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France has terrible aircon. Why is that causing a generational riot? · The Front

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  Speaker 1: From The Australian, here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
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  Speaker 2: It's Tuesday, October 20, 2026. A shocking act of violence
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  Speaker 2: against a widely admired and decent member of federal parliament.
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  Speaker 2: A counter-terrorism investigation is underway into an allegedly targeted attack
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  Speaker 2: on independent Helen Haynes in the Victorian country town of Wangaratta.
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  Speaker 2: centre of her seat of Indi. Haynes was struck by
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  Speaker 2: a vehicle outside her electorate office in what Anthony Albanese
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  Speaker 2: said was not an accident. That story is developing fast
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  Speaker 2: and you can find out the very latest at theaustralian.com.au.
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  Speaker 1: It's the most French of stories.
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  Speaker 2: A public grievance blows up into a major conflagration with
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  Speaker 2: town halls burned and synagogues ransacked. This time, anger over
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  Speaker 2: classroom conditions in history's hottest summer has become a public
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  Speaker 2: order catastrophe.
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  Speaker 1: So who's really to blame? Greg Sheridan is here in
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  Speaker 1: just a moment.
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  Speaker 2: Greg Sheridan is the Australian's foreign editor and he's been
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  Speaker 2: writing about the riots in France which have captivated global attention.
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  Speaker 1: Looks like France is on fire.
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  Speaker 2: Chaos has once again erupted in France.
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  Speaker 3: It's like a war zone here. Limoges Town Hall, central
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  Speaker 3: France last night. Its roof collapsing. Taking with it the
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  Speaker 3: building's ornate 19th century clock tower.
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  Speaker 2: Greg, May 1968, we saw students taking to the streets
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  Speaker 2: angry about classroom sizes and eventually calling for the dismantling
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  Speaker 2: of the French state. The 1789 bread riots, you know,
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  Speaker 2: 2005 Paris's suburbs were burning. How much of what we're
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  Speaker 2: seeing now is just the French tendency for things to
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  Speaker 2: get out of control very, very quickly? And how much
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  Speaker 2: is this something different?
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  Speaker 3: Well, I'd say all of the above, Claire. Let's hope
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  Speaker 3: it doesn't. reach the 1789 proportions because not only did
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  Speaker 3: they have a revolution and behead the king and institute
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  Speaker 3: the guillotine and murder vast numbers of people, but they
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  Speaker 3: then ended up with Napoleon as the precursor to Hitler.
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  Speaker 3: So riots, they don't always end well. The 1968 riots
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  Speaker 3: began because there was a prohibition on men visiting women
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  Speaker 3: in their dormitories at universities. So the French have a
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  Speaker 3: history of extremism, there's no doubt. And the French left,
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  Speaker 3: you know, they have this sexy image drinking short black
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  Speaker 3: coffee and in the old days smoking galois on the
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  Speaker 3: left bank and so on. They're actually the most intolerant
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  Speaker 3: Stalinist extreme left you could ever imagine. Hideous 20th century
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  Speaker 3: dictators were schooled by the French Communist Party, Pol Pot,
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  Speaker 3: the genocidal dictator in Cambodia, Ho Chi Minh, Stalinist dictator
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  Speaker 3: in Vietnam. So it doesn't have to be different to
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  Speaker 3: be absolutely deadly. If it were anywhere near as deadly
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  Speaker 3: as 1789, it would be a shocking, terrible, history-making event.
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  Speaker 3: But I do think there are elements of this that
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  Speaker 3: are horrible. The first is that France probably has the
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  Speaker 3: most pampered and extensive welfare state in the world, and
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  Speaker 3: yet people are engaging in violent protests because they don't
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  Speaker 3: have air conditioning in classrooms. I mean, did you ever
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  Speaker 3: have air conditioning in your whole group?
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  Speaker 2: No.
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  Speaker 3: It gets pretty hot in an Aussie summer and we're
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  Speaker 3: lucky to use a fan or something. I know.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, they have just gone through one of the
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  Speaker 2: hottest summers on record in Europe. It has been hot
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  Speaker 2: in these classrooms. I don't think anyone's denying that. It's
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  Speaker 2: kind of how it spirals up, isn't it? And this
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  Speaker 2: time we are seeing a new element, which is a
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  Speaker 2: lot of the people in these crowds are wearing keffiyehs.
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  Speaker 2: We're seeing Palestinian flags being waved by the people who
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  Speaker 2: are being fired upon with tear gas canisters by the
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  Speaker 2: riot police.
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  Speaker 1: How much is that part of this, Greg, that it's
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  Speaker 1: a sort of.
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  Speaker 2: Big Gen Z kind of social discontent or just an
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  Speaker 2: opportunity to throw some rocks at the cops?
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  Speaker 3: Well, that's not entirely new. You know, there are a
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  Speaker 3: lot of different factors at work here. For several decades now,
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  Speaker 3: France has had a large, undigested North African and Arab
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  Speaker 3: Muslim immigration. And there's very widespread sociological evidence that in
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  Speaker 3: a proportion of those people, there is a real contempt
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  Speaker 3: and hatred for France. And there are extensive sociological work
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  Speaker 3: on this in a definitive book, The French Intifada. Some
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  Speaker 3: of those people have joined the demonstrations. And as a result,
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  Speaker 3: you've seen Moroccan flags and Palestinian flags. But a lot
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  Speaker 3: of the French left, who are not of Arab or
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  Speaker 3: North African extraction, are also wearing kafirs and brandishing Palestinian
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  Speaker 3: flags because the global left has made the Palestinian issue
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  Speaker 3: its cause celebre for the moment. You know, Greta Thunberg
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  Speaker 3: moved on from extension rebellion to Palestinian activism. And now
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  Speaker 3: there she is with the French students getting as active
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  Speaker 3: as she can be.
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  Speaker 2: I came here to be here and support the students
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  Speaker 2: who are protesting to protect their basic rights.
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  Speaker 1: And the whole.
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  Speaker 4: World is watching with awe for these students who are
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  Speaker 4: fighting back.
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  Speaker 3: I think it's a very easy fiction that a lot
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  Speaker 3: of French are trying to put out, that really the
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  Speaker 3: majority of the demonstrators are peaceful and it's only these
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  Speaker 3: terrible thugs coming in. Well, if you were having a
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  Speaker 3: demonstration which resulted in a thousand innocent policemen being injured,
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  Speaker 3: burning down historic buildings which survived both world wars and
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  Speaker 3: Nazi occupation, injuring teachers and innocent civilians. If that was
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  Speaker 3: the result of your demonstration and you were devoted to peace,
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  Speaker 3: you might stop demonstrating. You might say, well, this is
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  Speaker 3: a bit more than we really wanted to get by
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  Speaker 3: our peaceful demonstration. So I think you've got Tremendous activism
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  Speaker 3: by the French left, which is very ugly. Jean-Luc Mélenchon,
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  Speaker 3: the leader of the France Assoumise Party, is encouraging these demonstrations,
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  Speaker 3: and his party is on about 18% of support, so
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  Speaker 3: that's a significant minority, although he hasn't personally advocated violence.
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  Speaker 3: party officials of his have called on people to burn
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  Speaker 3: down the president's office. Other mayors belonging to his party
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  Speaker 3: have said violence is justified. You've also got the Islamists
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  Speaker 3: at work. You've got the result of French education, which
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  Speaker 3: is as bad as Australian education, teaching kids that France
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  Speaker 3: is an evil thing, that the concept of France is
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  Speaker 3: colonialist and evil and wicked in history. And therefore the
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  Speaker 3: honourable romantic noble thing is to go out and, um,
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  Speaker 3: smash windows and try to smash the system and so on.
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  Speaker 3: Another factor we haven't mentioned, but I'm sure it's there,
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  Speaker 3: there would also be foreign interference through social media coming,
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  Speaker 3: I would guess, from Russia and Iran and maybe even China.
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  Speaker 3: I have no evidence of the Chinese angle, but you
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  Speaker 3: know that these nations are very active in Western social media,
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  Speaker 3: fomenting discontent. So you can, you know, with so many kids,
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  Speaker 3: especially isolated in their digital silos, you can bet that
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  Speaker 3: there's a foreign element in this as well.
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  Speaker 2: A synagogue was ransacked in the 19th arrondissement of Paris.
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  Speaker 2: Other Jewish businesses have been targeted. This ransacking of the
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  Speaker 2: synagogue seemed particularly targeted, more so than just throwing bricks
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  Speaker 2: through windows. A Torah ark was opened. Religious texts were scattered.
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  Speaker 2: What do you think about the anti-Semitic element in these riots, Greg?
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  Speaker 3: I think the two great drivers of contemporary anti-Semitism in
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  Speaker 3: the West are the Islamists arising out of mass Muslim
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  Speaker 3: immigration to the West. Most Muslims are not violently anti-Semitic,
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  Speaker 3: but a significant minority are. And the ideological turn of
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  Speaker 3: the extreme left. Now, in France, the extreme left has
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  Speaker 3: a tradition of violence and extremism. And you can see
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  Speaker 3: various sort of left of centre media outlets in the
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  Speaker 3: West straining to put a positive light on these demonstrations.
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  Speaker 3: Every other report on TV says these mostly peaceful demonstrations
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  Speaker 3: in which 300 buildings were torched, synagogues were ripped apart,
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  Speaker 3: shopkeepers were harassed, women were attacked, these mostly peaceful demonstrations.
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  Speaker 3: You'd hate to see a mostly violent demonstration, I'll tell
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  Speaker 3: you what.
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  Speaker 4: Here in France, rioting broke out in cities across the
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  Speaker 4: country after largely peaceful demonstrations against rising costs and declining
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  Speaker 4: public services turned violent overnight.
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  Speaker 3: And this ridiculous fiction that I talked about earlier where
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  Speaker 3: they say the majority of the demonstrators are peaceful and
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  Speaker 3: it's only these wicked agents provocateurs. But the hatred of
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  Speaker 3: Jews is common to Islamists and it's common to the
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  Speaker 3: far left. And the left and the Islamists are the
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  Speaker 3: authors of this violence. So it's just what you'd expect.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, it's hideous. It's disgraceful. It shows that these
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  Speaker 3: demonstrators are the enemies of civilization and they're not heroic
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  Speaker 3: young people filled with idealism. They are intolerant, abusive street
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  Speaker 3: thugs getting a taste of violence and enjoying the violence.
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  Speaker 3: This psychology of mob violence is very important. And anti-Semitism
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  Speaker 3: is a feature of contemporary mob violence.
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  Speaker 2: Emmanuel Macron has been calling for peace, but I wonder
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  Speaker 2: to what extent you think this is a rejection of
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  Speaker 2: the kind of France that he's been trying to build
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  Speaker 2: for a decade now, you know, a rejection of the
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  Speaker 2: old two-party system, this idea that everything can be kind
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  Speaker 2: of logical and that we can trust technocratic expertise rather
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  Speaker 2: than relying on old-fashioned kind of emotional distinctions between the
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  Speaker 2: left and the right. What do you think about that?
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  Speaker 2: Is there an element of rejection of that here?
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  Speaker 3: Well, if you don't like the governing party, you vote
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  Speaker 3: for someone else. I think underlying all this, however, is
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  Speaker 3: a really profound crisis of social democracy. In France now,
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  Speaker 3: government spending is 57% of GDP. Government debt is 120%
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  Speaker 3: of GDP. The French are unable to control government spending.
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  Speaker 3: The budget deficit this year will be probably 6% or
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  Speaker 3: more of GDP. Macron tried to raise the retirement age
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  Speaker 3: from 62 to 64. Now, how can you be in
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  Speaker 3: a country with 120% of GDP in debt and you
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  Speaker 3: have a retirement age of 62? I mean, I think
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  Speaker 3: it's 67 in Australia, although as you know, Claire, at
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  Speaker 3: News Corp, we never retire.
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  Speaker 2: No, I think to pay off my mortgage, I'll have
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  Speaker 2: to be working until I'm 95 anyway, Greg.
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  Speaker 3: We work until we meet God, really. And one of
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  Speaker 3: the failures of French democracy is that no mainstream leader
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  Speaker 3: will level with the French people about their budgetary situation.
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  Speaker 3: But the demonstrators, they've drunk the Kool-Aid that you can
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  Speaker 3: have everything. So they want lower taxes and lower prices,
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  Speaker 3: and they don't want to have to pay interest on debt.
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  Speaker 3: They want climate action, but they want cheaper energy prices.
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  Speaker 3: And if you put up the energy prices, they'll have
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  Speaker 3: massive demonstrations in the street, like the yellow vest demonstrations
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  Speaker 3: of a few years ago. But if you don't do
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  Speaker 3: climate stuff, They'll have demonstrations about that too. Well, in
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  Speaker 3: the physical universe, you can't do all these things at once.
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  Speaker 3: And no political leader has really convinced the French. So
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  Speaker 3: what Margaret Thatcher did, what Ronald Reagan did, what Hawking
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  Speaker 3: Keating did, these were extraordinary democratic achievements. The question now
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  Speaker 3: is whether our political culture is capable of that kind
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  Speaker 3: of rational decision-making.
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  Speaker 2: France is the second largest economy in the EU. It
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  Speaker 2: feels like the European zone is under pressure from all
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  Speaker 2: sorts of angles, Greg, not least Vladimir Putin in the east.
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  Speaker 2: Do you think this kind of instability, because we're seeing
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  Speaker 2: it in Belgium and other places as well, signals trouble
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  Speaker 2: for the EU?
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  Speaker 1: Is the EU experiment kind of ending?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I wish the EU experiment would end. I mean,
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  Speaker 3: I think the EU has been a force of the devil.
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  Speaker 3: One reason that all these countries can't fix their economies,
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  Speaker 3: fix their immigration policies, is the EU. I mean, Britain
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  Speaker 3: is out of the EU, but it's still subject to
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  Speaker 3: the European Human Rights Court. And it tried to do
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  Speaker 3: exactly the same border control policies as Australia tried to do.
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  Speaker 3: And the European Human Rights Court ruled that out of order.
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  Speaker 3: So Britain cannot, even Britain having left the EU, cannot
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  Speaker 3: control its own borders. France, Germany, Greece, Italy, would have
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  Speaker 3: much more economic flexibility if they had their own currency
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  Speaker 3: so they could take an income hit through a devaluation.
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  Speaker 3: The EU has really been a big part of the
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  Speaker 3: problem for Italy, for France, for Germany. Now, of course,
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  Speaker 3: if you tried to dissolve the EU, that would be
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  Speaker 3: very messy and disorderly and you wouldn't want to dissolve NATO.
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  Speaker 3: But another part of France's crisis is that the EU
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  Speaker 3: won't learn any lesson ever. So they lost their chief
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  Speaker 3: military power and their second biggest economy in Britain. And
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  Speaker 3: did they reform? Nope. Did they allow nations to have
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  Speaker 3: greater decision-making? Nope. So it's already breaking down. One thing
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  Speaker 3: that leads to riots in the streets, I don't think
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  Speaker 3: this has been a primary cause, but the sense that
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  Speaker 3: voters get that it doesn't matter how they vote, nothing changes. And, um,
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  Speaker 3: You know, Georgia Maloney has been a very good prime
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  Speaker 3: minister of Italy, but she would have liked to have
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  Speaker 3: been much more aggressive in border control. She can't because
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  Speaker 3: of the EU. And now there are parties emerging to
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  Speaker 3: her right who want to take much more radical action.
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  Speaker 3: So the EU is one of the many things that
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  Speaker 3: prevents European democracy from working at the national level.
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  Speaker 1: Well, Greg Sheridan, thank you very much for your time.
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  Speaker 3: Thanks, Claire. Great to be with you.
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  Speaker 2: Greg Sheridan is The Australian's foreign editor. You can follow
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: all Greg's reporting and this story