Aspirational goals. Canada did not pick up enough Francais.
this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2026
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Whenever the French are protesting something they all seem to end up setting their own cars on fire.
"I'm unhappy about the retirement age being raised by one year, here let me set the fire to this random persons fiat, that will show the government"
Whenever the governments of the US and Canada do anything we can’t even be fucked to do much of anything, so I think shutting the hell up and letting the French do what they do is probably better than trying to mock them for at least trying.
Absolutely fantastic. Once you get over the initial chuckle at how novel a concept it is, its a god damn power play.
An army marches on its stomach.
You can't do that in USA. You don't have the public transport infrastructure.
Ahhh but many cities and towns have some sort of rails in the streets, and bonus: they're not being used!
Yeah but they're all filled in and broken.
I just thought of how that would look on the San Francisco cable car tracks. Fast sausages.
Middle aged American here, and when I was a kid the culture around me regarding france was basically "lol they surrender." And that whole stupid thing probably peaked in 2003 with Freedom Fries.
But now?
I honestly wonder if any other nation's population has their heads on straight as much as the French. The only place in Europe where I have spent much time though is up in Sweden, and the nords seem pretty good at life-ing too.
They've been flirting with far-right government like most everyone else, but their protesting game is on point. The whole country being smaller than Texas helps, too.
Yeah, the average population density of the US is a lot lower than many people realize. Protests are seen as city-based things, both geographically and culturally.
And then you have eu-nation-sized red states that can hold many many trumpers who are unable to play nice with others because they don't have to have neighbors.
How on earth the fact that your country also has was swats of empty land stops you from doing effective protesting? Or any, actually.
I didn't really finish my thought there. Apologies.
It was starting to get at why we don't really see "the americans" protested like we might "the french." And our media doesn't help in how they report it. It enables the republican populace as well as the entire government to more easily ignore it. It's always "protests broke out in cities across america in response to X.
The physical separation is also part of it. it all helps feed into this "divide" where the republican voters can seemingly give no shits about human suffering or the rise of fascism because it's all happening to "other" people far away. It might as well be the middle east.
People without neighbors are also less clued into to how policy changes affect entire societies of people, rather than just the price of gas for their truck.
And like the other reply said, this is just one contributing factor.
It does seem they're suffering from the same rightward-slide that many other countries are facing though, unfortunately.
Historically, the French really only surrendered once, unfortunately evocative of the "but you fuck a goat one time ..." joke. It didn't help that they surrendered to one of the biggest monsters in history, at a time where they arguably didn't need to surrender. TBF, the main reason their biggest ally (Britain) didn't surrender at the same time was the fact that they were able to run away.
The other thing to remember is that when they surrendered they surrendered their entire naval fleet to the Nazis which was really irksome because why did they do that? So then the British had to launch a mission to sink the French naval fleet. All of which was a giant waste of resources, those ships could have come over to the UK.
Obviously it's all water under the bridge now but it was a tactically stupid decision.
when they surrendered they surrendered their entire naval fleet to the Nazis
This is absolutely not correct. The Nazis didn't try to seize (what was left of) the French fleet until the end of 1942 (more than two years later) in response to the Anglo-American invasion of North Africa. The French fleet remained under Vichy France's control and the French admiral had promised to scuttle the fleet if the Germans attempted to seize it. Churchill did not consider this assurance adequate for the security of his country and ordered the attack. It's worth noting that France did scuttle most of their remaining vessels when the Germans attempted to take them in 1942.
Should the French fleet have continued fighting? As I mentioned in my comment, the entire country could have and probably should have continued fighting. But once France surrendered, there's no particularly logical reason why just one part of their military should have gone on.
Freedom Fries
As an European, I still can't believe you guys did that
Middle aged American here, and when I was a kid the culture around me regarding france was basically “lol they surrender.”
Copied from my earlier comment elsewhere:
Have an extensive history of military might, from rampaging barbarian hordes, to a continent-conquering emperor, to a foreign legion famed as being one of the most badass fighting forces in the world, and nobody bats an eye. But get embarrassingly outflanked one time, and you never hear the end of it!
explanation since the comm isn't History Memes this time
- "rampaging barbarian hordes" -- the Gauls
- "continent-conquering emperor" -- Napoleon
- "foreign legion" -- the French Foreign Legion
- "embarrasingly outflanked" -- the failure of the Maginot Line in WWII
There was the loss in WWII, but there was also the loss of all their colonies after WWII. Some of them they fought for and lost like Vietnam and Algeria. The reputation of the French for losing wasn't accurate, but it also wasn't based on nothing.
One post that I read somewhere else on fedi was in the lines of, you can't reasonably think French are cowards, they made snails into fine cuisine.
Let them eat sausage.
And yet i've never seen a french protest where they had decent sound system. Not that important when the goal is to make noise, but they sure got their priorities
If you’re gonna protest, might as well eat good while doing it.
The French have been refining protesting since 1790.
Guys, take lessons, take lessons!
Excuses incoming in 3, 2, 1...
"But, but, but the us country is huge. We can't be expected to protest about something all the way over there..."
"But, but, but, wait for the midterms. We'll sort it then."
"But, but, but, the protests are gaining steam now. It's not easy to coordinate these things and we need time...{also we'll conveniently ignore you when you point out that we live in a world of instant communication and that protests and strikes were coordinated decades ago when we didn't have today's technology}"
Here in Minnesota we've still been protesting every week....
Glad to hear - we don’t hear about it as much up in Canada lately. The news cycle is always desperate to keep up with whatever the orange buffoon is fucking up next
Oh yeah. That's true. The news really dropped off once the federal government "pulled back" ICE. But they're still doing the same shit. Still kidnapping. We're still documenting and doing our stuff.
“But, but, but the us country is huge. We can’t be expected to protest about something all the way over there…”
Oh, is all of Europe protesting in unity when protests are happening in Paris? i must have missed that.
With regard to point 3, 'today's technology' is very much a double edged sword. Yes, you can communicate instantly but surveillance has modernized just as much.
As reductive as it sounds, I think part of the issue is it happens all the time in other countries because it happens all the time in other countries. The connections to each other already exist. The networks already exist. All the instant communication in the world doesn't make a lick of difference if you have no idea who else to call. At this point, I feel like that's the real benefit of protests. You gotta meet like minded people somewhere to get any real momentum and third spaces are pretty fucking dead.
I don't think the issue is necessarily a lack of will to organize now, I think the issue was a lack of will to do so years ago. Hell, decades ago for that matter. So now the people that genuinely do care have to build their entire network from the ground up while under heavy surveillance which yes, is going to be fucking slower.
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French people are very serious about 2 things:
La Liberté et La Cuisine
Yeah, you stop believing in the first part when you see what they vote for.
I would like to see the rest of the comment about "climate accords polar bears", please.
Yeah same I’m curious now.
I found those on a 💩website https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/climate-paris-2015-polar-bear.html?sortBy=relevant
Hero, thank you
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