Tomorrow The Revolution Will Be Good Again
On the unfulfilled potential of French protests and the romanticisation of a revolutionary past
Everybody knows. The revolution, the heads that were cut, the power that was overthrown, the social unrest in French universities during May 1968, the Yellow Jackets, and the fire in our streets. A quick look at our history says it all : the French knows how to put up a fight and hold on to it. On a random Saturday in November 2018, I was getting back from my usual coffee shop and making my way to my place at the time, located in the 7th arrondissement. I had to zigzag between cars on fire, smoke, and an impressive number of police vehicles packed on my street. Every Saturday, the revolution was rumbling under my window, and for a moment, it felt like everything was about to change. All those years of complying with an increasingly unfair social and economic system had brought us to this moment: a wave of explosive anger, triggered by the government's attempt to increase the price of automobile fuels in an already economically challenging period.
However, in a matter of months, the intensity of the revolution started fading away. While the movement had obtained what it demanded from the start - the cancellation of the tax, the promises it held seemed to be forgotten. The Yellow Jackets was a movement full of hope and change. Beyond the tax demands, people were asking for a full reform of our system. Things had to change; the tax was simply the cherry on top of the economic oppressions. But as the movement rose, so did the number of demands. Left and right, people were asking for transformations. The list of demands kept growing, encompassing economic, political and social changes. But after a while, it became clear that what was understood by systemic reforms had a radically different meaning from one person to the other, from one political group to the next.
We were all facing the mirror of our political divides and we lost what had brought us the disintegration of the tax increase: it was standing together that made us so powerful.
Everywhere I look, everywhere I go, I’m struck by the world’s fascination with France’s passionate protests. The people are acclaimed, revered for their resilience, their ability to stand up to oppressive power and reclaim what the Republic promised to them.
The world views it as revolutionary, but what I see from the inside is a revolution that has the power to break the status quo, but never really does.
The French Revolution, despite some of its terrible consequences - the Reign of terror was definitely not our most joyous period - unified the people in a common fight : the end of the monarchy and the rise of the republic. The May 1968 protests, while initially sparked by student demonstrations, quickly expanded into a general strike involving millions of workers. Despite the diversity of the groups involved, there was a shared demand for an end to the old order and the establishment of a more equitable society.
In the last decade, the sentiment has been the same: the current order has to go. What we have trouble defining is what the end of this order looks like, and what we want to build after it. One of the demands of the Yellow Jackets was certainly the end of Macron’s reign, while others were asking for a new Republic. If this signified a common desire to bring change, it also showed a wildly different approach to it through a multitude of voices each calling for their own version of change.
When the government decided to raise the legal retirement age from 62 to 64 in 2023, France rose up once again in a spectacular fashion. But after weeks of battles, the compromises were disappointing. Sure, the reform was pushed back a year and provisions were added for certain sectors. But at its core, the reform, the real flaws in our system, remained intact. Because at the end of the day, this was never just about the pension reform itself. It was about a government that kept taking from us, hoping we would comply.
It was about saying ‘no more’ to a government that would rather push its lower classes to the brink than collect the money owed by the richest.
As the reform protests began, I was hit with flashbacks. Walking down the street with my partner, we were surrounded by fire and destruction. Friends were texting me about the start of a revolution, and my parents were asking if I was safe. From the inside, the protests are also very impressive. For a moment, I genuinely believed that things were about to change for the better. It feels odd to think that the system didn't collapse right then and there, that the destructions didn’t match the changes that ensued.
Could it be that these fires have lost their meaning? Do they simply represent the typical course of a protest in France ? What does a real revolution look like ?
In 2017, the Défenseur des Droits, one of France's independent constitutional authorities, released an unprecedented investigation on police identity checks. Young Arabic and Black people are 20 times more likely to be subjected to police control. What shocked and sparked debate among many French people was merely the confirmation of a reality well-known to people of colour in France. Among my Algerian family and friends, stories of people being controlled, sometimes more violently than others, are extremely common.
While people of colour in general suffer from this reality, France has a specific history when it comes to Arabic, particularly Maghribi people. Systemic discrimination is not surprising to anyone but those who have the privilege to ignore it. In its more subtle manifestations, I have witnessed people frown and make inappropriate comments about my family name. In its most obvious forms, a friend of mine was told she was "too Algerian" for a job. However, in its most horrific manifestations, discrimination takes the form of Algerians drowning in the Seine. On October 17, 1961, an estimated 30 to 200 Algerians protesting a curfew imposed solely on Algerians in France were beaten and thrown into the Seine River by the French police, where they drowned. It took 40 years for the government to acknowledge the massacre.
It is hard to imagine how a violent past, intertwined with a century of colonisation and discriminatory acts, could lead to the impartial policing of the very people who were drowned 60 years ago.
The killing of Nahel felt like the culmination of decades of unaddressed racism. Killings like this happen for a reason; they were expected, growing from the seeds sown deep within the racist designs of our systems. France is sad and revolted; the streets are on fire because the pain is unbearable. The message is clear; this should not have happened, and it should never happen again. Paris and its surroundings are once again a battleground, but what I'm scared of is what it truly means.
I'm scared that this protest, just like the one before it, is just a temporary outcry, and the promises it held will be buried with the rest of them.
I don't feel proud writing this. Part of me feels like I'm being critical of the one thing I should be proud of: the resilience of the left. Part of me wants to remain silent, to shout with the crowd and remain full of hope as to what bright future those flames are going to bring us. There is a certain comfort in destruction, a softness in chaos. A violent protest holds promises like no other form of contestation does. I can only imagine how relieved people felt when the ground started shaking in 1789.
While I firmly believe that this protest holds the potential to ignite a true revolution, it must lay the groundwork for uncompromising systemic change.
As you're reading this, the police are gaining even more power than before; a new justice reform bill is set to authorize the police to spy on suspects through their phones. If there is one thing Nahel’s killing made clear, it's that the police needs less power, not more. I'm afraid of what it means if we fail to make things change. The protests might be at their peak, but in the meantime, €1 million has been raised for the policeman who shot this kid, and the fundraiser has not been disabled by the government.
This may look and feel like a revolution, but a revolution is not one unless it brings substantial change.
The flamboyance of our protests can make us blind to the fact that nothing is changing. It feels like the revolution dazzles the rest of the world, making us forget about what the next step should be. Most of the time, French revolutions rise and fall without making more than a splatter, a single crack in the foundations of our flawed systems.
This time, we need more than a crack. We need radical change. The spectacle of a revolution is not enough. We need to recognise that while these protests are a part of our identity, they often don't bring about the substantial change we aspire to. We need to move beyond the spectacle, to channel our passion into sustained political action. Only then can we hope to bring about the change we so desperately seek.