“National Sport” is what the French call protesting, dating back to the French Revolution.
Right now, there’s a polarizing gap between what the French want and what the government demands.
The French have always used the street as political theatre to voice their demands rather than behind the closed doors of the National Assembly.
As a former university student in France who lived and worked for years in Lyon, I view the recent nationwide protests as a movement which emerged from the same tradition.
But on Oct. 17, the page turned.
Alongside peaceful marches, there were clashes, looting and fires, from the Champs-Élysées in Paris to the tourist office in Lyon and the historic Limoges town hall — which survived two world wars but lost its roof and clock tower to the flames.
Students protesting teacher shortages and deteriorating school facilities were joined in the streets by university students, trade union activists and Yellow Vest supporters.
Protesting is in the DNA of French political culture. During the last 60 years, there have been many student protests that have been joined by other groups and spread on a wider scale.
“La beauté est dans la rue” — “beauty is in the street” — appeared on a poster during the May 1968 protests. The poster depicted a young woman throwing a paving stone, presenting the street as a place of political action.
May 1968 is France’s most prominent example of student protests joining with workers’ strikes to produce a political crisis.
The spread of demonstrations and street clashes that began at universities challenged President Charles de Gaulle’s government and forced it to make significant social and economic concessions.
De Gaulle dissolved parliament, and his camp won a decisive majority in the 1969 June election. He resigned the following April after losing a referendum on Senate and regional reform, rather admitting his resignation was a direct result of the student protests.
More recent protests took off in 2018. The Yellow Vest movement began as a protest against fuel taxes and grew to encompass broader demands over living standards.
It relied on local networks and maintained its independence from traditional organizations. Some of its gatherings involved serious clashes.
In 2023, the police shooting of Nahel Marzouk, 17, a youth of Algerian origin in Nanterre sparked another wave of unrest. Social media and the speed at which images spread distinguished it from earlier protests, there was looting and people took to the streets shouting, “Justice pour Nahel.”
The slogan associated with the current student protests has a very different origin, “bismillah, c’est les ténèbres” roughly translates to “in the name of God, it’s the darkness.” It came from a screenshot of a Snapchat message that circulated as students organized school blockades.
Students believe the awkward mix of Arabic and French slang was an attempt by an undercover police officer to sound like a teenager, and they began repeating it to mock the message. The identity of the person behind the account has not been verified.
The political consequences of Oct. 17 will depend in part on how the events are remembered. France’s traditional left and right have lost much of their former influence, while Marine Le Pen’s far right and Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s radical left have become central forces in the political debate.
Le Pen has focused on the fires, looting and failure to maintain order; Mélenchon has emphasized the students’ demands and the government’s failure to address them.
With the presidential election approaching, a contest between these two political poles looks increasingly possible, though its outcome is far from settled.
Each side will try to make its account of Oct. 17 the one that voters will remember.
Various opinion polls, including an Oct. 14 poll from Odoxa Institute, point to stronger positions for Marine Le Pen, leader of the far right, and Mélenchon, leader of the radical left La France Insoumise.
The polling suggests that these two very different political camps will compete closely in next year’s election, and the recent violence could tip the balance towards one of them.
Whether the protests come to stand for neglected schools and rising costs, a breakdown of public order, or the government’s inability to deal with either may help determine who benefits politically.
But I think, ultimately, what will matter is which narrative of the crisis persuades more voters.
