This isn’t really just directed at French users, but also anyone who’s country has had a recent major protest since COVID like Nepal or Hong Kong. And if these questions feel too personal or detailed, then just take it as the ramblings of a mad person I guess. I’ve just been feeling awful for months now, and the state of my country only continues to decline.
As I see the various videos going around of the current France protests, I just wonder how you make it look so easy and natural to have thousands of people protesting but also doing arson or chasing off cops.
How do you get people to care? I remember feeling astonished back in 2024 when I realized two of my former high school friends weren’t going to vote, one of them being a minority girl, which sounded insane to me. It literally takes a matter of seconds to less than 5 minutes to vote during early elections, which I have always done. But millions of people couldn’t even take the time out of their day to do that, even in States that actually make voting easy. So how do you manage to get millions of people willing to set a building on fire? Hell, just the youth alone. Maybe protesting would’ve been easier if I was still a minor, but I remember feeling faint just watching videos of BLM riots. I couldn’t imagine being in the middle of a crowd.
In addition to that, gathering people? I’ve been to a few No Kings protests, but the only possible public transport I would’ve had would be bus, and literally nothing else. Car is pretty much the only option, which I know hinders people as they’re far more traceable than metro and buses, but the distance too. My protest was in my city and neighboring cities, but I couldn’t imagine heading more than 2+ hours to a protest, and by car ( wonder if people could afford it with gas prices now…). So is it the public transport that helps? How far did people go to participate in riots in Paris? How many other locations are they occurring at?
How to you coordinate people? Inform them? We just had scandals about Meta censoring No Kings posts, and while I will say “that’s obvious, why use these platforms”, you also have to reach the people where they are. Are French people not posting this stuff on Big Tech media? Why isn’t France trying to censor or quell posts encouraging dissent? Why doesn’t Big Tech just assist them in doing a media blackout? I can’t imagine that all of the rioters are on decentralized, censor-resistant places like the Fediverse. So do the youth literally just walk up to each other and go “lets go riot”? Are people communicating through encrypted channels like Signal and Briar? They don’t just rawdog it on iMessage and Whatsapp, despite them being some of the most used chat apps? I mean, even Nepal had their informal election after the protests on Discord, which obviously isn’t secure or censor-resilient.
What about damage to locals? There are clips of random small businesses getting caught in cross-fire, and I’m reminded of people who took advantage of BLM to loot. Do businesses not leave? Do you not get food deserts? Do major businesses not pull out? How are people paying bills right now? Are workplaces and colleges just expecting people to be missing right now? I know you don’t have healthcare tied to work, but literally, is there nothing that makes you hesitate?
What about legal repercussions? People are filming and taking so many pictures right now, does the government not pursue them? Are there not CCTV cameras and “Flock”-like cameras recording who goes where and does what? Are they not tracking phones and social media accounts? Do people not have fear of being in jail for most of their life? Do people not have fear of never being able to find work because of it? What about transport, is it easy to buy tickets with just cash? Is there not fear of being tracked? I mean, Hong Kong protests focused on covering faces, but Nepalese students were just out there. Even Jan 6 rioters got caught before the Presidency changed and they unfortunately got pardoned.
How do you feel unified? I barely know the people on my street besides the fact that most of them are old or conservatives. I can’t even imagine trying to convince or talk to them, I mean these people literally have signs out on their lawns right now of the Republican candidates in my State. It amazes me that most of y’all seem to agree that the riots should be done. Like, I literally think if something like “Progressive Jan 6” happened, MAGA would just start killing people in the streets. I mean Charlie Kirk got shot by another white conservative man, and yet they sent bomb threats to unrelated HBCU’s because they’re fucking dumbasses and racist. I feel so much fear over something like Trump being killed violently because of events like that. Do you not fear of neighbors or locals ratting you out? Killing you? Hong Kong had “Do Not Split”, but every day it feels like people on Fedi argue about No Kings not being substantial enough of a disturbance and that violence is necessary to get change.
This also relates to fear of cops. Are they not armed with guns? Why are there so little casualties, if not full on deaths? When does the French government deem military force necessary? The US has quite literally burnt and bombed it’s own cities in the past for “uprisings.” What makes France hesitate? When do they go militarized on you?
But the biggest thing of all is, what about fear for those around you? Like I said, I fear that if Trump was assassinated, civil war would break out. Millions of people voted for him, thousands were willing to storm the capital over an election they lost, and there are gun freaks everywhere. How many innocent and unrelated people would die? Is there no fear of randoms being killed? Just getting shot for being in the wrong place and looking like “the enemy?”
I just wanted to know. I feel like I can do nothing. Around my friends, I’m open about my beliefs and choices. But I’m so afraid. Of dying. Of rotting in a prison to be another forgotten statistic. Of never getting to have a chance at life. Of never being able to be free of corruption. It’s just so different, and I wanted to know why. If it was my own cowardice or flaw or failure that holds me back. I don’t want to watch people get kidnapped off streets to die in ICE cells. I don’t want to watch police shoot children and abuse people. I don’t want to see the internet and real world become a panopticon hell-hole. But outside of voting and contacting reps, I just don’t know how. I want better, I want hope.
America and France are very different places. Other answers have gone into the structural, geographic and social differences that make French style riots unlikely in America, but those very differences also affect what would be effective.
The vast majority of French “rioters” are actually peaceful, doing little more than marching and being part of the discontented mass. The comparatively small amount of violence and looting is picked up on because it’s sensational, not because it is particularly effective. Those sorts of riots would, even if you could get people to take part, have much less effect in the US, for the reasons you and others have stated.
The visible riots and marching are really just marketing for the more important, and effective, part though, which is the economic halt that also occurs. This is the bit that Americans should be looking to emulate, as it’s the effective bit, and less likely to get you shot.
Get together with anyone like minded who you can find, and prepare. Build up local community resilience and mutual aid groups. These steps help whatever happens, so they’re a good way to pull in more people. Once communities start building up their own strength, they can stop, or reduce, taking part in the economy that supports the fascists.
For example, Walmart U.S. had net sales of $129B last quarter alone. According to their balance sheet, the property value of all of their stores, warehouses, and other property is about $136B. If people reduced their spending there by even 10% that would be a $12.9B hit, per quarter, or about the equivalent of close to 10% of their property portfolio without anyone having to go out on the streets, set fire to anything, or get shot.
Um… Well it’s indeed the far more effective part, but also that’s where crowds of people tend to get mowed down (historically at least)
The economic stop isn’t the bit that gets people shot, being on the streets rioting or marching gets them shot. Just staying at home or with your community, and not giving money to the companies does at least as much damage, and doesn’t need anybody to get harmed.
Yeah… No, not spending money is really marginal stuff. It doesn’t cause economic damage, it just affects the state of the economy, it’s just market conditions. By the time it starts to affect the supply chain, the government can step in to buy time, and eventually they’ll outlast us. If done in an organized fashion, we can pick winners and losers, but that’s not how you do economic damage
Real economic damage comes from disrupting the means of production. A general strike can do an amount of damage in days that no amount of boycotting will ever to
And historically, it gets a response. People have been escorted to work at gunpoint. They’ve even used the full force of the military against company towns that performed a general strike
It’s not safe. Nothing that threatens meaningful economic damage will ever be safe. At least we’re in a place where the military would likely refuse to turn their guns on civilians, but if we actually use our power as workers it’ll be met with some degree of violence.
It’s hasn’t been that long since they dragged the aircraft controllers out of their homes. There’s been recent talk of doing the same for nurses when they threaten a strike, and during Biden’s term he threatened to do it to rail workers when they performed a strike
Granted, we’re currently on a path where tens of millions are likely to die for easily presentable reasons, so we should be brave in the face of violence. We should just prepare ourselves