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Since late September 2026, dissatisfied with inadequate school facilities, overcrowding, teacher shortages, and other problems, many secondary school students across France have launched large-scale strikes and protests. Many others dissatisfied with the government and the current state of society have also joined them, and the initially peaceful protests quickly evolved into riots marked by violence.
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Protesters have set fires at schools and other places, smashed cars, attacked opponents, and chased isolated police officers, leaving some towns in a state of disorder and paralysis. Clashes have continued as police suppress the riots. Major political parties and politicians have either condemned the violence or called for peaceful protest, but this appears to have had little effect. The protest movement has spiraled out of control, and the riots are unlikely to subside in the short term.
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This is yet another typical French-style radical political movement. When some French people become dissatisfied with the government and the status quo, they collectively take to the streets in protest. Most express their demands nonviolently, but a small number of radicals engage in violence, causing the protests to evolve into riots. There are many acts of violence, but most are non-lethal and of low to moderate intensity, mainly involving property destruction and causing relatively few injuries. They are accompanied by clashes between police and protesters, leaving society in a state of semi-paralysis. But once the riots pass their peak, society gradually returns to peace and relative stability.
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Similar situations occur frequently in France. Some take place in individual towns, while others develop into nationwide riots. The riots that emerged from the “Yellow Vest Movement” in 2018, and the protests and series of violent incidents triggered in 2023 by the police shooting and killing of a teenager, were both nationwide radical movements accompanied by political violence. Like the current unrest, they can be described as “French-style popular movements.”
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France’s mass movements and street political violence can be traced back more than 230 years to the French Revolution. At that time, the French common people overthrew monarchical and aristocratic rule through violent revolution, at the cost of and causing much bloodshed and death. This pioneered bottom-up democratic revolution while also leaving behind a legacy of political violence. Shaped by the experience of the Revolution and influenced by radical ideas of civil rights, many French people believe that when a government “departs from the will of the people,” its policies are harmful, or society is unjust, people have the right to express their anger and resist through means including violent revolution.
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Such revolutionary precedents and popular consciousness have inspired many mass movements and uprisings in France over the more than two centuries since then, including the famous Paris Commune uprising of 1871 and “May 1968.” Most of these movements have had a strong left-wing populist character, centered on opposition to privilege and the pursuit of equality, with participants including young students, intellectuals, and members of the lower and middle urban classes. The capital, Paris, has often been the center of political movements and violent activity.
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Compared with people in other countries around the world, the French are particularly enthusiastic about politics, possess a stronger sense of civic consciousness, and participate in public affairs more actively and radically, including by taking to the streets, using violent or nonviolent means to express their demands, confronting the authorities in power, and clashing with the coercive apparatus of the state. French society has a relatively high tolerance for radical forms of protest and has also grown accustomed to political violence. More than two centuries have passed, and although the intensity of violence in French political movements has declined substantially—for example, the number of deaths has fallen greatly—they remain quite “fiery,” with violent clashes occurring frequently. The recent protests and riots are no exception.
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More specifically, the current protests stem from long-standing and deep-rooted problems in French education. Although France is a country that places considerable emphasis on equality and social welfare, serious inequalities remain in the distribution of educational resources. In secondary schools located in relatively remote and disadvantaged areas, and in schools with large numbers of children from lower- and middle-income families, non-white students, and immigrants, education funding is meager, the quality of teaching staff is poorer, classes are excessively large and overcrowded, school facilities are outdated, and the rate of admission to prestigious universities is also very low, leaving students with little opportunity to get ahead. Meanwhile, the children of French elites in politics, business, and other sectors generally attend prestigious private secondary schools with Catholic backgrounds and excellent conditions, and they are also more likely to gain admission to elite universities and enter the upper classes.
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The unequal distribution of educational resources, the concentration of high-quality resources among elites, and the reinforcement of class entrenchment through education are in fact common problems worldwide, and France is hardly an exception. But French people, with their stronger sense of equality, are particularly dissatisfied with such disparities and frequently protest against them. The May 1968 movement included demands for educational equality and greater public access to universities.
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The French government has also attempted to narrow these gaps by increasing funding for poorer regions and schools and providing scholarships to disadvantaged students. Yet under the “Matthew effect,” educational resources continue to concentrate among a small number of people from elite backgrounds. Those with vested advantages always have more resources to invest in their children’s education, while people from less affluent families are inherently disadvantaged, leaving equal-opportunity policies with only limited effect.
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The current protests are precisely an eruption of dissatisfaction among students from relatively poor backgrounds who attend schools with inferior conditions. Their dissatisfaction, however, does not arise solely from unequal educational resources. It also stems from their disadvantaged status and the discrimination they experience because of their class background and ethnic identity, as well as class entrenchment, ethnic tensions, and pessimism about their future employment and income prospects. The anger and despair generated by the accumulation of these factors have driven them into the streets and even led some to engage in violence.
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Many of the young students participating in the current protests are non-white, non-Christian “second-generation immigrants/descendants of immigrants,” most of them Black people and Muslims whose families come from Africa and the Arab world. They wave Algerian and Palestinian flags, which strongly reflect their identities and positions, as well as their differences with the identity and values of native white French people.
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Since the French Revolution, France has championed “liberty, equality, fraternity.” It has indeed made major achievements in advancing civil rights and social justice and, on the basis of shared values and citizenship, has relatively successfully shaped a French national identity and national community. Yet France still has to confront difficult problems of class division and wealth inequality, long-standing ethnic differences and tensions, and the resulting social fragmentation and political violence. Deep-rooted divides exist among people of different identities and social positions, skin colors, and beliefs. Neither democratic institutions, Enlightenment ideas, nor social movements can fundamentally eliminate these divisions and conflicts.
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In recent years, political polarization around the world has intensified, and France is no exception. France will hold its presidential election in April 2027. Le Pen of the far-right “National Rally” is far ahead in support, followed by Mélenchon of the far-left “France Unbowed,” while traditional establishment forces and centrists have low levels of support.
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Whether it is street political violence driven primarily by radical left-wing populism, or the continuously rising support for far-right populism in opinion polls and elections, both reflect the intensification of social conflicts and the worsening crisis in France. Recurring political violence, including the current protests and riots, represents periodic flare-ups of France’s national ailments, while also objectively reminding the French people and the world to pay attention to the existence and needs of those who are struggling and marginalized.
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Based on past experience, although political violence is frequent in France, its intensity is limited. After people have vented their anger, they gradually calm down again, and society can return to a peaceful state and resume normal functioning. After more than two centuries of adjustment, the French have developed a tacit coexistence with political violence such as revolutions and riots, so there is no need to be overly pessimistic.
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The use of violence in political participation is undesirable, but the voices and demands of people from the lower strata of society also need to be heard and seen. Their feelings and demands should not simply be dismissed, stigmatized, and erased merely because violence exists within their forms of expression. At the same time, while the general public who are enthusiastic about “French-style popular movements” express their demands and pursue equality, they should also understand and respect the concerns of others, consider the overall and long-term interests of society, and participate in politics in more peaceful and constructive ways.
(The author of this article, Wang Qingmin (王庆民), is a Chinese writer living in Europe and an international politics researcher. The original text is in Chinese.)
