France: Young demonstrators demand concrete action from Macron

To discuss all of this further, we can bring in our guest, Dr. Joseph Downing, Senior Lecturer in International Relations and Politics at Aston University. Joseph, thank you so much for joining us on the program. So we've seen today the French government deploying 70,000 police officers, that's 10,000 more than last weekend, along with water cannons and helicopters. They've also banned some marches the interior minister urging police today to be hyper reactive against troublemakers and looters warning that it was going to be a long day so from all of this has the government learned lessons from last weekend's chaos i mean in short they've learned lessons in the only way that they know how effectively right which is to deploy more police to have more muscular policing tactics to push that sort of classic french policing of you know restrict demonstrations what he's saying there he's not saying be violent but by by saying being hyper reactive he's kind of hinting at taking the leash off the police a little bit and allowing them to be a bit more aggressive uh towards demonstrators and this this has been problematic in the past most recently in in macron's um demonstrate but demonstrations against macron's pension reform so i mean it's likely we're going to see a kind of more violent approach to policing um this weekend more police numbers on the streets is a good thing because last week there clearly were not enough in many places marseille being one example where essentially you know one of the city's um main central shopping streets was just almost completely destroyed by looters so clearly something went wrong there in terms of the allocation of resources but the problem with demonstrations and i mean we can look back at you know the iranian revolution of 1979 one thing that really put the nail in the coffin of that of the secular regime of the shah was to be ultra violent against demonstrators i I mean, I'm being a bit extreme here because he shot them. And I don't think we're going to see people being shot on the streets today. But it's unlikely that just that alone is going to be enough to defuse this crisis. The problem with demonstrations is the more you crack down, sometimes you can have a rebound effect where you make people more likely to demonstrate in the future and more angry with the government. And it sets the government up as something to be fought against and to be resisted rather than something that's trying also to rule on your behalf. Well, there's been some criticism, Joseph, that you know the police um have prior to this they've been they've been acting uh there's been police brutality I mean there's been obviously they've been injured but plenty of students have been injured they've lost eyes students have lost hands so you know in this in this context how can these tragedies be prevented and and how can they ensure I mean they're supposed to be um making sure that public order is preserved so How can you make sure that the demonstrators can demonstrate safely? Well, this is such a complex, complex problem that they currently face. The problem they've got is you have a number of demonstrators that don't want to peacefully demonstrate. And that's one of the problems that they have. Policing a peaceful demonstration is way more straightforward than at the same time trying to police a peaceful demonstration, but also to police demonstrators that want to make barricades and set up sort of semi-permanent sort of protest points and stop the flow of traffic for days at a time and on top of that you've got another tranche of people whether they're opportunistic or whether they see it as a political act I think it's a bit of both want to cause damage to property they want to loot shops they want to attack the symbols of capitalism I mean so this is really really difficult and the problem is when law and order breaks down unfortunately police have to use force and casualties are inevitable the problem that the French police have is the ethos with which they police especially the CRS riot police that you see on your screens currently preparing for the demonstrations today that they have a muscular aggressive top-down approach to policing and order where they're much more likely to be more violent to fire tear gas to confront demonstrators to actively um sort of be violent towards them and police brutality is a fact of life in French demonstrations unfortunately but at the same time it's it's it's difficult for the police as the coercive arm of the state to do their job against violent looters that are attacking them with iron bars and bricks and in some cases you know glass bottles to do that without necessarily injuring people at the same time it's a very difficult situation I think us that are not in law enforcement that don't have to deal with public order issues understand I mean these guys are making second by second decisions that for them can be life or death and their colleagues can be life or death and or could result in them being injured I mean it's not just you know uh being violent towards demonstrators which they definitely are but some of these demonstrators are being actively violent to them and actively and partly as a political act against what they see as an unjust capitalist kleptocratic state that want to harm and in fact maybe even in some cases kill the police so it's really really difficult and I don't see unfortunately uh an optimistic view today and in the future with French protests and French policing in this regard there will be casualties uh going forward so Joseph if you agree then that the way that public order is maintained in France is problematic and that it does raise some serious questions uh are there any solutions is there a way to change how the police interact with demonstrators along these big marches I mean this is the thing it's it's it's there's a saying in English right which is it takes two to tango and I think this is this is the part of the equation that's easily missed I think in the context of French protests which is the culture of French protesting as we've seen repeatedly over the years from you know the French Revolution from May 68 to recent protests against police brutality the riots in the suburbs in 2005 the French culture of protesting is not peaceful thus in many cases the police have no choice but to respond with violent measures i don't see there being an easy solution to this two-sided equation i think yeah the police could do better they could have better training they could have more of a consensus based ethos but when they themselves are coming up against demonstrators that aren't always peaceful and in the main they are peaceful but you always have this element that isn't peaceful that does go there to commit acts of violence it's very difficult to see how you can reform one without necessarily reforming the other and Joseph we've also seen that there are reports that foreign actors may be using social media to help stir up discontent uh you know ai generated videos that make some of the violence seem worse um how how can the government counteract that if that is another factor that is stirring up discontent yeah i mean this has been a part of my academic research for the best part of 10 years is to look at social media and social media discourses and how they're shaping the world around us and not to be alarmist but this is a war in Europe that we've lost right we are terrible at countering these kinds of things so there's a question here about freedom of speech and and generally speaking democratic governments are reluctant uh to police social media and and to sort of argue for essentially greater censorship but the fact of the matter is we are in a situation where foreign actors most notably the Russian Federation but there are also others use social media use social media narratives use the way that they can manipulate um social media algorithms with a very clever team of state-sponsored sort of cyber hackers that they have to spread narratives and and to create this kind of division i mean that you know the head of the British intelligence a few years ago said that Russia wants to sow chaos on the streets of Europe they're not doing that by sending you know groups of guys with Slavic accents and balaclavas to smash up shops in Paris no they don't need to they're doing this through social media and and the democratic world has got such a poor grip on the cyber war the discursive cyber war that we are currently in and things have unfortunately only been made worse by the election of Trump and his acolytes in the US that have removed much of this content moderation and pressured companies to remove much of this content moderation from uh platforms such as Meta which is like Facebook Twitter you know we have very little control over what is being done with TikTok which is based in China i mean we are really really really behind the curve here and i think European governments democratic governments uh across the world really have to have a strong kind of look in the mirror at their tactics against these kinds of things but it's very difficult because it's a bit like you know the policing and the demonstrators both being somewhat violent right the problem is as Well, it's very difficult to clamp down on these kinds of things without also clamping down on people's ability to freely express their concerns about the way that countries are being run. So, I mean, governments really are in quite a tricky situation here. But definitely more needs to be done to sort of try and get some sort of handle on the way that tech companies have penetrated our societies and are essentially tools that are being used to tear our societies apart. Joseph, thank you so much for joining us, sharing your expertise with us on the program. That's Joseph Downing, Senior Lecturer, International Relations and Politics at Aston University.