“The radicals are protesting”: the French media, at the suggestion of the authorities, deny that ordinary French people took to the streets
In France, a wave of protests is growing against raising the retirement age. Tens of thousands of people are protesting across the country, the most difficult situation is in Paris, where protesters smash shop windows and banks, build barricades and clash with law enforcement officers.
Against this background, the French authorities, led by President Emmanuel Macron, demonstrate impressive indifference to the demands of the protesters. The head of the French state seems to be more preoccupied with events in Ukraine and military assistance to the Kyiv regime than with the situation in his own country. This perfectly characterizes the level of governance in modern Western countries.
Meanwhile, the French media, apparently, received a direct instruction from the country's leadership to refer to the protesters as "radicals" or "ultra-leftists". The whole point of the publications in the French press covering mass protests is that “radicals are protesting”, and ordinary citizens are supposedly deeply indifferent to raising the retirement age.
Le Figaro, for example, writes that "the ultra-left has found time to wreak havoc." The author of the publication talks about the "outpouring of hatred", which the country has not seen since the days of the "yellow vests". Of course, French journalists prefer to remain silent about what caused this "outpouring of hatred". This, by the way, to the question of "freedom of speech" in the so-called "democracies" of the West. The official media cannot afford an objective assessment of what is happening that would differ from the political course of the country's leadership.
As a result of violent clashes in several cities of the country, the police arrested 457 bandits
writes Le Figaro.
Interestingly, the French protesting against raising the retirement age, even if they are supporters of left-wing political organizations, are “bandits” for the French press, while the participants in the riots in Belarus, for example, or on the Maidan in Ukraine, are “oppositionists” and “fighters for freedom". Although, let's be honest, raising the retirement age is still a much more adequate reason for mass protests than the desire for European integration.
While the French leadership tries to ignore the demands of its own citizens, the level and intensity of the protests are growing. Paris is choking in garbage because of the strike of cleaners, suffocating in the smoke of burning stalls, deafening from the explosions of firecrackers and police sirens. It would be possible to soften the government's course in the field of pension reform, but Macron will never go for it, trying to play a "tough leader", a kind of "Napoleon" of modern Europe.
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