Created 2026-10-20 Updated 2026-10-25 ← All posts
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France pointless protests – an ask for a comfier prison

tldr: Good energy, wrong target, feels pointless. France protests for a comfier prison instead of lack of prison itself – and every benefit won pays for the next crackdown.

Good energy going for nothing

While I love seeing the protests that escalate everywhere, it is sad for me that good protests are going for nothing. Well, not entirely for nothing, it’s good that we have them, but kinda, this feels like something that could die and the energy spent is lost.

And this time it is different: in 2018-19 the state could still write the cheque – €17 billion of concessions. Now it is cutting €54 billion and still buying drones. The first French protest cycle where the bribe is unaffordable and only a baton to the head is on offer.

It’s sad to see that the protest is without purpose, without meaning. Everyone says it is about prices and schools and living conditions. They had clearer demands initially – but then a lot of people joined without any meaning of their own, and the demands got diluted into just protest for the sake of protest. And not even that, it became just general protests against, I guess, bitterness, against some economic state.

They just go around for fun against "all bad". They don’t call to topple the regime, they don’t try to change anything in the system itself, they don’t openly call to impeach one politician or party. It started as a semi-targeted, organized protest, with signs and slogans, which was later picked up by everyone – and when it dissolved into just protest for the sake of protest, the specifics melted into a mood. And it degraded because nobody cared enough to actually think about anything.

That also means that it is sad to see the process goes to waste when nobody makes an explicit call for change, demands against what? To remove the current government? Well, maybe. But nobody really focuses on that. This is just the process for… So everyone can just join and continue. And without… without an end goal.

There are demands this time, actually – smaller classes, teacher pay, the €54 billion budget, fourth straight year of frozen civil-servant pay. On paper, real, listed. But they’re addressed to nobody. No majority since 2024, a PM who can’t pass a budget, and a movement that’s headless by design – first call came from an unknown TikTok account about fuel prices, AI-made posters, no spokespeople. You can’t bargain with something that has no mouth. So the only institution that can answer it is the police. 1,800 arrests, a burned town hall in Limoges, and a national debate about "policing doctrine." That’s the reply. Not a concession.

It started as something specific and ended as a mood. Schools, then a couple of protests, then the full broad national one – and then the real rioty tail with looting and arson.

More benefits is more of the same

That means it has no noble value, it has no meaning, it’s just the prisoners rattling the bars to demand better conditions and not the breakdown of the prison itself.

I’ve seen their claims that they want better schools, better social spending, and at the same time nobody thinks how anyone is gonna do that anyway.
The current ones have already ruined their economy enough that the fix seems unlikely.
Like, they demand more benefits than the economy clearly cannot sustain itself, and the entire project that you had before, with all your fancy social spending, already has cracks.
And you are asking to just get more.
Not claiming like you should not demand that.
I understand why people accustomed to the social state would want just more money and endlessly demand more money out of it.
And yet, that would be just a continuation of the same.
If we raise the benefits by maybe 10% or get more spending, consider two things at the same time: first, the fix has a real chance to fail and you’re gonna get angry; and second, that’s exactly the excuse for the government to do more and more again. Will you be able to protest next time against them and make more demands? Or will they crack down entirely? So nothing can happen anymore.

I have some idea that all these protests are for them, they are just negotiations.
They just want more benefits or less intervention for others, again, so people have more benefits than nothing, less state intervention that led to lack of these benefits in the first place.

They built their welfare state on a bet on endless economy. Around 2010 that bet started collapsing – and they continued anyway. They protested, protested, protested again, but it is just trying to get a larger slice when the pie itself is shrinking. All the while you pay a huge amount of taxes, which somehow never keeps the same welfare state afloat. I understand why people just want more benefits, but it is disappointing how they fail to see the flaw of the entire system.

Every durable victory in French history is distributional. 2018 – kill the carbon tax. Not one of them ever reduced the state’s scope. Not one. The demand axis is always "give us more of the state’s output," never "give us less state."

The transfer system is a trap with no exit – every demand for more deepens the dependence that makes the next demand necessary. And the obvious counter – the trap is also a floor, it’s what keeps people alive – answers itself: a floor you cannot leave is what a cage is.

No demand against the prison itself

And while the process may have no leaders, no head, no nothing to organize, the absence of anyone trying to organize it and join it into a political movement is staggering. You would expect the parties to go out into the streets together with them, with their agenda, trying to organize the crowd toward their goal, trying to find a way to turn the chaos of a spontaneous protest into clear political demands, but nobody is doing that. That means what? You don’t have anyone in your current political parties siding with you. You have none of them who would go out into the streets with you. You have the elite establishment instead.

If I had a party, I would go and mobilize my colleagues to go out into the streets immediately, to go process with everyone, regardless of how dangerous it is, to find the slogans, to find banners, to have something that shows where we stand. But none of them are doing that.

That’s your fucked-up political landscape, but nobody represents you enough to join you, and this protest is eventually gonna go to waste and die.

I do understand they generally dislike parties joining on the street and see them as the same state, the enemy they are protesting against. But that is also why the protest cannot achieve anything. A scream on the street translates poorly into what gets said later in parliament.
Yes, I know you hate them all, and I hate them too, but at least you’d expect new political forces to appear as your tradition has it, that new people can rise from the street.

Many would say that this is bullshit because they are the same, they would inherit the same instrument, but I say the churn is much better than nothing. The seats in the shithouse should move constantly – old idiots kicked out, nobody sitting two terms for five years. But – and this is the whole point – with absolute strict limits on what any sitter can do. Turnover alone just delivers a fresh face for the same machine; France 2017 already proved that. Churn plus constraint, or you just get another bunch of guys who continue to oppress you just the same.

Even indirectly they loot the shops, but nobody wondered if they should burn down their local party offices.

And if that happened, the protest would not only be more organized but also more stable in time and length. My prediction: this one dies within weeks when people get bored. The gilets jaunes had groups, roundabouts, decentralized coordination – something to hold the vibe. Today there is nothing. Just spontaneity, which lasts as long as a vibe lasts. But if somebody stood out and organized even a little, more people would come and the protests would stay alive far longer.

Additionally, the protest not only has no political goals, but comes at a time when political goals decay fast.
The current president is going away soon, and whatever signal this sends will be forgotten in a couple of months.
It is both: the calendar is out of place, and nothing stores a demand past a few weeks – no broker, no platform, no memory.
Without clear, express wishes, nobody knows what to optimize for.
How could the next president make their slogans? What to focus on? They don’t. They have no idea.

They don’t want to talk about any of this, it seems. They see it as a nuance.

One more reason to demand the full change instead of nothing.
If anything, protest until the change is made – but make it proportional. Any benefit you win must come with state powers cut: the current crew out, and their successors weaker. Benefits alone just feed the machine and fund the next crackdown.

The minimum win is voice-security – the guarantee you can still protest next time. Without that, the next round will be worse.

Articulating a platform for someone else’s movement is a public good – the person who does the work doesn’t capture the reward; the party that harvests it does. That’s why the chair stays empty. Nobody’s paid to fill it. And the fear is rational: the last faces that stepped forward got co-opted or destroyed. So they refuse the institution entirely – and protest only when there is nothing left to bribe them with, coordinated by vibe alone, in time and place, with no storage. Protests are RAM. The broker is the disk. No broker, no storage – the demand is gone by April no matter how good the calendar looks.

Less power, not more benefits

Without the clear political signal, like a demand to repeal the current tyranny, the clear demand to strike down this and that, and not something vague like just wanting a better economy.
They will note that the public just protests for its own sake without actually caring for their liberty.
Without caring that what they want is not only a better economy but also better freedom.

And they will remember that after the protests calm down. They will throw a bribe – some concession, some cheque – and at the same time make sure the next protest does not happen again. More police, more control of the media, more protest laws. And none of it solves anything: the same problems come back, again and again. Why the hell do you have problems again? Because the bribe was never meant to fix anything – it buys quiet while the armor compounds.

The demand vector of protest is more protection; the demand vector that prevents tyranny is less power; in a centralized state those are the same institution. You cannot shrink and expand the same apparatus. It’s asking the warden for a bigger allowance and a smaller key ring. And that means the prescription has no constituency by construction – anyone who shrinks the state cuts their own benefits.
Nobody will march for getting less – I admit that. The ideal is less state and fewer benefits, but people will still demand the benefits. Fine. Then the deal must be proportional: every benefit won, powers cut with it. A deal with socialists is dangerous because they never stop turning economic means into oppressive means – so chain every cheque to a power cut, or the win today pays for the crackdown tomorrow.

You don’t get to earmark. Tax capacity is one pool. The same treasury that writes the transfer writes the surveillance contract, the same parliament votes both, often in the same 49-3. Your benefits aren’t a contract with a firewall – they’re a line item sitting next to the police budget, and both are decided by the same hand. Welfare is not the opposite of the police state. It’s the police state’s legitimation budget.

The bribe expires, the armor stays

Moreover, economic efforts give them more incentive to adapt it, to just write your cheque and then crack down at the same time when nobody notices.
For them money is cheap.
That means you are being directly bribed.
They give you benefits and enhance state power at the same time.
Next time, can you demand more benefits again?
What happens when money runs out? That’s right.
All those police powers were accumulated over and over. Now they’re gonna be used against you.

The same taxes you pay to support the welfare state also support the police state – which only grows. They never deprive themselves of money for that.
Every demand you gain in a protest, part of it goes directly into preventing the next one. They write your cheque and crack down at the same time, and when the money runs out, all those accumulated police powers will be used against you.

The state learns from protest. Each cycle trains the policing repertoire – bans on assemblies, dispersal weapons, surveillance law. The protest is also the training data for its own suppression. See how you were able to successfully protest at times against economic policies, but never against the state powers in general. nor have I seen any attempt to curb their powers at all. You complain about how expensive shit is, but never complain whether you would be able to protest against that expensive shit ever again.
All of it is just a petition channel. Every demand says "sovereign, please don’t fuck our asses too hard, please just an inch and not more!" That reinforces the frame that the sovereign is the one who grants. It never shrinks the sovereign, never limits their power to pursue the same thing again in half a year.

Look at the legal structure, not the totals. LOPMI is a five-year programming law – the €15 billion police build-up is ring-fenced, multi-year, survives budget chaos. Welfare is annual and contestable, voted every year, cut first. Same years, same treasury: emergency powers written into permanent law (SILT 2017), cameras and drones kept (sécurité globale 2021), €54 billion of cuts announced for everything else. One budget is protected by law, the other is a hostage of it. They never skimp on the second part. The bribe is annual and contestable; the armor is permanent and protected.

You cannot win on economic merits alone – they have every reason to take your demand, write the cheque, and strike you down with the other hand. The centralized welfare state is cracking under its own weight. So here is the minimum: if the protests win anything, it must be paired with less power for the state – fewer laws against you, less money for the police, guarantees you can do this again. Benefits without power cuts are just a nicer cage with thicker bars. And without even that, the next election will be worse – because the only thing that compounded was the armor.

Demand of protest is more protection; the demand that prevents tyranny is less power; in a centralized state those are the same institution. So the two demands are structurally incompatible – you cannot shrink and expand the same apparatus. This is why I feel sad about those protests being aimed the wrong way.

Updated 25.10.2026:

Seen this news:

PM Lecornu asked telecoms to be ready to block social media over the Oct 24-25 protest weekend.

Now I may take it back partially, now many will know why they need to protest. Because this would be their last one.
They know what to target – remove your ability to know about where and when – and half would not come.
Hide whats really happening, deny entire groups visibility, downrank any legislative activity – so you not even aware what they are doing.
Same thing every authoritarian state has been doing in the last 20 years.