As French Police Teargas Students, Trump Blames Protests on “Mass Migration”

Por Shireen Akram-Boshar — Truthout

Over 200 students have been injured as police fired teargas and used batons against the youth protestors.

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On Tuesday, Trump took to his social media platform, Truth Social, to smear the student mobilizations spreading across France as caused by “out of control mass migration” and “Islam wanting to take over.”

Other right-wing politicians and commentators echoed these spurious claims.

“This will come to America if the Democrats take power again,” claimed right-wing commentator Dave Rubin on X.

Their comments came as France’s weeks-long student movement transformed into a nationwide revolt on Tuesday, with organizers and trade unions estimating some 450,000 people protesting in 40 cities across the country.

The movement began on September 21, with high school students organizing demonstrations against poor school conditions, a neglected public education system, and dilapidated buildings. The protests began in the suburbs of Paris and quickly spread, with students blockading their schools to force them to shut.

Since the movement’s start, French police have arrested some 6,000 students — a majority of them minors. Over 200 students have been injured, as police have fired teargas and used batons against the youth protestors.

On Tuesday, France’s General Confederation of Labor (CGT) — one of the country’s largest and most powerful trade unions, representing teachers and civil servants, among other workers — joined the nationwide protests.

One of the participants in Tuesday’s demonstration, a teacher named Manel ben Boubaker, told Truthout that the mobilization was “a massive success.”

“What struck me most is that it really shows the emergence of a new generation of young people in France who are refusing the world as it has been built for them — the way the education system is organized, neoliberal policies, racism, the way our society is structured,” she said.

Manel added that 90 percent of universities in France were blockaded and shut down on Tuesday, largely by left-wing university student unions acting in solidarity with the high school protestors.

Contrary to the claims of Trump and right-wing commentators in the U.S. and internationally, Manel asserted that the student movement “is extremely organized and serious. The students have clear demands and clear slogans. They know exactly what they are fighting for.”

Manel outlined the students’ demands: more resources for public education; renovation of school buildings; free school meals; and more teachers, nurses, psychologists and social workers in their schools.

The student movement is also demanding the abolition of the university selection process and the Parcoursup platform introduced by French President Emmanuel Macron — which has restricted access to higher education, as previously high school graduates who passed their exit exam could enroll automatically in local public universities.

Manel explained that the high school student protests originated in Seine-Saint-Denis, a working-class neighborhood, in a high school largely attended by students of color. Manel works in this neighborhood.

The students, she said, “are making connections very explicitly” between the negligence at their schools, Palestinian liberation, and racism and Islamophobia.

“There are slogans about racist violence in schools, about the banning of abayas and the wearing of the hijab — in other words, about Islamophobia. We also see many Palestinian flags and Congolese flags,” she said.

“These students are part of a generation that is becoming politically conscious around questions of genocide and mass violence around the world. They are deeply outraged by what they are witnessing.”

But they are also building on a long tradition of mass protest and revolt in France, including by students and youth, dating back to May 1968, when student protests against grievances at French universities eventually grew into a general strike that paralyzed the national economy. Student movements in France have become commonplace — though today’s are being described as the most powerful student-led movement since May 1968.

“The students are mobilizing around issues that I have also fought over for many years,” Manel explained. “I personally took part in major education struggles in 2018, 2019 and 2020, as well as in the 2024 emergency plan mobilization in Seine-Saint-Denis. We went on strike for three months to demand more resources, and we got nothing.”

“We have seen a steady deterioration in the conditions of public education in France, while successive governments have pursued policies that increasingly favor the private sector.”

Manel also explained that the student movement “illustrates the failure of Macronism” — in other words, privatization and free market policies under the veneer of progress. Macron “began his presidency with the Yellow Vest movement, and he is ending it with a high school student movement. After nine years of Macronist education policies, the consequences are now impossible to ignore,” she said.

The student movement is demonstrating its rejection of Macron’s policies, but also demanding “a real break with the current system” ahead of elections that threaten to bring to power a growing far right political party.

“Yes, this movement is against Macron, but it goes beyond Macron. It is also a rejection of all those political and media leaders, all those elites, who would be willing to give us another five years of Macronism — or something even worse, potentially the Rassemblement National [the National Rally, France’s far right political party] coming to power,” Manel concluded.

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Shireen Akram-Boshar is a socialist writer, editor and Middle East/North Africa solidarity activist.

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Fonte: Truthout