France’s proud tradition of protests

France has seen protestors don yellow vests and march to fight high fuel taxes. Angry farmers, seeking better pay, drive tractors down the Champs-Élysées. The nation also saw museum workers strike and shut down the Louvre to secure better tourist management.

Protest is as French as “La Marsillaise,” the 1792 anthem that enshrines the collective duty to fight tyranny in the country’s national identity. However, this month saw the most violent protests in years alongside tough policing measures, which raised concerns about riots — comprising hundreds of thousands of people — marching against rising living costs and poor conditions in schools.

Saturday saw at least 2,400 people being arrested after rioters in cities across France clashed with authorities, set cars on fire, stormed public buildings, looted stores and lit a historic city hall on fire. The country could see more protests in the future.


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"How can French people do this to France?" outgoing President Emmanuel Macron asked on Sunday.

Nothing justifies the destruction, he added. “We all feel anger and shame.”

However, any student of French history would know the West European country’s proud, loud and colourful protest culture has occasionally turned violent — starting with the beheadings of King Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette during the French revolution that overthrew the monarchy in 1789.

A protest culture is born

According to historians, the French Revolution gave birth to the modern-day French tradition of civic engagement as a duty. The idea is that voting is not the only way to drive change; demonstration is considered a bedrock value, a way to make elites hear the populace and to defend freedoms. A child becoming an activist is seen as a rite of passage across generations. The right to protest is even constitutionally protected.

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“It’s a way to build collective identity and political community,” said Magali Della Sudda, research director in political science at the French National Center for Scientific Research in Bordeaux.

France's history after the revolution is not isolated to protests and reforms but comprises cycles of popular uprisings, repression, mobilisation and political concessions

Tragedy had struck the tradition in 1871, when government troops cracked down on the new “Paris Commune,” reportedly killing thousands.

Collective action in France has also won in certain ways — as in 1968, when student demonstrations and a general strike forced the government to grant concessions like an increase in the minimum wage.

Recent history has seen the “yellow vests” — “gilets jaunes” in French — demonstrating against a proposed fuel tax increase, which broadened into protests over other issues like living costs and inequality.

Some demonstrations in 2018 and 2019 featured burning cars, looting and confrontations with police. It is not uncommon for violence on the fringes to mar otherwise peaceful protests.

Similarly, the student protests expanded from education to other matters of concern, featuring scenes of looting and clashes with police. There is no clear record of how many of those who were ransacking shops had turned out to join the day’s protest, which drew thousands, or were mere opportunists.

Authorities, in response, imposed nightly curfew amid rising calls for protests later in the week.

The upheaval happened less than two weeks before the US midterm elections on November 3, which will also amount to a referendum on President Donald Trump’s troubled second term in office. Trump and leading Republicans are attempting to leverage the widespread riots in France by alleging that the social unrest in Europe is caused by Muslim migrants.

Authorities and police have not linked immigrants to the rioting in France.

Police violence blamed for mistrust

According to political scientist Fabien Jobard, some of the forces propelling the protests for the last month owe to a more recent French tradition.

Jobard said that the country has seen recurring waves of what the French call “violences urbaines” or what Americans would call riots, since the 1990s, which were often sparked by police violence.

Nationwide unrest erupted in 2005 after two teenagers died while fleeing police and again in 2023 after an officer fatally shot a 17-year-old during a traffic stop outside Paris.

“For young people from the suburbs, the riot is one of the traditional forms of collective expression,” he said.

Government critics and human rights campaigners have alleged that last month saw police tactics being unnecessarily violent. Much of the criticism focuses on rubber-bullet launchers, known in France as LBDs and stun grenades, which are blamed for inflicting serious injuries to protestors.

Additionally, Della Sudda highlighted that nearly 8,000 arrests took place in the weeks leading up to October 17, which dwarfed the few dozen during the 1998 protests of 500,000 students against a shortage of teachers and dilapidated schools.

The feeling of not being heard also is part of it, she says.

Rather than listen to protesters and negotiate, Della Sudda noted, the government, for example, tried to appease “yellow vest” grievances through a digital platform, which translates to “the great national debate.” Anti-government protesters panned Macron’s plan.

“As a result," Della Sudda wrote, “mistrust is growing.”

(With inputs from AP)