No, France is not ‘burning’

Ludivine Bantigny challenges headlines portraying France as engulfed in chaos, noting that the student movement demanding better educational conditions is otherwise peaceful. She argues that the word “violence” conflates property damage, attacks on people, revolt and repression, recalling Brazilian Archbishop Dom Helder Camara’s distinction between violence caused by injustice, revolt and repression. Bantigny adds that inequality, discrimination, social humiliation and precarious living conditions are also forms of violence. She cites the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, as an example of oppression, insurrection and repression intertwined: about 100 assailants were killed, and the fortress governor, Bernard-René Jourdan de Launay, was later killed.