French Voters Are Waking Up to the Real Cause of Their Country’s Riots, Experts Say

French voters aren’t falling for the media narrative about their country’s riots, a leading French conservative said Friday.

“What is clear is there is a big awakening in France about this situation,” Alexandre Pesey, founder and director of Institut de Formation Politique, said at a panel discussion hosted by The Heritage Foundation.

“Whatever the mainstream media say,” he continued, “people don’t buy it anymore, and the polls are very clear about that.”

Pesey, whose organization trains young French conservatives, spoke alongside two other French right-wing political leaders on the origin of the country’s riots and their political implications.

Over the weekend, Reuters reported that ongoing protests and riots showed little sign of stopping as police clashed with nighttime rioters in Paris and Marseille following a peaceful demonstration of more than 110,000 people.

During the previous weekend, violent protests erupted in dozens of cities around France, with almost 1,000 police officers and gendarmes injured, at least 3,000 businesses damaged or looted, and nearly 2,400 arrests made. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu blamed far-left groups for causing “profound unrest in the country in the run-up to the presidential election,” Reuters reported.

Contrary to the mainstream narrative of students fighting for educational reform against an oppressive police force, Pesey said the riots—which began in September as road blockades—are part of France’s annual left-wing protests, magnified by the Left’s pessimism over the next presidential election cycle.

“The radical Left, which is said to be around 20% in the poll in France has no chance to win,” Pesey said, “so they’re already prepping what they hope is a revolution.”

The average French blue-collar worker is no longer a leftist, according to Pesey. They began voting for conservatives decades ago.

“The Left is looking for a new proletariat in France,” he continued, “and they find it in new citizens, or the immigrant origin French people.”

Marion Maréchal, president of the right-wing Identité Libertés French political party, said there is a substantial link between the protests and mass migration.

“Since we saw the profiles, we saw the foreign flags, we saw the language,” she said. “We have seen the testimonies, numerous testimonies, including from French people of foreign origins, especially Maghrebi who themselves have denounced the massive presence of their community.”

The “red-green alliance” between the radical Left and Islamic movement in France is three-fold: electoral, programmatic, and personal, Pesey said. He noted especially a rise in leftist leaders whose children convert to Islam.

He and Maréchal both observed, however, that these alliances don’t last.

“It may, and it will, finish like in Iran, like Lebanon,” Pesey said. “In all these countries where you see the red and green alliance, the red don’t last very long—they’re the first on the list of the green.”

The liberal wing is already struggling to control its own movement, Clément Liebard, president of the student activist organization La Cocarde Étudiante, said.

According to Liebard, leftist organizers have proved unable to begin their own demonstrations because rioters were already looting the designated route.

“They [the Left] are already losing the momentum and losing the control upon these people,” Liebard said.

Rioting, Liebard said, has not yet reached the level of civil war, but as business owners and average citizens grow tired of the violence, that could change.

Liebard called for unification among the French Right ahead of the elections next spring.

“We are not used to have many options and many choices and very much competition between the leaders,” Liebard said, “but we have to unite in the last moment.”

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