Last week, Heritage Explains spoke with Director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at The Heritage Foundation, Nile Gardiner, about the riots rocking France. In the few days since our interview, things have gotten way worse.
Over the weekend, masked rioters broke into the historic 19th-century Town Hall in Limoges and set it ablaze. There is perhaps no better symbol of the war raging to define the West than a nearly 150 year old building which survived two World Wars burnt to the ground by socialists and Islamists.
Beyond burning buildings, the fight for France has also been playing out on French university campuses. At the prestigious Sorbonne university, members of the La Cocarde Étudiante student organization confronted left-wing activists over university blockades and attempted to reopen access to campus, to much resistance from university and government authorities.
President Emmanuel Macron addressed the country, condemning the violence while acknowledging legitimate grievances among peaceful demonstrators. But to many this isn’t enough.
To dive even deeper into the war for the West’s soul raging across the Atlantic, we spoke with Laura LaCombe, a spokeswoman with La Cocarde Etudiante to get the on the ground story.