What do you expect when “protests” involve widespread destruction of private property, looting, fires, and vandalism?
Well a proper response from the government? Not something that antagonize the population, maybe something more human than using ILLEGAL weapons against your people ? Proprety destruction and looting is what you get when you push your people to the brink.
Look, I understand that the people have a grievance, and there are 101 ways to protest that does not include violence and the destruction of property.
We saw evidence during the BLM protests that violence was being started by police by both beating on peaceful protesters and using agent-provocateurs. The most famous example was the hooded man wearing police issued boots, who wasnt participating in the protest, knocking out the windows of a Target.
My point is that if violence and property destruction discredit a protest for you then the police have already won. They can turn any protest into violence and destruction if not by outright attacking peaceful protests, then by using an agent-provocateur.
Haiti won it’s independence from the French when it finally killed all the French people on the island. What did France do? It charged Haitians for the loss of property of French citizens. Which property did the French lose? Their slaves. Literally. So the French put a price on each black person on the island and calculated a debt.
In today’s dollars, that debt was in the billions. That debt still exists today, it is stl generating profit for white Europe. Citi holds the debt and collects the interest.
Sure, it’s possible to protest in a way that makes you comfortable, but white society, and in this case especially French society, has demonstrated that they won’t budge unless you do this. They have zero interest in justice, rule of law, human life, sustainable society. If you ask for liberation they will kill you. If you win your liberation that will punish you and enslave you in different ways. And their allies will support them.
Riots are the voices of the unheard. The French govt has a long and proud tradition of violently oppressing protests. Things in France have been contentious all year over a variety of issues. What exactly are the French people supposed to do? A letter writing campaign to stop having their rights stripped away? Sit quietly outside of Parliament and ask nicely to stop being oppressed? Politely ask that the pigs only crush their neck a little? If you abhor disruptive and violent political action done by the people, surely you’ve found the non-violent alternative that works better. What is it?
Riots are the voices of the unheard.
Protests can be.
Riots are criminal attacks against innocent businesses and residents, which contribute nothing to any cause, and only results in aggressive reactions from police and governments.
The French govt has a long and proud tradition of violently oppressing protests.
This is truly unfortunate, and I do sympathize with protesters.
What exactly are the French people supposed to do?
Not hurting innocent people and local businesses would be a good start. There cannot be an effective protest without the support of the community. If you’re burning down the community, then you’ve only made more enemies.
It may be helpful to learn (based on studies) what methods of protests work and why.
If a protest can’t be effective, then it’s a waste of time.
You do understand that, when being discussed empirically, nonviolent protests often includes riots and looting right? Here you go.. I’d also like to add that your own source states that violent protest is effective. And that nonviolient, nonnormative protests are better at garnering public support. They article states the author personally believes those protests may be better at introducing change. Not that it is. They think it might. For a more thorough look into things here’s a video that’s worth your time and consideration.
Riots like these are what you get when you prevent any other forms of protests: banning protests (illegal but by the time you get through court to get the ban lifted it is too late), making unions and strikes irrelevant by never ever yielding, preventing votes in the National Assembly using pressures on MP and all that the means that our constitution allows to bypass parliament, even though there is no clear majority for whatever you are doing, forcefully removing peaceful protestors, etc There are reasons why unions was good for everyone, elite class included, they allow peaceful resolution of conflict. If you remove all peaceful avenue, there will be people going into the not peaceful avenue.
I get it, the people of France are in a bad position, and there is a long history of protests and pushback from the government.
But there is no benefit to adding violence, unless the goal is to hurt the communities you are protesting for. This particular protest literally had no peaceful beginning, it started in violence and only got worse.
What’s the end game with such a strategy?
I am not advocating for violence. However, it is not historically acurate to say that violence has no benefit. As a matter of fact, I can think of instances in the 18th, 19th and 20th century where violent protestors obtained rights or the end of some kind of oppression. I am not sure I can think of even one instance where anyone got anything without some kind of violence (or destruction of private property), even in the 20th century (there was violence in the May 1968 protests, or in the 1936 strikes, etc). The term “sabotage” itself has something to do with workers destroying the workshops by throwing their shoes (called “sabots”) into the machine.
What’s the end game with such a strategy?
To scare the living shit out of the oppressors, and ultimately remove them from power one way or another. If they don’t take the hint that is the city burning, chop-chop!
I dunno if you know literally anything about the French, but Rioting is a long-standing part of their political culture over there. I’d argue it’s a good thing.
I’d argue it’s a good thing.
It got France to this point (descent into authoritarianism), and you think that’s a good thing?
Riots may have worked for France 800 years ago, but not in this modern world, I’m afraid.
800 years ago
The most famously successful riots happened in 1789 (234 years ago). I’m sure you were just being hyperbolic, but its important to note that this isn’t some relic of ancient history, its the cornerstone of their modern democracy.
It did not get France to descend into authoritarianism.
When your policies are so unpopular that it comes to that level of rioting, you have two options:
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You dissolve the National Assembly and organise new elections. If your party loses, you step down from the presidency.
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You increase the budget of the police and the military, create additional surveillance laws, criminalise actions you feel are a danger to your ability to hold power, you ban environmentalist groups.
A democratic government would go for the first option. Macron has always been authoritarian.
If government addressed the peoples concerns at the word stage, things would never get to the firebomb stage.
Violence, Destruction, Etc are a direct result of government not addressing grievances satisfactorily.
Except, you can’t mad at a government when half the country didn’t care enough to vote.
You get what you vote for.
Yes, you can. The government is supposed to act in your interest, whether you voted for it or not.
You seem to be exercising a very concerted, propagandistic attempt at blaming protestors for being angry at their grievances not being addressed, and not a single word of criticism at the government facing the inevitable consequences of its lack of desire to answer to their citizenry, forcing citizenry into escalation.
So it’s A-OK for the billionaire class to set our world & society on fire, but when people get upset about that & are then told “too bad, shut the fuck up”, we’re just supposed to take it?
How’s that boot taste?
So it’s A-OK for the billionaire class to set our world & society on fire
Not at all. Is this riot targeting billionaires, or did I miss something?
I’m reading about small, mom-and-pop shops being destroyed, community grocery stores being burned down, a firefighter being killed, and other things that simply aren’t helping the people.
If anything, it’s creating more of a separation between the wealthy and the poor, so I can’t see why these riots would have anything to do with protesting against billionaires.
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 like the reason was pure destruction. You could’ve even come up to both masked protesters and 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.
The thing is, it’s not like it started with this, there were peaceful protests and strikes at first.
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.
Maybe you expect the government to do something to stop it? Instead of making it worse? 🤷
Is the answer to let people destroy cities? I don’t understand the reasoning behind wanting inaction against mass vandalism, looting, and arson.
I guess the issue with that argument is that you only apply it to people destroying things. Though it can be reversed to our political class currently. It’s more insidious of course because they have “the law” with them as they make them. The main problem in France right now is not that we “have a long history of not being in line with our government and to destroy everything”, it’s that at this moment in time, the way politics are handled are very one sided. Our parliament is not listened and cannot vote on main topics (retirement is the main example but there was a dozen like this where government used the famous “49.3”).
So indeed, I agree with you, we won’t go far with violence, though it’s a bit biased to only speak of the degradation and violence of the street when it actually started by the one of our current government, and at the end, the main threat here is that the attention is all focused on the street degradation made by the people and not on the root cause of all this.
And I need to say it again to avoid misinterpretation : I’m in no way in agreement with any kind of violence.
PS : sorry if things are not crystal clear, I’m not a native english speaker.
