By Glenn Greenwald / Rumble Following the recent protests against police in France, the French government has taken steps to implement increasingly repressive measures in the forms of mass surveillance and the rhetoric endorsement of online censorship.
I’ve spent some time just walking around looking at what’s happening during the protests in a large French city, and those didn’t really feel violent or overly destructive, more like a show of strength and trying to make the overwhelming public stance heard.
The only establishments that I saw had their windows broken were either large international chain stores or some municipal buildings, small cafes or various boulangeries were intact. There were burning trashcans and other stuff, but never too close to a building or something that might catch fire, everything was moved towards the center of the streets. It worked to disrupt car traffic and give the city a protest vibe, but it didn’t feel that violent. You could even come up both to masked protesters and to cops and just have a chat in most cases. I think it was more violent in Paris, but I’d guess a lot of it had similar vibes still.
The thing is, it’s not like it started with this, there were peaceful protests and strikes at first. But when you ignore your population long enough, they see that peaceful means aren’t working and escalate. It could’ve been prevented if there was a reasonable governmental response.
That escalated it a lot, but the protests and strikes started way earlier with a pension reform that kinda robbed the people of 2 work-free years. And it wasn’t even that applicable to most of the population, instead it unfairly targeted those who held some of the most physically demanding or damaging jobs. Macron doubled down, and then that traffic stop killing… so yeah, it’s really not surprising that it escalated from there.
What didn’t help is that police has a long history of violence in general, see this article from 2016, for example. It’s been like this for a while.
There is currently a climate of defiance of our government in France. So I guess every little thing can just light everything up unfortunately.
My other comment is more explicit on why we are in this context.
I’ve spent some time just walking around looking at what’s happening during the protests in a large French city, and those didn’t really feel violent or overly destructive, more like a show of strength and trying to make the overwhelming public stance heard.
The only establishments that I saw had their windows broken were either large international chain stores or some municipal buildings, small cafes or various boulangeries were intact. There were burning trashcans and other stuff, but never too close to a building or something that might catch fire, everything was moved towards the center of the streets. It worked to disrupt car traffic and give the city a protest vibe, but it didn’t feel that violent. You could even come up both to masked protesters and to cops and just have a chat in most cases. I think it was more violent in Paris, but I’d guess a lot of it had similar vibes still.
The thing is, it’s not like it started with this, there were peaceful protests and strikes at first. But when you ignore your population long enough, they see that peaceful means aren’t working and escalate. It could’ve been prevented if there was a reasonable governmental response.
I’m assuming this is related to the 17-year-old youth was shot by police? Or are they protesting something else?
Because the police shooting protest started violent from day one.
That escalated it a lot, but the protests and strikes started way earlier with a pension reform that kinda robbed the people of 2 work-free years. And it wasn’t even that applicable to most of the population, instead it unfairly targeted those who held some of the most physically demanding or damaging jobs. Macron doubled down, and then that traffic stop killing… so yeah, it’s really not surprising that it escalated from there.
What didn’t help is that police has a long history of violence in general, see this article from 2016, for example. It’s been like this for a while.
There is currently a climate of defiance of our government in France. So I guess every little thing can just light everything up unfortunately. My other comment is more explicit on why we are in this context.