The Wild Reed: Understanding What’s Going On in France

Sunday, October 18, 2026

Understanding What’s Going On in France

Saturday, October 17th saw the biggest student uprising in France since the defeat of Sarkozy’s CPE legislation in the mid 2000s. An estimated 800,000 protested across the country. Saturday was billed as the mother of all protests as the movement of secondary school students was to be joined by the famous “Yellow Vests” . . . a loose knit movement of largely working-class protestors who brought France to a standstill eight years ago when demos against fuel hikes became a decentralised direct-action movement against inequality. They caused massive economic damage to the French state and regularly fought the cops off the streets. They were largely unconnected to the organized French left and trade unions. Their unruly campaign achieved a lot of its objectives causing Macron to scrap a raft of neoliberal proposals.

Yesterday they had little or no presence on the protest in Paris but there were plenty of the trademark high-vis garments on display. Being worn by their children. The state has thrown everything at the secondary school students who have imposed militant blockades of their schools over the appalling state of education. The repression has achieved little other than making the protests more militant. Students have been blinded and mutilated by the cops rubber bullets and stun grenades. Over 6,000 (majority of whom are under 18) have been arrested, yet still they march and disrupt.

It is also very clear that these mobilisations are about much more than just the state of secondary education.

These protests are militantly antifascist. There is a very genuine fear that after 8 years of neoliberal misery, inflicted on the French people by Macron’s technocratic failures, the door is now open for fascist Le Pen at next year’s Presidential elections. For the youth of France this thought is utterly abhorrent.

They fully understand the real causes of their pain and their anti-racist instincts have been cemented by the behavior of the cops towards students of colour. Particularly in the poorer suburbs of the cities, like the banlieues of Paris. Many of them chant the chorus of antifascist anthem “Porcherie” by ’90s punk band Beruier Noir. A song written over a decade before most of them were born.

The other issue that dominates is Palestine. Generation Z care little for the billionaire owned outlets of the mainstream media. Their news comes from sources like Instagram where the ongoing livestreamed genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing of the West Bank has become a focus for the injustice they see everywhere coming from the “Epstein class.” Racism against French Muslims, particularly Algerians, has also played its part.

[. . .] It was clear that the incredible numbers seen in Paris and across France had brought the youth to a place where they had lost their fear and decided it was payback time for weeks of police brutality and a rotten system that is robbing them of their future. They fully understand how the broken economic model they endure is hurtling them towards a fascist dystopia full of social, economic and environmental ruin. Why the fuck should anyone be expected to behave themselves in such circumstances?