Whenever France burns, people look for precedents, the best comparison to the riots du jour.
People throw around dates such as 1968, or sometimes 2005. Those with longer memories cite 1848 or 1789.
Since the great General Strike of ’68, there has been a pretence that protests in France are somehow a traditional feature of rebellion against some aspect of the French system, or a wider injustice.
The current conflagration began somewhat in this manner, with the asinine claim that the riots now spreading across the cities that are the jewels of French civilisation are somehow ‘school protests’.
It does not take a historian
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