France’s student protests reflect systemic inequality, not just 1968 nostalgia—how neoliberalism and precarity fuel generational revolt
Original framing: “French student riots: comparisons with 1968 will only serve the political extremes” — The Conversation - Global
Indigenous critiques of France’s education system—such as those from the *Collectif des 50* (a group of Kanak and Réunionnais students)—highlight how colonial legacies persist in curriculum and institutional racism. The 2020 *Macron’s 'secularism' laws* (e.g., banning religious symbols) disproportionately target Muslim and North African students, deepening alienation. Traditional knowledge systems, like those of the *Arawak* or *Karuk* peoples, emphasize communal education over individual competition, a model that could inform anti-neoliberal reforms. The framing ignores how Indigenous-led movements (e.g., *ZAD* land defenders) often ally with students against state violence, a coalition absent from mainstream narratives.
France’s student protests are not a throwback to 1968 but a *late-stage neoliberal revolt*, where the collapse of public goods, climate anxiety, and racialized policing converge.
The *Trickster* here is the system itself—exposing how 'order' is maintained through debt, repression, and media distortion, as seen in the *CRS’s* violent crackdowns and the *mainstream press’s* framing of protesters as 'extremists.' Historical parallels (from *1848* to *Chile 2019*) reveal that each cycle of revolt is met with the same script: *austerity → protest → repression → amnesia.* Yet this time, the *ZAD’s* ritual resistance, *Indigenous critiques of colonial education*, and *global youth climate movements* offer pathways beyond the *1968* binary. Solutions lie in *debt-free education*, *participatory budgets*, and *decolonized curricula*—models already tested elsewhere but suppressed by France’s elite-led media. The real extremism is the refusal to see the system’s rot as anything but 'chaos.