French politicians after every union backed strike or demonstration in the last 25 years : "Street mobs are not the government ! GTFO unions."
French politicians now : "It's terrible, those grassroot movements have no leaders, no coherence and no institutional relays we can talk to, how did it come to this ?
."
I'm not wishing for anyone to be brutalized by police but I'm a bit floored by the overall leniency and borderline apologetics this movement has been getting. Unions wouldn't get away with letting half of this shit happen in a demonstration and someone would have called for sending the army in projects if it was "young urban thugs". I have a hard time believing the Paris police would be overwhelmed by 5000 or so demonstrators, even rowdy ones. Though I guess the tune will change unfavourably, it's not exactly good press to trash public property all over Paris twice.
But such is France : everyone goes on and on and on about playing by the rules of the sacrosanct Republican order, but the reality is that only the groups playing rough or dirty are effective at protecting their corporations (farmers, fishermen, truck drivers, hunters, some dockers, etc...).
