PARIS – Few countries have a protest tradition as powerful—or as deeply rooted—as France.
When French citizens oppose fuel taxes, they take to the streets in yellow vests. When farmers demand fairer pay, they drive tractors along the Champs-Élysées. And when museum employees object to the way tourists are managed, they can strike and bring the Louvre to a standstill.
Public protest is woven into France’s national identity, much like “La Marseillaise,” the 1792 anthem that celebrates a collective duty to resist tyranny. Yet this month, some of the country’s most violent demonstrations in years, coupled with a forceful police response, have fueled concern that riots could eclipse the hundreds of thousands of peaceful protesters marching over rising living costs and deteriorating conditions in schools.
At least 2,400 people were arrested on Saturday alone after rioters in cities across France fought with police, torched cars, occupied public buildings, looted shops and set fire to a historic city hall. Further demonstrations may follow.
“How can French people do this to France?” outgoing President Emmanuel Macron asked Sunday. He said there was no justification for the destruction, adding: “We all feel anger and shame.”
Still, anyone familiar with French history knows that the nation’s proud, boisterous and often colorful protest culture has occasionally descended into violence. The tradition reaches back to the revolution that abolished the monarchy in 1789, when King Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette were beheaded.
A protest culture is born
Historians trace France’s modern tradition of civic activism to the revolution. In this view, voting is only one means of producing political change; taking to the streets is also considered a fundamental way to make leaders hear the public and protect individual freedoms. For many French people, becoming an activist is a generations-old rite of passage. The right to protest is also protected by the constitution.
“It’s a way to build collective identity and political community,” said Magali Della Sudda, a research director in political science at the French National Center for Scientific Research in Bordeaux.
France’s post-revolutionary history is not a straightforward march from protest to reform. Instead, it has unfolded through repeated cycles of popular revolt, repression, renewed mobilization and political concessions. At times, that pattern has been devastating. In 1871, government troops crushed the newly formed Paris Commune, or municipal government, reportedly killing thousands.
At other moments, mass action has produced results. In 1968, student protests and a nationwide general strike pressured the government into granting concessions, including an increase in the minimum wage.
More recently, the “yellow vests,” or “gilets jaunes,” took to the streets to oppose a proposed fuel-tax increase. Their movement soon widened to include grievances over the cost of living and inequality. Some protests in 2018 and 2019 were marked by burning cars, looting and clashes with police—an example of how violence on the fringes can overshadow otherwise peaceful demonstrations in France.
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The student demonstrations over the weekend followed a similar path, expanding beyond education to encompass other complaints while producing dramatic scenes of looting and confrontations with police. It remains unclear how many people ransacking shops had joined the tens of thousands who attended the protests and how many were opportunists. Authorities imposed nighttime curfews, while some groups called for additional demonstrations later in the week.
Police violence blamed for mistrust
According to political scientist Fabien Jobard, who has studied the history of protest and policing, some of the forces behind the unrest of the past month reflect a more recent chapter in France’s protest tradition.
Since the 1990s, France has experienced recurring waves of what it calls “violences urbaines,” or what Americans would describe as riots, Jobard said. Police violence has often been the trigger. Nationwide unrest erupted in 2005 after two teenagers died while fleeing officers, and again in 2023 after police 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 opponents and human rights groups have accused police of using unnecessarily aggressive tactics over the past month. Much of the criticism has centered on LBD rubber-bullet launchers and stun grenades, which critics say have caused serious injuries among protesters.
Della Sudda also pointed out that the nearly 8,000 arrests made in the weeks before Oct. 17 far exceeded the few dozen detentions recorded during a 1998 demonstration involving 500,000 students protesting teacher shortages and deteriorating schools.
A sense that authorities are not listening is another central grievance, she said. Instead of negotiating directly with protesters, the government tried to address the yellow vest movement through a digital platform known as “the great national debate.” Anti-government demonstrators dismissed Macron’s initiative.
“As a result,” Della Sudda wrote, “mistrust is growing.”
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Kellman reported from London.
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