They have the ‘destroy stuff’ thing figured out all right. When it comes down to actually getting any of their demands addressed it’s not as good. I don’t remember the last time when French riots ended with any concessions from the government.
Are you being sarcastic or ignorant? I legitimately can’t tell. I’m low on time so I’ll only cover recent events:
2025: then PM Bayrou proposed massive budget cuts to pensions, welfare, and cutting 2 holidays for the sake of “productivity”. Massive uprisings across the country “Bloquons Tout” (Block Everything), government collapsed.
2024: Tractor blockades around Paris (“Siege of Paris”) and across the country forced the government to drop the planned phase-out of the diesel fuel tax break, provide €400 million in emergency aid and announce other concessions.
2018-19: the “Gilets jaunes” riots, weeks of protests including violence on the Champs-Élysées, caused by Macron’s pro-wealthy politicies (abolishing the “solidarity wealth tax” that applied to millionaires, or the “exit tax” letting them run away with their fortunes to tax havens, and several more), earning the nickname “Président des riches”. The riots forced an increase in minimum wages, scrapping of a fuel tax that would disproportionately tax the poor, tax relief for pensioners and other tax cuts that directly improved low-income families, etc.
You can go back and keep finding more and more examples of situations where ACTUALLY FIGHTING for your rights caused the money grabbing elite to actually stop in their tracks - for a while.
And for those that wish to see video evidence of French protest success, this video covers the ZAD de Notre-Dame-des-Landes who have repeatedly defeated the French government.
Yeah, that’s a bunch of wishful thinking. Snap elections were called in 2024 because of the rise of popularity of the far-right. The resulting hung parliament was too weak to push pension reforms changes and had to compromise. The protests served more as a backdrop to all this than the direct cause of any of it.
Yellow wests protested for months and achieved nothing. Then Covid hit and government relaxed some of its reforms to save the economy and the protests fizzled out.
I will give you the farmers protests. The right-wing aligned farmer unions were successful at extorting the government. 1 out of 3 is not bad but it’s really not the ‘world champions of protesting’ levels people think it is. Most of the time it’s just bunch of rioting that results in nothing.
I don’t remember the last time when French riots ended with any concessions from the government.
Well now you do, and that’s a whole of a lot more than what most of the world, and especially Americans, do when they get fucked in the ass by the pedoelite.
Also, you’re deluded if you don’t see how the riots and public protests feed the opposition and gives them the ammo to shut down the government.
Of course Bayrou’s was a wimpy government, it was like Macron’s 7th attempt or something, but do you have any doubt that they’d have cut the 2 holidays and pensions and healthcare if people didn’t come out as they did against it? And the next guy who thinks to propose the same will hopefully not have such a short memory.
Yes, there was one I missed. In the same time frame I saw about 10 different negotiations between worker unions and government/companies in Spain that got workers their demands without rioting or damaging property. Right now it looks like after just a week of simple, non-violent protests they will have snap elections. In comparison, in France I see a lot of things burning down but few actual wins. It’s mostly performative and I don’t know why people are so impressed by it.
France has stronger worker protections, shorter work hours and far lower persistent unemployment than Spain, saying that they do worse than Spanish is, at the very least, highly debatable.
True that Spain also has a very active protest culture, more centered in collective bargaining and less propensity to catch things on fire. That doesn’t make either more effective on its own, they do what works for them.
I didn’t say France does worse than Spain in terms of worker right. It’s absolutely possible that over the previous decades their protests were effective and granted them many rights. What I’m saying is that in recent years effectiveness of those protests was largely diminished. That’s why I said I don’t remember last successful protest, not that there never was one. People confuse the scale or protests with their effectiveness. Another example:
“”“On 4 July, the president of an employers’ organization, MEDEF, estimated that the riots cost businesses around €1 billion. This estimate was based on “200 business which were thoroughly looted, 300 bank branches destroyed, 220 supermarkets that were damaged—of which 25 were burned to the ground—and nearly 1200 independent businesses that were affected”. “””
What was achieved? Nothing. This is the pattern I see in France. Really impressive scale or protests but no results. At the same time I’ve seen many successful strikes in Spain but since those are usually resolved by sitting at a table and negotiating they don’t look as nice on the TV and people are not impressed by them.
I genuinely don’t know what point you’re trying to make.
You agree that french workers have strong protections, and that these were achieved by their aggressive protests, so that’s not it…
Is it only about the effectiveness of recent protests?
Because the explanation for that seems fairly simple: €1 billion of business costs are very easily absorbed by today’s multinational corporations, but not so for a small local company, so the mega wealthy come out even stronger.
Huge multinationals need to be cut up by governments, like the robber barons they are, except that we’re in such a globalised economy that no country wants to shoot itself in the foot that hard, hence the current downfall.
My hope for Europe is that trump eventually pushes so hard that we outright restrict market access to the likes of Amazon, Microsoft etc, and put in place a system that prevents any one company from obtaining such huge shares.
France knows how to protest.
They have the ‘destroy stuff’ thing figured out all right. When it comes down to actually getting any of their demands addressed it’s not as good. I don’t remember the last time when French riots ended with any concessions from the government.
Are you being sarcastic or ignorant? I legitimately can’t tell. I’m low on time so I’ll only cover recent events:
2025: then PM Bayrou proposed massive budget cuts to pensions, welfare, and cutting 2 holidays for the sake of “productivity”. Massive uprisings across the country “Bloquons Tout” (Block Everything), government collapsed.
2024: Tractor blockades around Paris (“Siege of Paris”) and across the country forced the government to drop the planned phase-out of the diesel fuel tax break, provide €400 million in emergency aid and announce other concessions.
2018-19: the “Gilets jaunes” riots, weeks of protests including violence on the Champs-Élysées, caused by Macron’s pro-wealthy politicies (abolishing the “solidarity wealth tax” that applied to millionaires, or the “exit tax” letting them run away with their fortunes to tax havens, and several more), earning the nickname “Président des riches”. The riots forced an increase in minimum wages, scrapping of a fuel tax that would disproportionately tax the poor, tax relief for pensioners and other tax cuts that directly improved low-income families, etc.
You can go back and keep finding more and more examples of situations where ACTUALLY FIGHTING for your rights caused the money grabbing elite to actually stop in their tracks - for a while.
And for those that wish to see video evidence of French protest success, this video covers the ZAD de Notre-Dame-des-Landes who have repeatedly defeated the French government.
https://kolektiva.media/w/o4MvBiXYFEb1rrZ7RqXvYR
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_to_Defend
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZAD_de_Notre-Dame-des-Landes
Yeah, that’s a bunch of wishful thinking. Snap elections were called in 2024 because of the rise of popularity of the far-right. The resulting hung parliament was too weak to push pension reforms changes and had to compromise. The protests served more as a backdrop to all this than the direct cause of any of it.
Yellow wests protested for months and achieved nothing. Then Covid hit and government relaxed some of its reforms to save the economy and the protests fizzled out.
I will give you the farmers protests. The right-wing aligned farmer unions were successful at extorting the government. 1 out of 3 is not bad but it’s really not the ‘world champions of protesting’ levels people think it is. Most of the time it’s just bunch of rioting that results in nothing.
Quoted, you:
Well now you do, and that’s a whole of a lot more than what most of the world, and especially Americans, do when they get fucked in the ass by the pedoelite.
Also, you’re deluded if you don’t see how the riots and public protests feed the opposition and gives them the ammo to shut down the government.
Of course Bayrou’s was a wimpy government, it was like Macron’s 7th attempt or something, but do you have any doubt that they’d have cut the 2 holidays and pensions and healthcare if people didn’t come out as they did against it? And the next guy who thinks to propose the same will hopefully not have such a short memory.
Yes, there was one I missed. In the same time frame I saw about 10 different negotiations between worker unions and government/companies in Spain that got workers their demands without rioting or damaging property. Right now it looks like after just a week of simple, non-violent protests they will have snap elections. In comparison, in France I see a lot of things burning down but few actual wins. It’s mostly performative and I don’t know why people are so impressed by it.
Nah, bullshit.
France has stronger worker protections, shorter work hours and far lower persistent unemployment than Spain, saying that they do worse than Spanish is, at the very least, highly debatable.
True that Spain also has a very active protest culture, more centered in collective bargaining and less propensity to catch things on fire. That doesn’t make either more effective on its own, they do what works for them.
I didn’t say France does worse than Spain in terms of worker right. It’s absolutely possible that over the previous decades their protests were effective and granted them many rights. What I’m saying is that in recent years effectiveness of those protests was largely diminished. That’s why I said I don’t remember last successful protest, not that there never was one. People confuse the scale or protests with their effectiveness. Another example:
“”“On 4 July, the president of an employers’ organization, MEDEF, estimated that the riots cost businesses around €1 billion. This estimate was based on “200 business which were thoroughly looted, 300 bank branches destroyed, 220 supermarkets that were damaged—of which 25 were burned to the ground—and nearly 1200 independent businesses that were affected”. “””
What was achieved? Nothing. This is the pattern I see in France. Really impressive scale or protests but no results. At the same time I’ve seen many successful strikes in Spain but since those are usually resolved by sitting at a table and negotiating they don’t look as nice on the TV and people are not impressed by them.
I genuinely don’t know what point you’re trying to make.
You agree that french workers have strong protections, and that these were achieved by their aggressive protests, so that’s not it…
Is it only about the effectiveness of recent protests?
Because the explanation for that seems fairly simple: €1 billion of business costs are very easily absorbed by today’s multinational corporations, but not so for a small local company, so the mega wealthy come out even stronger.
Huge multinationals need to be cut up by governments, like the robber barons they are, except that we’re in such a globalised economy that no country wants to shoot itself in the foot that hard, hence the current downfall.
My hope for Europe is that trump eventually pushes so hard that we outright restrict market access to the likes of Amazon, Microsoft etc, and put in place a system that prevents any one company from obtaining such huge shares.
In the meantime, I’ll protest.