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I recently have been heartbroken when shown this video of the protests in France. Therefore I found myself compelled to write about it, and generally about the whole wave of protests that has been crepitating through Europe, as simply it had become too much for me to not ignore.
Video:https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/c6e3xjw37wn7o
Completely normal, isn't it? How triumphant to destroy a monument in protests, it's all good. The initial protests begun stupidly, a student protest. A few decent reasons here and there about conditions in high school that were simply the average conditions for any high school ever, I found it to be a petty reason to riot as I don't ever see much reason to riot at all (the only issue is overpopulation cough cough). These are not protests, and everyday less they seem like riots.
What does education have to do with pillaging and looting, burning kiosks and cars, robbing, destroying public and private property indiscriminately, destroying fountains with hammers? The protests progressed as any protest now days does, screaming about Palestine and communism (all as an offspring of education! or the cost of living or whatever justification) and resulting into complete chaos. Disrupting public order and wrecking cities, people with aggression and self hatred have infiltrated the ones with deep roots to their country, and induced them to support this meaningless violence, they have induced them to suicide (and they cheer their demise!).
This has revealed to be simply a wave to destroy society as we know it, to make the western world crumble with its culture. The town hall wouldn't be set of fire if they were meaning to inhabit it. It was destroyed, so they can replace history, do they can erase it, and what better place to begin destroying the western world than Paris, former epicenter of it? What bothers me the most as a lover of art, is the loss we have suffered, inside that building there were valuable things too, now burnt. How they claim to be "anti-imperialist" yet behave exactly the same; it's all a lie to bring vulnerable and frustrated young people on their side.
In Portugal there is never as much agitation. We are, for the good and bad, a very passive people, we like to live quiet lives. It surprised me that some were surprised to encounter police resistance to their unauthorized protests at 3am. It's not a question of right to assemble, it's that there should be order, and there are times established for large protests (and all kinds of limits too) and after a certain hour you cannot do any sound. What dumbfounds me is seeing people in these protests for housing (a cause that I by itself support) that have came here from other nations expecting to be given a house. We have a large number of struggling Portuguese families, people are emigrating, old people have no pensions, and now you come here from an even more underdeveloped country expecting to be given a house?
The worse is that they get it, and remain poor still, and the governments keep us in misery all at once to fight like rabid dogs. This is what is happening. What they cannot control is the fact that who they have let in will burn them to ashes, along with the assembly, and all monuments, rules, and conventions.
Comments
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MJ
"The initial protests begun stupidly, a student protest. A few decent reasons [...] a petty reason to riot" so you think teachers AND students having to keep their jackets on in winter because there's no heating, "petty" ? Is it "petty" to want classrooms without mold and rats, without water leaking through ceilings? Are teachers and students "petty" for not wanting overcrowded classrooms so everyone can get an education in the best possible conditions? How petty is it, to want substitutes teachers when yours is on sick leave? When school started two months ago and one of the main subject of the curriculum, you don't have a teacher for because there's no substitute?
You cry about the town hall of Limoges, a town foreigners can't even place on a map. You pretend to care about a historical building but look away when the historical building is a school that has awaited funding to install heating.
You cry about "riots" but these have never been riots. They've always been protests. Pacifist protest. The escalation of violence is the responsibility of the police. They weren't sent to protect us, much less to make sure the protest remains calm. They are the henchmen of a government that doesn't want its authority questionned. Police is sent to repress. To deter us from speaking up about the issues impacting our lives. Have you actually done research on the issue, or are you just speaking out of your ass? Otherwise you'd have heard how, since the beginning of the month, there has been peaceful students-teachers protests outsdie of schools, disrupted by "casseurs" (people who break things) that turn out to be undercover cops. Just so the overt cops can have a reason to charge students. To mutilate them with war weapons, to gas them, to beat them to near-death. You condemn the violence we have to resort to, without looking at the violence inflincted upon us by the government and the repression. Bystanders have been harmed. Elderly have been gased. Children have been choked. In Paris, a MEDIC has been killed by the police, recorded as proof. We are facing people who have protection on every part of their bodies and who strip us of the few things we can use to protect ourselves (serum to clean eyes and water to clean airways when gased). Unarmed, we have to face people with a plethora of weapons at their disposal.
You complain about intersectionality, but you just haven't seen that we've always been protesting for multiple things that play off of each other. Lack of fundings for schools has the same root cause as the lack of fundings for hospitals and nurses. That same lack of fundings cause job insecurity and housing difficulties. The government cuts the fundings we the people need, so it can serve the elite to get richer. That's what we protested against on Saturday. We protested against a government that looks down on us, that belittles us and treats us as expendables.
This town hall that burned? It can be rebuild. But not by the bourgeoisie, by the working class. But if there is no working class because we are freezing or starving to death, then indeed, there is no historical building. If the price to pay for the lives of your youngs is a few burning buildings, then let it burn. Deep-throating the bourgeois & their symbols will not stop them from crushing you.
thank you for that ! ! ! as a french person who saw those riots in news, also the living conditions in paris has been worse due to livibg housing being expensive iirc
by SlothBunny ₊ ୨୧; ; Report
fr and it's even only in Paris, je suis dans le grand-est et on galère aussi suffisamment pour pas avoir des étrangers venir juger le seul moyen qu'on a pour se faire entendre sans rien savoir de nos galères.
by MJ; ; Report
flatl111n3r_
well im not sure what you expect will happen when protests get met with tear gas, and weaponry that (correct me if im wrong.) but is only allowed in ONE country in the EU.. a 15 year old boy had his had blown off. like. clean off his arm. and rubber bullets.
i don't know where you get the idea that the conditions of their highschools were acceptable. but they arent- you expect 16 year olds to be happy with buildings that are falling apart? with no teachers? with rats and mold?? yeah no that is not the standard. they had every right to do something about it.
i suggest you read through these before you decide to comment about this
evidence:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9zrdmxp4vy6o (boys hand blown off)
more about the weaponry use : https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/oct/16/french-police-injuries-teenagers-school-protests-arrests-custody
about the struggles in schooling: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/oct/06/how-dilapidated-french-schools-inequality-education-system-protests
༺⛧𝔏𝔬𝔫𝔤 𝔏𝔦𝔳𝔢 𝔊𝔢𝔫𝔢𝔰𝔦𝔰⛧༻
Buildings can be rebuilt, lives cannot. You trivialise the reasons for the blocus. Educations are being lost due to understaffing and apalling classroom conditions. 30+ students in one classroom, cockroaches and rats, mold, ceillings collapsed, etc. Change was never made peacefully.
Clanvy
I think protests itself aren't something bad: it depends on how they're organized. A protest can be peaceful, without detroying anything, and work better. If a large number of people walk along toward the same goal asking for a better world, that's right, but if something is destroyed, all those people would be seen as childish, and the protest won't work.
Unfortunately, that's how a lot of TV programmes fake the truth. Here where I live there has been a lot of peaceful protests, but TV programmes ignored them completely, and they talked generally about how ALL protests are wrong, showing only videos of the few, little and aggressive ones.
i definitively don't think protests are wrong, but recent ones have just really bothered me
by pereira; ; Report
Some are really aggressive, I know. Society nowadays doesn't work very well.
by Clanvy; ; Report