Rioters in France rip up their streets because they can’t tackle the real cause of their anger

October 25, 2026 — 5:00am

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Après nous, le déluge. After us, the flood. We live for now, let the world go to hell when we’re not in it.

The nihilistic declaration is famously attributed to the extravagant Madame de Pompadour, mistress to pre-French Revolutionary King Louis XV. It was appropriated by the Parisian student protesters of May 1968, beloved of the avant-garde art scene which dramatised their “struggle”. They thought they were dismantling establishment values. It never occurred to the protesters that they were aping them.

Nor has it occurred to the protesters who, over the past weeks, ripped up the streets of France. Nor those who picked up their refrain in Italy, Spain, Portugal, the geriatric school protesters in Berlin, or the German “Gen Z uprising” movement calling for nationwide protests on October 31.

They say they are revolting against a system that holds them back. So were their grandparents who ripped up paving stones in 1968. And their parents, who held up placards of murderous communist dictators Lenin, Stalin and Mao in May Day marches over the past few decades.

They are the entitled heirs of entitlement. A generation which learned there is always someone responsible for you; always someone else whose choices are more powerful than yours.

The violence of the streets of Paris looked like rage. It revealed a society that will take years to heal

Spanish sociologist María........

© The Sydney Morning Herald