France: 'Legitimate' grievances over education & inflation risk being overshadowed by violent unrest

We can now bring in Laura Kiesman, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Vrije University Amsterdam. Thank you so much for joining us on the program today. French police, riot police, typically know how to handle demonstrations. We often have protests regularly in this city, across this country. What, in your opinion, went wrong? Yes, this will be subject to debate, and it depends on who you ask how it went wrong. So it started with student protests, obviously, and then gradually more people started joining and also people from from the outside areas. We've seen this before, and it's really hard to pinpoint when and where things go wrong. But the mobilization of the amount of people is enormous and therefore also the mobilization of the French police. I saw the protests last week on Saturday in the afternoon, and there were a lot of people. There were a lot of people who were legitimately protesting, a lot of people with cardboard cutouts in their hand, walking peacefully. And suddenly, very quickly, things turned violent. There always tend to be these radical elements in a protest. How does that overtake the legitimate people who are out on the street and become the story? indeed it has really uh the potential of taking over the message uh in a way i think it is really important for police and everyone to distinguish who is protesting and indeed uh why they are protesting so what their intentions and what their motivations are in the end you will only know who uh exactly were these people when they've for example been arrested so if they commit criminal offenses uh people will be arrested and then you may know if they are from the extreme left if they have radical views um or if they are indeed still students or if they are coming from uh the outside areas so in the end you will only know if you have them uh in custody but we've seen it before that people indeed integrate into groups um and kind of uh sometimes hijack is what people say uh take over but that doesn't necessarily mean i would say that it's not politically motivated so even if these are uh younger people from the banlieues from the outside areas they too suffer under uh bad schools and uh budget cuts in funding in the education system so it doesn't mean that they're not necessarily politically motivated now if we're talking about anti-fascist movement or anti-capitalist movements, those people would probably legitimize looting because of their anti-capitalist views. But Laura, in the last few days, we have government officials and now the French president who have gone after ultra-left elements. Just a short while ago, he said they tried to bring down the republic. This is pretty harsh language that the French president is using. So how would ultra-left elements mobilize? Would they use social media? How do these groups talk to each other? Yes, indeed. Social media is a really big factor in demonstrations nowadays. So previously it was the trade unions and the pension unions that are really, really strong. In France, actually, they are still really strong to this day. And so they would inform their members about coming together and mobilizing for protests. in the recent years social media everybody has a phone everybody's recording it is really easy to reach a far and big and wide audience and so yes people from the far left will also use it but people from the far right will also use it so social media has worked as an accelerator it is much more easier to reach uh reach many more people and to mobilize quickly and that's i think also what you've seen here that the mobilization of students went really quickly so it was very rapid um and also people other people joining uh this and so you see in france that's then typical that's the yellow vests indeed and that other trade unions or other unions are also joining the president said he would authorities would be approving legitimate protests and banning illegitimate protests. Now, for instance, on Saturday, the Yellow Vest movement have called on supporters to take to the streets of Paris and other cities throughout France. What happens for argument's sake if authorities tell them, no, you cannot protest? Would this fuel further anger out on the streets, do you think? It could. In this case, I think the grievances are quite high and the level of violence is already quite high. So it could have indeed a counter effect where people do not accept being banned from protesting. Actually, banning protests under European law is quite difficult. So there have to be really good reasons in order to do that. Now, I think the French government will probably use this level of violence and fires and arson and safety for people involved, that that is at stake. They will probably use that argument to try and ban future protests. But the right to demonstrate is really a big right in European law. So it's going to be very difficult. And indeed, I think police might also be fearful of it backfiring. And final question. We have, over the past few nights, had a curfew in place in certain pockets of Paris around the main railway change hub of Châtelet-Les Halles, as well as the République, which is where that iconic statue is in the central part of the city. We have curfews between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. We even have a helicopter circling the city for some hours. are these effective in your opinion or is our authorities just trying to show that they're on top of things um i i think it might be both so yes authorities are trying to show they are on top of it and they're trying to take control of public space this is one of the things that french policing is known for taking control of public space and protecting institutions and so with this indeed it's a little bit of a show of a force and we are in control we are seeing you And we are really trying to prevent you from from doing anything else. Again, it's it's quite a typical French approach to things to take such control of space that you're even looking at areas from the air, so to speak. And yes, curfews we've known from the COVID-19 measures and the protests during that time in several countries in Europe that actually curfews also incited more protests and really made people mobilize even more because they had grievances about this and weren't agreeing with curfews. So it might be the case that indeed people don't necessarily stop. Laura, we'll see what happens. Thank you very much for joining us on the program. Laura Kiesman there.