If people are having a spasm of déjà vu as they watch the unfolding France riots, it's because we've seen this before. 

In this case, the riots started after French school kids cut class to protest their terrible schools. "Sometimes our teachers are absent for several weeks without being replaced,” a Paris student told the BBC. Lessons would be canceled for weeks, students claimed.

"Some resent the banning of mobile phones or school days that last until 18:00," the BBC reported. "'You get home at 7 pm, and have no time to sleep or do your homework,' one lycéen [high school student] told France 2."

The students say this puts them at a disadvantage for a spot at a good university, where they can protest to their heart's content.

But France funds its schools better than the rest of the EU, according to the BBC. France is also the second biggest welfare state in the EU after Finland. France spends nearly a third of its GDP on welfare programs, most of the money going to fund "social" programs. French workers' taxes and "contributions" to welfare programs constitute 55.4% of the country's GDP. 

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It's hard to run a successful low-productivity, high-immigrant welfare state.

And now the student protests have been subsumed, shoved out of the way to make room for the "Palestine" flags. 

Hey, Joan of Arc, how's that hijab feeling? 

Globalists planned a 2014 invasion of immigrants into the EU, and the second-order effects of that, along with unfettered immigration of people who don’t care about or hold complete disdain for Western civilization, create quite a cauldron of chaos.

More — What's Happening in France Is a Warning That Our Civilization Is Not Immortal

And then there’s Antifa, outfitted in black bloc, who, like flies swarming to cow patties, have come from all over the world, suited up, and intensified the violence started by their trade union “comrades” who came to “aid” the “students.”

Water cannons. I can’t tell you how many times our PJ Media readers have suggested that the French police deploy them on the rioters.

A Paris store clerk declared to me years ago, while holding up a dress for my perusal, “Voilà et voilà,” basically meaning, “here it is!” or “ta da!”

Paris, voilà et voilà! Here are the riots. Come to think of it, that shop has probably burned down by now.

Speaking of which, voilà et voilà!

So it is that Antifa and state-acting propagandists have arrived in Paris to fan the flames and lob the Molotovs. They pretend the issue is the kids, but “The issue is never the issue. The issue is the revolution,” goes the phrase attributed to Saul Alinsky, though it was likely uttered by every tinpot revolutionary commie from time immemorial. As Saul Alinsky really said, “The issue is power.”

Good Question: Can the French Establishment Summon the Courage to Save the Republic?

And so the children started holding protest signs to complain about education funding, and it quickly became riots to topple the elected government. The issue is never the issue. And there is no finish line. It’s just a string of protests, general strikes, demand lists, and waiting-out of opponents.

Simone Rodan-Benzaquen, who is a senior envoy for Europe at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), joined me on the Adult in the Room Podcast. She just left Paris, her home, for her kids’ school vacation — and to “exfiltrate” from the riot zone.

I asked her what the endgame was for the riots, and she told me that the shifting rationale points to the next presidential matchup after the Macron regime terms out. Cui bono? The far left party leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who wants a matchup with Marine Le Pen in the 2027 presidential race.

She pinpoints the players on the streets and discusses the 30,000-foot-level propaganda war going on right now. She does some mythbusting and truth telling. It’s worth your time.