00:00Well, we can now speak with Douglas Yates, who's Doctor of Political Science at the American Graduate School in Paris.
00:06Thank you very much indeed, Dr. Yates, for being with us.
00:09France, of course, no stranger to big protests, but were you surprised at all by the national scale and the
00:15ferocity of the disorder?
00:17Well, yeah, in a way, these student protests could have been easily dealt with by a government that was less
00:25isolated.
00:26But Emmanuel Macron is really a lame duck president.
00:30He's he's very unpopular at home and his cabinet really mismanaged every aspect.
00:37The wrong types of police were called out.
00:41So there's two types of police.
00:42There's the type of police who do investigations and the other type that arrest people.
00:48So the ones that arrest people were arresting students and bringing them in.
00:53And there were no charges against them, a mess up in the Ministry of the Interior.
00:57And then there was a mess up in the Ministry of Education.
01:01Macron has been hiring people as ministers of superior and and of their normal, larger, broader educational system, pursuing all
01:11kinds of reforms.
01:12And since Sarkozy, there's been 20 years of reforms that's created cacophony.
01:18And the students find themselves suffering from this.
01:21And finally, infrastructural neglect, just a dereliction.
01:26There are holes in the roofs, letting rain in.
01:28And during the hot heat wave that hit France, no air conditioning in the classrooms.
01:34Things could have been done to stop this as student protest.
01:37But once they were joined by cost of living protest, and that was capitalized on by the extreme left and
01:45extreme right politicians, then things got out of hand.
01:49This was a storm that turned into a hurricane.
01:53Indeed.
01:53And what do you think it's going to do to the shape of the presidential election debate?
02:01It's going to polarize it, because both the extreme left, under Jean-Luc Mélenchon, and the extreme right, under Marine
02:09Le Pen, are capitalizing on this unorganized discontent.
02:14You see, there's no one to talk to in this movement.
02:17No one who represents it, who could say, OK, everyone, calm down.
02:22So this chaos plays into the hands of the extreme left and the extreme right.
02:26It makes all the centrist parties look like they can't maintain social order.
02:33Those are already, the two extremes are already the ones who are profiting in the polls, and it could only
02:39play into their hands as offering, ironically, order.
02:43You mentioned the conditions in school, classroom.
02:46How seriously have social conditions been deteriorating for people struggling with the cost of living?
02:51And how much room does the government actually have to address the protesters' demands on public services?
02:57Well, it's funny.
02:58France actually has a very big public sector, and its public expenditures are among the greatest, not only in Europe,
03:06but in the world.
03:07So spending all of that money, offering all of these programs, it should be that people would be happy.
03:13But what happens perversely is people get used to these services.
03:18And so as the services degrade, for the normal reasons, people have a sense of entitlement, and they're mad.
03:28But if you were to compare the situation in France to many other countries in the world, it's outrageous.
03:35Cradle to grave health, full, almost free public education through university, great public transportation.
03:44But people expect it now.
03:46It's no longer seen as a privilege, but a right they're entitled to.
03:51We've just been looking at pictures of the Limoges Town Hall in flames and collapsing, a real echo of the
03:56images from the Notre Dame Cathedral on fire a few years ago.
04:02Do you see this getting worse?
04:04Do you think we're going to see more big protests like this and escalating out of control, as we did
04:09see in the past few days?
04:10Yeah, so I was actually out in the streets over the last few days here in Paris, and here's what
04:16I saw.
04:17You would have a cortege.
04:18You would have a protest that was organized, that was a march, that would have posters that were calling either
04:25for educational reform, cost of living reform, or a change in government.
04:29And surrounded by this were mass bootlegs, members of the extreme right, members of the extreme left, and just regular
04:37criminal types.
04:38And so there's a lot of broken glass, particularly in boutiques, that have nothing to do with these protests.
04:45And those groups are going to continue.
04:48But as far as the organized protests go, they feel a bit betrayed, and they feel like they can't control
04:54these fringe elements that are ruining their protests.
04:59To get control, they're going to need to have some kind of leadership, and that they haven't identified.
05:07Douglas Yates, from the American Graduate School in Paris, really grateful for your time today.
05:13Thank you very much indeed.
05:14Thank you, Paul.
