Over half a million people took to the streets across France. What began allegedly as high school protests turned into something far darker: burning town halls, more than 3,000 shops looted or destroyed, over a thousand police officers injured, and curfews across the country. President Macron says they sought to “bring down the Republic.” Is he right?
In this episode, I’m joined by Simone Rodan-Benzaquen, Senior Envoy for Europe at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and longtime head of AJC Europe in Paris. Few people follow the fault lines of French society as closely as she does.
We discuss:
🔥 How a student movement was hijacked by the radical far left, Islamist networks and foreign actors, including Iranian-linked accounts and Al Jazeera’s AJ+
🗳️ Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s strategy: why chaos may be his ticket to the second round of the presidential election, and his “win-win” calculation against Marine Le Pen
🏛️ Why this is not just the French “tradition of protest”, and what it means when citizens feel the state has lost control
🇪🇺 Why Macron hesitated where Italy acted, and how around a hundred organizations are mobilizing across Europe
🇵🇸 Why the Palestinian flag has become the symbol of anti-Western rage, and the role of colonial guilt and post-Holocaust psychology
🕌 How the Muslim Brotherhood works differently from ISIS, and why European governments were slow to understand it
✡️ What this means for France’s Jewish community, the largest in Europe: fear, solitude, and the question every Jewish family is now asking: should we leave?
“It always starts with the Jews, but it never ends with the Jews.”
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
02:01 From student protests to riots
06:07 “An attempt to bring down the Republic”
09:06 Mélenchon’s strategy and the presidential election
15:11 Is this just the French tradition of protest?
20:08 A state losing control and Macron’s responsibility
25:17 Why Macron hesitated, and the European dimension
33:15 Polarization and the end of a shared reality
38:13 Why Palestinian flags in Paris?
45:13 Islamism and the Muslim Brotherhood strategy
52:25 How French Jews are experiencing this
55:30 Are French Jews leaving France?
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