The question of violence: protests in France, riot or rebellion?

The unrest in the streets is exposing a widening gulf between the French political Establishment and the people in whose name it governs, says DENNIS BROE

Inequality / 29 October 2026 Global wealth and poverty grow hand in hand 29 October 2026 Popular anger over inequality is based on cold, hard facts. International statistics show the intense concentration of assets in the hands of fewer individuals and a handful of countries, writes ROGER McKENZIE

The Brazilian electoral victory offers many lessons for socialists in other countries, especially on the interaction between race and class, argues CLAUDIA WEBBE

US proposals seek to undermine international support for a much-delayed referendum on Saharwi self-determination, warns LUKE ROTELLO

KATE CLARK uncovers an intriguing connection between a song by the hero of US labour movement and the Nackrosen metro station in Stockholm

Only a focus on the systemic roots of austerity and war can help the left and the labour movement steer Britain away from the same anger as Europe

Britain is still one of the wealthiest countries in the world but too many are excluded from sharing its benefits. ANDY McDONALD suggests that the solutions are already obvious — but Labour needs to find the political courage to implement them

THE Monday after a series of often violent confrontations between, on the one side high school and university students, pensioners and unions and police on the other, the foreign press was ablaze with graphic descriptions of “burning cars … and shattered shop windows,” as The New York Times photo caption put it over a photo of a “burned-out vehicle.”

The Murdoch press was even more graphic with The New York Post claiming the “riots in France” were an “attack on civilisation” led by “Muslim communities.” While Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal lead headline blared that “Rioting Sweeps Country,” then returned to commercial oblivion right next to it with “How Coke Beat Pepsi To Supply Beverages at KFC.”

The New York Times’ more “reasonable” approach sounded the alarm as across Europe, following the French, “young people and workers” were tempted by “promises of radical change.”

Yes, there was violence and some looting but the resort to portraying these demonstrations as a pure eruption of violence is the last resort of a government and a media which has lost control of the narrative.

The protests have now moved beyond secondary school and university students to a re-emergence of the rural and periurban (or urban fringe) disenfranchised and pensioners with October 17 marking the convergence of “Le jaune et le jeune,” the yellow (vests) and the youth.

The protests have now spurred the unions as well who will be staging a mass action that may turn into a general strike on November 5, occasioning even in the mainstream press here in France a description of the moment as “the end of Macronisme,” that is, of nearly a decade of neoliberal “reforms” which his administration has wrought including a vast redistribution of wealth upwards, declining medical and education infrastructure and an increasingly repressive police presence to squash dissent at these “reforms.”

The government has responded to these protests not with the Five Stages of Grief, but with Three Stages of Control. The first response was to deny their importance, a response that had to be abandoned as the protests grew in strength and frequency and as the claims of a disintegrating education system and lack of promise for the future gained credence with the rest of society.

Then came slight acknowledgement and placating. The Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu proposed adding 3,000 substitute teachers to the secondary school system, which was immediately understood for what it was — a measure to stop the demonstrations with the temporary teachers then let go when tensions decreased.

The third stage, though, is open violence on the part of the police, who have arrested thousands of demonstrators, largely minors, in a repression that has been described even in the mainstream press here as “historic in its scale.”

The demonstrators know that when they take to the streets they will be met with tear gas and billy clubs and they now know that they must respond in kind, in a pitched battle for control of the streets, defending their right to protest.

One of the most common placards in the corteges is “ACAB,” All Cops Are Bastards.” On the 17th, police quickly barricaded the area around the main protest staging ground at Republique, not allowing protesters to enter and, when they tried to surmount the barriers, met with tear gas grenades whizzing over their heads and the young people frantically running in one direction or another to avoid the canisters.

The LFI, France Unbowed, the main party favouring the peaceful part of these protests noted that “confrontation seems to be the goal of this law enforcement strategy,” accusing the police of having “organised the disorder.”

The mainstream media focus on demonstrators’ violence — street violence portrayed as flashy and graphic — is at the expense of the slower and more deadly structural violence that the protesters are attempting to call attention to.

The economist Thomas Piketty points out that what Macron has presided over in the area of education is a 20 per cent drop in funding per student when adjusted for inflation with teachers’ pay outside the elite universities, which Macron’s polices of entrepreneurship have promoted, falling by 50 per cent.

This has resulted in universities and secondary schools with collapsing ceilings, in school facilities with little of no heating or cooling and in administrative offices deserted because of declining salaries.

This in a country, as Piketty points out, where in the last decades private wealth has risen from 300 to 600 per cent of the total national income and where, for example, the wealthiest companies grow richer as the oil and gas company TotalEnergies reported an €11.2 billion profit this year.

Two stark moments characterise these protests. One is that Le Monde mourned the fact that the Socialist candidate for president Raphael Glucksmann, who won what that party quaintly terms a “primary” by getting only 70 per cent of 144,000 votes, could not visit the protests because he would be booed and laughed off the barricades.

This represents not the “ultra-left” position of the protesters but rather their understanding that the centrist parties, even those that call themselves left, represent only a “college-educated elite.”

The other symbol mourned in the press was the toppling in Marseille of a statue of Marianne, signifier of the French revolution. This is not a descent into anarchy. It is a recognition that after four revolutions in under 85 years — 1789, 1830, 1848 and 1871 — to finally rid the country of the aristocracy, the bourgeois republic that was installed now no longer represents the interests of the majority of its people.

As one protester put it, “We’re following in the tradition of May ’68” and in that tradition these protesters will find their own Marianne.

Europe / 27 October 2026 Students reject French PM’s measures to end wave of protests 27 October 2026 Europe / 23 October 2026 France 2026 and the collapse of the European consensus 23 October 2026 BEN WOODWARD surveys the underlying causes of the mass turmoil rocking European countries and the role of the younger generation of activists who have come into mass mobilisations

Voices of Scotland / 20 October 2026 A school for revolution? Eyewitness account of the French education revolt 20 October 2026 MAYA McGOVERN, a Scottish student teacher currently working in northern France, offers a first-hand account of local demonstrations in support of reforms and against police violence

Features / 11 October 2026 Sound and fury from the new French revolution 11 October 2026 DENNIS BROE reports from Paris, where secondary school student protests are rocking the country and terrifying the political elite, while drawing support from wide sections of the public