For the past few weeks, images of burning buildings and devastated shopping streets have dominated international media coverage of France.
asserted
images → burn → France
“France is burning”, “France in turmoil”, “Chaos in France”, the headlines have declared, focusing on the violent element of an otherwise peaceful student movement demanding better conditions for education.
asserted
headlines → burn → education
To understand why this has happened in the past and is happening today, let us start by examining the word “violence”.
asserted
us → understand → violence
In today’s context, it is used indiscriminately to refer to a broken shop window, a police officer injuring a demonstrator, a car set on fire, or shots fired at an unarmed crowd.
asserted
it → use → crowd
This confusion tends to inaccurately place material damage and attacks on people, revolt and its repression, on the same level.
asserted
confusion → tend → level
Brazilian archbishop Dom Helder Camara, an advocate of liberation theology, distinguished between three types of violence: the first, that of injustice that oppresses; the second, that of the revolt it provokes; and the third, that of repression.
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it → distinguish → repression
I would add one more form of violence: that of inequality, discrimination, social humiliation and precarious life.
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I → add → inequality
French history reminds us how often revolts, the injustices that fuel them and the repressions that answer them are closely intertwined.
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that → remind → them
It was an act of armed insurrection by revolutionaries who rejected an oppressive absolute monarchy and saw the prison as a symbol of its abuses.
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who → reject → abuses
The defenders of the fortress fired on the assailants, killing about 100 people.
asserted
defenders → fire → people
After their capitulation, the Bastille governor, Bernard-Rene Jourdan de Launay, was killed, and his head impaled on a pike and paraded in the streets.
asserted
head → kill → streets
In the following weeks, peasants started invading properties of the aristocracy, ransacking them and burning property deeds that recorded feudal rights.
asserted
that → follow → rights
These documents embodied the feudal domination peasants were subjected to.
asserted
peasants → embody → domination
Three years later, on August 10, 1792, revolutionaries stormed the royal residenceod the Tuileries Palace, which led to the deaths of hundreds of Swiss Guards.
asserted
which → storm → Guards
In September, in a climate of panic in the face of foreign invasion, armed groups executed more than 1,000 prisoners, among them Catholic priests and criminals arrested for common crimes.
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groups → execute → crimes
These outbursts of popular anger were rooted in the systemic violence of the ancien regime: privileges of birth, feudal oppression, tax inequalities, arbitrariness in the use of force and repression.
asserted
outbursts → root → force
Popular violence cannot be separated from that of a social order founded on domination.
asserted
violence → separate → domination
Throughout the 19th century, the same driving forces — fear and anger against those in power — continued to fuel collective violence.
asserted
forces → drive → violence
In February 1831, an anticlerical crowd sacked the archbishop’s palace in Paris and destroyed its furnishings, thus striking at a Church associated with the deposed monarch.
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crowd → sack → monarch
In 1871, following France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, thousands of disaffected Parisians rebelled and established the Paris Commune.
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thousands → follow → Commune
They took hostages in an attempt to persuade the government in Versailles to stop bombarding them.
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They → take → them
The killing of the hostages ultimately took place during “Bloody Week”, as the Versailles army massacred Parisians by the thousands.
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army → take → thousands
Social violence, however, has not always taken the spectacular form of insurrection and its suppression.
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violence → take → insurrection
It has also been expressed in the form of labour mobilisation and the targeting of factories, machines and representatives of the employers.
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It → express → employers
On January 26, 1886, in Decazeville, engineer Jules Watrin, deputy director of the local mines, was beaten, thrown from a window, and killed by a crowd of miners angered by bad working conditions.
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Watrin → beat → conditions
His name gave rise to the neologism “watrinade” – the killing of a manager or a boss.
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name → give → manager
In Armentieres, in 1903, a textile strike degenerated into the ransacking of shops.
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strike → degenerate → shops
In Limoges, three years later, demonstrators forced open the gates of factories and destroyed porcelain in one plant.
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demonstrators → force → plant
Two gun shops were looted and an explosive device set off outside a director’s home.
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device → loot → home
In 1968, a student-led protest for better university conditions triggered a society-wide mobilisation, drawing in millions of workers who went on strike.
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who → lead → strike
The barricades in the Latin Quarter of Paris were accompanied by overturned or torched cars, the throwing of cobblestones and the use of Molotov cocktails.
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barricades → accompany → cocktails
In Nantes, the director of Sud Aviation was held captive in his factory for several days.
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director → hold → days
In the following years, the process of deindustrialisation put workers yet again in a precarious situation and drove yet another wave of labour protests.
asserted
process → follow → protests
In 1979, the steelworkers of Longwy and Denain, faced with massive job cuts, took part in mobilisations that left behind broken doors and scattered files at the subprefecture of Briey, vehicles set on fire and shop windows smashed.
asserted
windows → face → fire
In 2009, after the announcement of the closure of the Continental plant in Clairoix, employees ransacked the subprefecture of Compiegne.
asserted
employees → ransack → Compiegne
In 2015, at Air France, two executives were attacked during a demonstration against job cuts.
asserted
executives → attack → cuts
In 2016, during the protests against the labour law reforms, which allowed employers to fire workers more easily, storefronts were smashed and police vehicles were attacked.
asserted
vehicles → allow → workers
Two years later, the demonstrations of the “yellow vests” over economic grievances brought an unprecedented level of visibility to such actions.
asserted
demonstrations → bring → actions
In December 2018, the Arc de Triomphe was defaced and shops were looted.
asserted
shops → deface → December
Yet, this movement was also notable for the serious injuries inflicted upon many protesters by law enforcement.
asserted
movement → inflict → enforcement
…and 14 more, not listed.
The Aporia
