A Quiet Admiration for the French Spirit 🇫🇷

There’s something striking about the French approach to protest. When the government steps over a line, the streets fill with people—workers, students, retirees—marching, striking, even rioting if necessary. It’s not just noise; it’s a national reflex. The French don’t just ask for change. They demand it. And they make sure they’re heard.

I can’t help but admire that.

It’s not about glorifying violence or chaos. Protest, especially when it turns confrontational, is messy and complicated. But at the heart of it is something I deeply respect: a refusal to accept injustice quietly. There’s a collective sense in France that people deserve a say in the decisions that shape their lives—and they’re willing to disrupt the status quo to assert that right.

In Australia, by contrast, there’s a different energy. We’re often described as “laid back,” but sometimes that feels more like “checked out.” Whether it’s political overreach, corporate greed, or environmental negligence, we tend to meet it with a shrug and a sigh. Maybe a post on social media. Rarely much more.

Of course, peaceful democratic engagement is important, and Australians do vote and debate and petition. But there’s a kind of apathy that lingers—like we’ve been trained not to expect much from the people in power, and so we don’t bother pushing too hard. We wait, we hope, but we rarely demand.

Sometimes I wonder what it would look like if we broke that pattern. What if Australians felt empowered to resist, to organise, to rise up when the system fails us? What if we truly believed we could change things, and acted like it?

I’m not saying we should take to the streets at the drop of a hat. But I do think we could learn something from the French spirit: a fierce belief that democracy doesn’t end at the ballot box—and that sometimes, it begins in the street.