Denise (84) lives very close to Republic Square, where a week ago a demonstration turned into an orgy of looting. Vandals set fire to a café and two restaurants in their small alley. “This is a civil war,” she says. "These things will increase the cost of insurance. And there will be no tourists. What kind of demonstrators are they?"
Someone wrote “Behead Macron” on the wall of her house and two hearts behind it. “We already had that with Queen Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI,” says the woman. "But Macron is a Machiavellian power politician. It may also be that he provoked chaos in order to stay in power."
At the statue in the middle of the square, a worker uses a sandblaster to remove graffiti. That's optimistic. Because the next mass demonstration is scheduled to start on Saturday, then all the work could have been in vain.
The student Abdel (17) was there last Saturday when things escalated. He sat on top of the statue and watched the goings-on. He had come to the city from a “banlieue”, a poor suburban area. It was students like him who began protests for better learning conditions in September, demonstrations that then turned into vandalism. “Life has become too expensive, petrol costs 2.50 euros a liter,” he says. As a “Maghrebin,” a Frenchman from North Africa, he complains about racism. “I notice it every day in the way people look,” he says.
He had nothing to do with the riots. “But I can also understand those who did it,” he says. "Some live on the streets, have nothing to eat. And these companies make billions." He believes Saturday's protests will be even more massive. There is mobilization everywhere, on X, on Instagram and TikTok. "And now they want to send in the army. France will then become a dictatorship," he says.
In fact, the military is supposed to come to help this weekend. 70,000 police officers are on duty. So far only one protest march has been approved in Paris; gatherings are banned in important places such as the Republic Square and in front of the Élysée Palace. Abdel says steadfastly: "We will organize ourselves and be everywhere."
A demonstration by students on Thursday in front of the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital was first banned and then allowed at short notice through an emergency decision. This time the police want to do everything better. Hundreds of people have gathered, water cannons are at the ready, some officers are carrying huge tear gas cannons in a martial manner.
But there are only about 500 students there. This could also be because the subway was closed, the demonstration was allowed at such short notice and the police formed several chains through which the demonstrators were only allowed to pass slowly.
Hannah (19) did it and had a megaphone in her hand. She chants: “Block this country!” She then says: "Macron is a shitty president. We just want better education and now he's sending in the army." Eloise (35) and Ann (21) say that there is a shortage of 300,000 places at universities. Their banner reads: “Enroll those without faculty.”
This is followed by choruses such as “Abolish the police”, “The national police are for capital” and “Together the people will win”. A large cardboard sign reads: “When you see the trash cans burning, that is our future that you are turning to ashes.” A brass band plays “Bella Ciao”, the partisan song. But it all seems rather harmless.
Alexis (61) also walks around among the young students, many with colorful hair, some with Palestinian scarves, wearing a red sweater and glasses. The old communist sells a newspaper called “The Bolshevik” for one euro. He speaks German very well, having moved to Berlin in 1989 to fight for “revolutionary reunification” rather than “capitalist reunification.” When that didn't work, he returned to France after a few years.
But his dream is alive. He says: "We now need the workers' revolution in several stages. But our workers, like the AfD in Germany, are looking to the right. The movement must find a connection to the working class."
This is also the topic of a “Communist International” leaflet distributed by students. It says that last Saturday there were 800,000 people on the streets, but the “bourgeoisie and its captive media” only showed pictures of the looting instead of reports of “general meetings” that could have reached the workers.
The authors state in Marx and Engels language: “At the moment, workers are not part of the struggle.” This is a problem because “a movement that is not understood is a dead movement.” Then things get wild. It says: "The police have been ordered to use the looters to spoil our movement."
On Thursday evening, a “general meeting” took place in a union building on Republic Square, which the leaflet writers hoped would convince the workers who had drifted to the right. The assembly building is historic: resistance fighters gathered here during the German occupation during the Nazi era. A few meters further is a closed tobacco shop, a sign reads: "This shop has already been looted. There is nothing left to steal here."
One organizer, Matis, in his late 20s, said the students would "decide together" whether media would be allowed to attend the gathering to cover it. Little by little, hundreds of participants come together, many with rolled-up banderoles from the demonstration.
Matis then announced in the round meeting room, which was around 60 meters wide, that a French television and a German journalist were there. “I’m putting up for discussion whether they can be there.” Someone shouts that this is a right-wing French station and they should all get lost. Many cheer.
A student then says in a quiet voice into a microphone: “I think it might be a good thing if our voice is heard, even abroad.” She is shouted down.
Then a young man says we should leave the press vultures outside. Many people stand up, stretch their arms upwards and shake their hands. Apparently a sign of approval. The press has to go out now.
Later, the revolutionaries discovered a small Asian man who had pretended to be a film student, but was said to have filmed the meeting with his large camera for a right-wing student association. He is roughly escorted out, then calls the police.
So the “working class” is once again not reached through the media. And since the riots, this seems to have leaned further to the right anyway. There are presidential elections in five months. The right-wing nationalist Marine Le Pen (58) has gained 34 to 38 percent in polls since the protests began, depending on the candidate constellation.
