The anger, radicalism and fragility of men and women dressed in scarves to protect themselves from the smoke contrast with the organized force of the French policemen, who resemble the ideal of the man-machine, programmed to contain the fury of the protesters. After Macron’s speech to calm the population a week ago, citizens have not stopped taking to the streets to show their rejection by breaking shop windows and launching projectiles of all kinds.
Once again, violence is manifested, mobilizations continue to dominate the French political and social landscape, as a form of communication when power does not listen to the demands of a large part of society. The violence experienced in Paris has set fire to everything, even the banners with which the protesters sought to express their discontent. In one of them you could read, as published by Le Monde: “I have become radicalized by watching LCP (the television channel of the French Parliament) and the public Senate.”
It must be taken into account that the protagonists of the mobilizations are not people who express themselves against the system from their individuality, but citizens and groups that seek to keep intact the rights that the State contracted with them and that now decides to change. The violence experienced in the streets of Paris and in other French cities is not the failed attempt to channel the ideals of a pending revolution, taking advantage of Macron’s political error in approving the pension reform using article 49.3, but the discontent of many citizens seeing that the State, which should serve them, turns its back on them again.
The mobilizations seek to unmask the fragile balance between the State and the citizens. Citizens seek a new correlation of forces with power, not to change it, but to fulfill the obligations contracted with them. For many French people, defeating Macron is not a revolutionary but a civic duty. If France has burned to claim the right to demonstrate against the pension reform, in Spain it can do so due to the rise in inflation that is slowly reducing citizens’ room for manoeuvre.
