Still Standing

I vowed a few weeks ago to keep an eye on the singular protest movement called Nuit Debout (Up all night) that has been variously amusing or annoying the French populace for a month now. And so I have, though it's not easy, as there is very little in the English language press. What there is isn't all that helpful either: analysts make comparisons to Occupy Wall Street or Los Indignados in Spain, but Debout continues to prove elusive. Its 'horizontal' or leaderless structure, its refusal to engage in ordinary political struggles or make demands or promote candidacies or place itself anywhere really in France's overcharged political landscape has left the conventional commentators puzzled and skeptical, to say the least.

One observer, reporting today in Slate.fr (here, in French), describes two distinct gatherings, each occupying a different quadrant of the vast place de la République. On one side, the 'real' deboutistes, with their daily popular assembly, their informational booths and rallying points, a collection of 'students' or at least young, well-educated, mostly bourgeois Parisians, fed up with their dysfunctional government, their sluggish economy, the lack of prospects for the young, and the failure of imagination to invent alternatives. But across the plaza this reporter sees quite another group: all-night partyers, some homeless, some Roma, rappers from the banlieue looking for some exposure, drinkers, dancers, a rowdy group of the disaffected. Being French, the reporter understands this as the dichotomy of the Apollonian and the Dionysian, the Head and the Belly, and a host of other tropes.

To this dualism the reporter adds a third: the smaller group, led by philosopher Frédéric Lordon and other intellectuals from Le Monde Diplomatique who actually launched the movement on March 31st and are now trying to give it content as they stage their own occupation across town at the Bourse du Travail. Lordon has himself gotten considerable attention for his unequivocally radical social vision, as has filmmaker François Ruffin, whose documentary film "Merci Patron!" ( a French take on Michael Moore's breakout film "Roger and Me") has been screened at République and has become a sort of leitmotif of the movement. But has the Debout movement left the station with these intellectuals still waiting on the platform?

Philosopher Jean-Claude Monod, reporting sympathetically in yesterday's Libé (here, in French), doesn't think so. Rather, he feels the movement is still trying to find itself, in place. As he describes talking with an enthusiastic colleague, also a philosophy instructor, he is willing to grant that the deboutistes have identified a momentous fact: many of the French middle class no longer believe their society has governance, direction, or much hope in its present configuration. But they haven't found a coherent alternative either. Hence all the coy talking around, the endless debates, the desire to hear everyone's ideas rather than choose.

Interestingly, neither of these reporters has much to say about a fourth venue, which was of considerable interest to the deboutistes at République just a week or two ago. At that time the big question was, can the movement spread to the banlieue, the vast public housing cités, full of the poor, the unemployed, the alienated children of immigration. It was there that riots broke out ten years ago in response to police violence, and where French eyes look with fear at the possibility of ISIS cells. Attempts were made to launch Nuit Debout events at many of these locations outside Paris, and notably in the crowded, disaffected cités in the north of Marseille. With little success: the banlieusards apparently find little common ground with the more privileged deboutistes, and the connections haven't been made (as far as I can tell at this distance, with limited press coverage). So the prospects for a real insurgency, within the most disaffected populations with little to lose, is apparently far from being realized at this moment.

It is nonetheless a significant fact that Nuit Debout has shown the staying power it has. More politicized versions such as the Indignados movement in Spain and Syriza in Greece have stumbled against the realities of entrenched power. The young who flocked to Bernie Sanders are discovering the same thing here. How they will respond--either withdrawing from the stage or accepting the realities of Clinton's candidacy--will be a large question in coming months. The fortunes of the Debout movement will respond to different vectors, but the movements are integrally related. Our overripe societies are not offering sufficient opportunity or satisfaction to rising young adults. Something has to happen. Something is starting to happen. Stay tuned.