Les Misérables: Understanding the French Culture of Discontent

For the last week, bus and train drivers have been on strike, paralyzing the public transportation system. Police officers, teachers, civil servants, hospital staff and many other workers have joined in protests over President Emmanuel Macron’s plans to reform the country’s complex pension system.

Demonstrations in France are nothing new. Every Saturday for more than a year, French people of all ages and from all walks of life from all areas have donned high-visibility yellow vests to demonstrate their general unhappiness.

Even before the “yellow vest” movement, which started in November 2018 as pushback against proposed fuel tax hikes and exploded into the expression of a general sense of injustice, disgruntled farmers would regularly rumble up the highways in tractors to dump perfectly edible vegetables on the steps of the French Parliament, or truckers would launch an “Operation Escargot,” driving at a snail’s pace to block major roads.

Puzzling as it may seem in a country that appears to have so much going for it — fine wines, haute cuisine, high fashion and roughly 1,000 different cheeses — the French are Les Misérables. As author Sylvain Tesson told France Inter radio recently: “France is a paradise inhabited by people who believe they’re in hell.”  (Continue reading)