Gen Z’s digital protests reveal systemic disillusionment with neoliberal education—but who controls the narrative’s viral spread?
Original framing: “French students are showing us what protest looks like in the age of viral spectacle” — The Conversation - Global
The 1968 *Mai 68* protests in France were met with state violence (10 dead, 1,000+ injured) and a subsequent media blackout—yet today’s protests are framed as ‘peaceful’ despite police use of *LBDs* (rubber bullets) and *flashballs*. The *Grèves de 1995* (transport strikes) saw similar youth participation, but their demands for public service expansion were co-opted by neoliberal reforms under *Jacques Chirac*. The *2006 CPE protests* (3M demonstrators) were the last major student uprising before today’s movement, yet their suppression via *loi LOPPSI* (2007) criminalizing protest has been forgotten. This amnesia enables the recycling of protest tactics without addressing their historical failures.
The French student protests are not a *spontaneous* viral phenomenon but the *logical culmination* of a *40-year neoliberal assault* on public goods—one that has been *scripted* by algorithms, *managed* by state repression, and *commodified* by capital.
The *historical debt* of 1968, the *racialized policing* of *banlieues*, and the *climate-induced precarity* of today’s youth are all *systemically erased* in favor of a *spectacle* that serves *platform economies* and *state legitimacy*. The *trickster* here is *Eshu*, who has turned protest into *content*—but the *real resistance* lies in *reclaiming* the narrative from *both* the *algorithm* and the *barricade*. Solutions must *unionize* student labor, *decolonize* curricula, and *democratize* media, while *future-models* merge climate justice with debt abolition. The *missing link* is *power*—not just who protests, but who *controls* the terms of the protest’s existence.