Reply #40: What on earth does that mean? [View All]

[julianer]

In that they are in France and involve riots, I'd say they are very similar.

In that the people involved are working class immigrants rather than lower middle class students (at least to start with) they are different.

The level of police violence appears to be higher this time round - you don't want to rough up the middle class kids too much because you don't know who their dad might be!

And also, of course, this time the riot is a result of discernable grievances and state policy - in '68 the reasons were much less material and the state was caught on the hop.

Edited to add this:

It is interesting to me that so many here are inclined to automatically take a moral position on this and also to automatically take the view that somehow the rioters need to be 'crushed', that they are bad and the police are supplying the justice, not the violence as well.

Deeply ingrained conservatism, that is, IMHO>