France Is Waking Up
France is waking up. I know it isn't perfect, and I know it's violent, but the government is finally reaping what it has sown for years.
The last two generations before Gen Z went dormant and fearful. "C'est comme ça" became their motto, until the system had taken everything from them: their money, their education, their healthcare, their land. It built a money factory for the rich and powerful, and kept people busy fighting each other so they wouldn't look up. Worse, it told them to turn on those who are different, the very people whose lands France once invaded and plundered, then left with corruption under the banner of "liberation." France stripped them of their sovereignty, invited them in, accused them of failing to integrate into a society that treated them like monsters, until some became what they were accused of being. Meanwhile, France's own flesh and blood stayed occupied, too distracted to rebel against a system designed to produce ignorance, racism, and the worst kind of human rights record.
What we're seeing now is the new generation's rebellion. Yes, it's immoral. Yes, it's violent. But it reflects the world around them, so what did anyone expect? Peaceful demonstrations? Where did those ever lead?
Nowhere.
In today's world, nothing changes without bloodshed and corruption. And instead of protecting its young, listening to them, serving them, the government is violently shutting them up. These are kids asking for a better education from a system that robs them in the name of providing everything.
But the world has opened up through the internet and cross-cultural exchange, and people are waking up. They aren't stupid anymore. They can see they're getting almost nothing: basic literacy, outdated history, lies, and lessons that are useless in the modern world. I know, because it was one of the reasons I left France. I didn't want my son growing up racist and uneducated, a "white supremacist" who knows nothing about anything. Like the king during the infamous French Revolution, the French police are now answering the people with force. Rest in peace, democracy. But people with perseverance always win against tyranny.
A firefighter went on social media asking where the parents and guardians of these kids are, and why they let them riot in the streets like terrorists. Well, they're probably busy working to pay taxes to a government that spends the money on weapons, corruption, and foreign aid instead of education, health, safety, and development at home. Or they're drinking away their sorrows. Or they've swallowed the system's logic that the children belong to the country, not to them. In France, the state controls your children from birth. Parents are sidelined on health decisions, on schooling from age three, on what their kids can do online. So why should parents get involved now? And now that, for once, these kids are demanding more and rebelling against tyranny and fake liberty, why are they suddenly expected to be controlled by their parents? The irony is unbearable.
My one hope is that this doesn't get politicised and twisted into "the effect of Arabs on France's new generation," a convenient story to bury a genuine movement. If it isn't, maybe France has a chance. I say that with a singing heart, hoping my son can one day go back and be safe.
You controlled their education to make them powerless, but nothing is more dangerous than people who have been chained and controlled. Nothing is stronger than people who have lost their rights and their freedom. The fake liberty your country runs on isn't enough anymore. Being naked but chained is the worst kind of violation, and the French government inflicts it every day on all kinds of French people. This sold liberty is cracking because it isn't real. A human being who knows what freedom is can tell the difference.
So to the generation after WWII and the millennials who stayed quiet: stay in your shells, stay followers, keep protecting the system and the safety it once gave you. Your time is nearly up anyway. Let the new generation fight. Let them find the courage your ancestors once had, so they don't die of shame. Let them turn the tables and remind the government what it's for: to serve the people, not the system, not the politicians. Let them win back their rights, defend the tax money they pay, and demand to be better educated and more advanced than the bubble they were handed. The Western world is ignorant, shining on the outside and decaying within.
After seven years in France, I can tell you it's a dying country. Those who have a chance leave. Those who lack the courage to leave slowly become part of the decay: the resigned, the bitter, the numb, the ball-less and the very, very old.