Tens of thousands march in France protests before police respond with tear gas and water cannons

These are scenes from Paris today. Police say over 100,000 protesters took to the streets in the French capital, resulting in the police firing tear gas and water cannons and making dozens of arrests. Add to that hundreds of thousands of other protesters also demonstrated in cities right across the country, and that resulted in more than 70,000 police officers and security forces being deployed. This comes after last weekend when the country faced the most significant unrest It's seen in decades. For more on the protests, we spoke with Philippe Moreau-Chavroulé. He's a political scientist and professor at Sciences Po University. And I asked him if these protests seemed different compared to past demonstrations. It's much more violent and you have demonstrators that are quite peaceful. But you've also got pillagers and people that take advantage of the situation to attack the shops, to attack regular people and take their belongings in a violent way, destroying stores, destroying streets even. And that's the first time that we see that at this scale. And that's why you've got a massive police presence. Even the army is mobilized kind of this time in order to prevent that from happening again. Why do you think we're seeing an increased violence like this? I guess because you've got two populist parties in France, one on the far right, one on the far left. and they're competing and they're competing violently they are not kind of they are not really blaming the violence they are not really against the violence they play with the violence in order to increase their reach and that's something that is quite going on that has been going on for a while now and it's very detrimental to our democratic system and to our democracy at large and the moderates are really weak in the polls you have to take into account that we are out of ten years of a moderate center-right or at times center-left president and that these people are kind of fed up with him and want change. The first thing that they want in the polls is change. Let's talk about that. Change to what? Because our understanding here was that this started off as a student-led movement and protest for better classroom conditions, but it has spiraled into something much larger. Yes, exactly. The first round of the movement, of the mobilization, was about the schools. And I think every people in France, they largely agree that it's something that should be taken into account. They are very much in favor of what the schoolers are asking for. They think that their demands should be satisfied. But in the meantime, they are very much against violence. 91% of the population is against the violence that we saw in the streets. And the problem is that's not the same people. On the one end, you've got demonstrators. On the other end, you've got pillagers. And you've got people on the far left, on the far right, that are kind of taking it to the streets in order to make their point. And that's a very, very peculiar kind of a mix and a very toxic mix. What do you make of how Emmanuel Macron has been managing this crisis? very badly because it took it took his time really to listen to the to the people that were demonstrating he should have done it much much earlier first of all because that's our kids that are demonstrating and you listen to the kids and you try to solve the problems before it gets heavy and dirty as it got and it's always getting heavier and dirtier when you don't listen to the people that are demanding something in the streets at such a large scale he should have done it earlier and then he made a speech on Sunday that was not at all convincing we were out of riots that are really deadly to our to the people the very shop the shop owners for instance that have been attacked and they have been traumatized and everything and the response was very weak he was understanding that the situation was not good but he was not saying that he would do something to get out of it and uh this week he was not at convincing either so it's like it's like he was out of the game he was out of the country literally and it's it's we need a leader in France you know we are kind of a country that is both revolutionary at times and in need of a leader all the time so it's very peculiar that's the French culture if you want let me ask you about external factors in this because so much of our conversation has been about France and internal issues, but is the ongoing trade crisis with the president of the United States, the kind of rhetoric that we see not only from the U.S., but some other European nation states that are going further and further to the right, the migrant crisis, the war in Iran, are these external factors playing into what we're seeing in Paris and further afield? We are very conscious now that the game is not at all national. That's not a national election anymore but i think it's the case in the whole of Europe we are being heavily influenced by the MAGAs by the U.S. conservatives i wouldn't even call them conservative they are ultra super conservatives and they are kind of trying to influence and they do influence our elections by spreading messages that are against the government and trying to you know fire up the demonstrators in their way they are going for influencers to do that and Russia is doing the same, and Iran, incredibly, is doing the same. And we are kind of also into this situation where we have to fight both an internal trouble and external influence that is very toxic. But, you know, you Canadians know all about that. Philippe Moreau-Chevrolet is a political scientist at Sciences Po University in Paris.