safe-Keeper]

Surprised there isn't a thread on this already.
In France, furious high schoolers are protesting and rioting and blocking the entrances to their schools in protest of atrocious conditions at campuses.
There have also been agitators, called 'Black Bloc' or 'Casseurs' in French, mixed in, who seems to have no connection to the cause, but are just there to stir up trouble and pick fights.

Several schools have apparently been put on fire, and the police response has been criticized for being exceptionally violent. The cops have been instructed to no longer use concussion grenades (if that's what they're called in English) on protesters.

This follows a pattern in French culture where protests easily turn heated or violent. Wish it wasn't so, but doubt it'll change any time soon.

Having said that, though... Despite my feelings about this, I can name at least one US university that could do with getting burned down by a mob.

 

[Flo]

According to Trump, it has nothing to do with conditions in schools, it is about islam having taken over European societies …

Seriously, we're in a pre-electoral year, and both the far right and the far left need to mobilise as many people as they can. LePen and the RN need chaos (hence the black bloc "casseurs" interventions to escalate the protests into riots) in order to persuade voters that the country is in peril and only them can save it; Mélenchon needs protests in order to persuade voters he has the answers and will return the country to social peace and justice. Both carry water for Moscow …

 

[Flo]

I've been discussing it on a French speaking board, and my linking the timing of the riots with the political situation in France and more generally in the context of the asymmetrical war waged by Moscow against the main EU countries has not been well received …

There's such an opposition to the politics of the Macron government, and such a tunnel vision that makes it almost impossible to view French politics in a larger context; it makes the idea of those riots being anything other than spontaneous almost sacrilegious.

French people are still attached to romantic versions of the 1789 revolution or the 1968 students revolts. In the last case, they still haven't realised how much the riots were manipulated by both Moscow and the far right (I remember a guy telling us how he was encouraged to shoot stones at the police from a building, in order to induce violence against unarmed students. He was mostly apolitical but found it funny and lucrative).

Call me cynical, but the parallels …

 

[malbui]

I continue to maintain that the only good things to emerge from the Spring of 1968 were that my wife and I exist. There wasn’t just revolution in the air.

 

[malbui]

On a more serious note, the students and lycéens are always going to find something to protest about. The unions and professional troublemakers are always going to join in, and the political extremes are going to make capital out of it. It’s just the way the country works. My kids were always smart enough to have a lazy morning and then catch up on homework in the afternoons.