A Quick Explanation of the Oct 2026 French Student Protests For USAjin Readers

Asalam aleikoum how's it going. Students in France, most notably middle and high school kids, are demanding better learning conditions from the government. Conditions have worsened and worsened these past twenty years, as politicians, Left or Right, prefer policing girls to determine if they're wearing "islamic" long skirts rather than ensuring every class has a teacher.

Students are protesting and are largely supported by parents, teachers and staff.

These are some of the major triggers of the protests

• Classes are overcrowded, with 36 or more kids per classes.
• Unsanitary conditions. Rats spotted. Mold. No toilet paper, no soap. Some schools can have a single restroom for hundreds of female students.
• Teachers on sick leave aren't replaced for months.
• Classrooms with inefficient HVAC, it gets way too hot in summer and way too cold in winter to study properly.
• ParcourSup, the online mandatory platform 3rd years high school students must register at to pursue higher education, is flawed and biased. It definitely favorites white people or people from better off neighborhoods among other issues.
• Schools are regularly getting flooded due to climate change.

Issues 1 to 4 were already major issues when I was in middle school myself. Meanwhile, ParcourSup's predecessor, Admission Post-Bac, was in place I was in high school myself, but you could already tell it was a way to sort children between the kids of the elites and the others. We'd discuss it a lot with my classmates.
It's like that Simpsons thing about how "it's not like Simpsons predicted the future, it's just that USA always had the same problems that never got fixed".

Politicians and mainstream media are trying to discredit students. They call it outrageous "violence" when trash-bins or a school gate burns, but don't bring up the fact that these students never had proper school buildings and services. It is the same colonial genocidal language used by imperialist states everywhere. These states' acts of violation aren't violence, but when the victims protest or defend themselves it is "unacceptable violence".

These issues are spread nationwide, but it's particularly worse in Paris' suburbs and in overseas territories such as Mayotte or French Guyana.

These territories have a high demography of minorities, with kids born from parents or grandparents from ex-French colonies in all of Africa and Asia: Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Cote D'Ivoire, Mali, Senegal, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, etc.

French governments for decades have been doing neocolonialism in Africa, supporting coup d'états against socialist governments, supporting dictators and billionaires' companies stealing the lands' resources. But the way successive French governments handled suburbs and poorer cities in France is also drenched in colonialist ideology. They are unoficiallyconsidered lesser citizens, hence their public schools together with all other infrastructures and public services, aren't given proper care.

Most political parties in France are rightwing, masked rightwing, or fascism facilitators. There are only a few truly leftist parties left. The biggest being La France Insoumise, LFI. Mainstream media and other politicians are calling them "the same as the far-right" and "far-left", demonize them as "anti-Semites" for speaking against Isreal. In truth, LFI is a level 1 leftist party who does the bare minimum.

"Some of the docile Asians are hard-workers, but most Black and Arab people in these cities are all lazy, drug dealers, thieves, rapists , or terrorists anyway. Who cares if they don't get their mail or have to wait months to see a doctor ". This is what the vast majority of french politicians think of minorities deep down. They've demonstrated it with their actions and their declarations over the decades. Recycling ideas of the far-right, unconditionally supporting isreal, and steering the country towards fascism. Every time protests happen, the government in place, left or right, uses the police to repress and kill.

There have already been horrific cases of police violence. A 16 years old kid permanently lost an eye after being shot by a """non-lethal""" flashball. Some kids were almost run over by cops in a car. A journalist was purposefully hit on the leg by a cop on his bike, his helmet bearing The Punisher logo. A kid was waterboarded by a cop in a river. Kids getting arbitrarily arrested, strangled, etc.

There have been multiple confirmed cases of cops passing as protesters and instigating urban vandalism and confrontations against the police.

Multiple cases of cops passing as children and contacting children on social media DMs have also been confirmed. On these messages, they are seen trying to pass as a kid wanting to attend future protests, asking for names, locations, and schedules. Pitifully trying to imitate how kids would talk, by using their limited and racist imagination. One case had a cop forgetting to remove the GPS function of his Snapchat account, and got asked by a kid "bro why you at the police station?".

Don't idealize France (or anywhere or anyone)

I get slightly irked when I see USAjin say things like "If this (latest act of fascism in USA) happened in France, French people would have already started a revolution." You're idealizing French people way too much. Please stop.