[Xtatic]

Insanity

[Xtatic]

[christianbeccy]

"Cost of living protests". This is not about cost of living.

[scallywag27]

If I was french I would be protesting too. Imagine being french, I'd be very unhappy about that.

[Guns N' Coffee]

They are making the cost of living go up, now the city has to rebuild city hall with your money.

[kellyhound]

The movement originally began in September 2026 as a series of student and pupil blockades in Paris’s working-class northern suburbs, protesting overcrowding, poor school facilities and chronic teacher shortages.

Over the last month, the movement rapidly ballooned to encompass trade unions, climate activists, and elements of the former Yellow Vest movement. Protesters are furious over stagnant wages that have failed to keep pace with soaring housing costs, rising taxes and fuel prices driven higher by conflicts in the Middle East.

Recent data highlights that energy prices in France have surged over 60% since 2015, the poverty rate sits at a 30-year high, and nearly 30% of French citizens report being unable to handle an unexpected financial expense.

By the way, copycat protests and minor clashes have also broken out in other European hubs, including Milan, Lisbon, Madrid and Brussels.

The violent rioting was carried out by a fraction of the total crowd, numbering in the several thousands. Out of the estimated 550,000 to 800,000 total demonstrators who marched across France, the vast majority protested peacefully.

French intelligence, police chief Laurent Nuñez, and political analysts have identified the rioters as a convergence of three distinct groups who infiltrated the broader trade union and student marches.

The Far-left & radical anarchists. Often referred to as Black Blocs, and these are highly organized, masked and hooded idiots. Many are affiliated with hard-left anti-capitalist factions.

Then you got the usual opportunistic rioters & looters which are primarily apolitical individuals, including gangs and marginalized youths from the suburbs and inner-city districts.

And radicalized students & fringe activists being of younger demographic consisting of radicalized university students, high school pupils and fringe Yellow Vest elements.

The rioting, looting and arson led to the arrest of roughly 2,400 people nationwide (incl. over 350 specifically in Paris) and resulted in injuries to nearly 1,000 police officers.

Police intelligence estimates that between 5,000 and 10,000 individuals were actively rioting, looting or engaged in violent clashes meaning 0.625% and 1.25% of the 800,000 total protesters.

Donald Trump's claim that mass immigration and Islam are the driving forces behind the French unrest is directly contradicted by French authorities, political analysts, and the core demands of the protesters themselves.

The French government, local intelligence and on-the-ground journalists have confirmed that the nationwide protests are fueled entirely by economic hardship and deteriorating domestic public services, not immigration.

Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social that "This isn't about schools, this is about Islam wanting to take over" and claimed that migrants have taken over France, urging the country to close its borders.

However the overwhelming majority of the 800,000 protesters are ordinary French citizens, union workers (like truck drivers, teachers, and pharmacists), and students.

Trump’s statements are largely intended for an American domestic audience. With the U.S. midterm elections just weeks away, Trump and conservative allies, like Vice President JD Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson, are using the dramatic footage of Paris burning to amplify their own campaign platform regarding strict U.S. border security and anti-democratic rhetoric and to take away the focus of the current Iran war and rise of cost of many Americans.

Actually Donald Trump is applying a highly similar political strategy to the war in Ukraine right now.

Trump openly called for Ukraine to replace Zelenskyy or get somebody else to negotiate, claiming Zelenskyy doesn't care and doesn't want the war to end.

Donald Trump's claim that Ukraine is driving up American pump prices is factually wrong. The global energy market structure and a much larger conflict in the Middle East is the root cause.

The true cause behind high U.S. diesel prices, which have spiked past $6 per gallon, is the escalating conflict between Israel, the U.S. and Iran.

Actually Fox News has featured energy industry sources and on-air segments confirming that the majority of the price movement in diesel over the last several months is the direct result of the conflict with Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

They regularly report the numbers, such as diesel spiking past $5.85 to $6.33 per gallon and detail how it is raising the cost of groceries and consumer goods.

However headline coverage on right-wing channels heavily mirrors Trump’s Truth Social statements.

Even Fox News analysts frequently highlight Ukraine's attacks on Russian refineries, arguing that targeting these facilities triggers global diesel shortages and directly forces Americans to pay more at the pump.

Following Trump’s talking points, commentators blame Blue State Democrats (specifically in California) for shutting down local refinery capacity and worsening the shortage.

California is in the middle of losing roughly 17% to 20% of its total refining capacity over a 12-month window. However, the claim that Democrats directly shut them down skips over the actual corporate and economic decisions behind the closures.

The state is not seizing or shuttering these plants; the oil companies themselves are choosing to pull the plug due to low profit margins and high regulatory costs.

While Democrats didn't pass a law saying close these refineries, conservative commentators blame them because state policies have aggressively squeezed the fossil fuel industry.

California has mandated a complete ban on the sale of new gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035. Knowing that long-term gasoline demand in the state is projected to collapse, energy companies are refusing to spend the hundreds of millions of dollars required to maintain and upgrade their aging, century-old plants.

In response to high gas prices, Governor Gavin Newsom and the Democratic legislature passed aggressive regulations allowing the state to penalize oil companies for excessive profits and mandating massive, costly fuel reserve inventories (via bills SB X1-2 and ABx2-1).

Some refineries have chosen to stop processing petroleum entirely because California’s heavy green subsidies mean they can make significantly more money converting their plants to produce renewable diesel and biofuels.

Also the planned shutdowns of the two major California refineries have an extremely minimal impact on total U.S. diesel refining capacity, accounting for roughly 1.5% of the national total.

Major fossil fuel companies and their executives have donated at least $75 million to Trump's election campaign and affiliated Super PACs and in exchange, the Trump administration pushed through billions in tax breaks for the oil sector and scrapped numerous environmental regulations to accelerate domestic drilling.

[zuiram]

What a clusterfuck. If the protestors wanted Le Pen, they could’ve campaigned for her in a more orderly way.

This is just the beginning of the demographic crisis / grey tsunami, and will be aggravated by escalating energy shortages, rising capital costs, rising logistics costs, rising military spending now that NATO is collapsing, and so forth.

As for the analysis, be aware that some contributing factors cannot- by law- be itemized by French authorities. Let’s say one group does poorly in schools and you want to spend money on them to improve their prospects. When you have to leave out key variables in how to figure out what people struggle with and where the funds can be usefully directed, your have a wicked problem. Same with less charitable measures. For instance, there is agreement about cutting the welfare rights of the looters, and debate about extending that to their families, which makes no sense until you realize they’re having an oblique conversation with correlates as proxies for the real topic because the law closes the door on an open conversation for historical reasons.

Wish our French members the best in these trying times.

[kellyhound]

Looting of an anime shop.

[yah]

Originally Posted by kellyhound ↗

Looting of an anime shop.

These are not protestors. They're just sorry-ass, opportunistic pieces of shit thieves & vandals.

[William May]

Originally Posted by yah ↗

These are not protestors. They're just sorry-ass, opportunistic pieces of shit thieves & vandals.

You mean they are just "TOONS", as the live actors in Hollywood scornfully refer to them!