[Old Teufel Hunden]

"In fact looking at pictures of rioters, many of them look like third worlders joining in the fun."

Yes, you are right. I think you have the real movement (people who are hurting and have had enough of governmental taxation) and then you have the ones from the extreme right wing and extreme left wing jumping in. Extreme right wing in Europe does not mean Milton Friedman, it usually is closer to Adolf Hitler. I have seen pictures from the riots of yesterday showing the international symbol for anarchy spray painted on the walls.

[Theoria]

People want to imagine why things are happening in the context of what a good revolt should be about. I see no coherent group of actors leading the ‘revolt’. These riots have attracted the typical people who always engage in such actions. This isn’t about immigrants or freedom. That might be what ‘we’ want it to be about. But, the French want the state, but not have to pay for it.

[aquila48]

Once a grievance group revolts, it is soon joined by every other self perceived aggrieved group.

Interestingly enough the seed of the French Revolution was also the raising of taxes in the midst of bread shortages. It quickly got out of hand when the king in his magnanimity encouraged the great unwashed masses to make their grievances known through their newly elected representatives, something that they had never been allowed before.

Well guess what, they took him at his word, unleashed a torrent of repressed resentments... and the rest is history.