The riots that were supposedly about French school funding have fanned out across Europe, briefly even surrounding the Colosseum in Rome on Saturday. While more than 1,300 were arrested on Emmanuel Macron’s fiery streets, Greece, Albania, Italy, Belgium, and Spain are racing to contain their own pro-Palestine agitators, dispelling any doubts about the real roots of this unrest. “You might think that Saturday’s chaos was orchestrated by the same students who started the protests,” The Free Press’s Nora Bussigny warns. “But you would be wrong.”

While the frustration over the French education system is real enough, the storyline has been a convenient one for anti-republic factions to hijack, Bussigny insists. After spending more than a year undercover in the country’s anti-Israel movement, she knows the players well. “The convergence of radical leftists with political Islamists, brought together by their shared opposition to Western values and institutions — has become increasingly difficult to ignore, rearing its head from England to Germany to college campuses across the U.S. In other words, what we are seeing in France is only a symptom of a much larger problem.”

By Friday, the city of Paris was bracing for a second wave of terror that had looted and burned its way through iconic landmarks and beautiful old cobblestone streets. Troops stood guard under the Arc de Triomphe, while shops boarded their windows and doors. One local contractor told the AP that people were frantically reaching out for help in protecting their businesses. “I got the call last night,” he said, nodding at the optician’s office where he was working. “The owner seemed desperate. He said I was saving his life.”

Turns out, local merchants weren’t overreacting. On Saturday alone, the country responded to over 75 fires and at least two dozen store break-ins and robberies. David Bahnsen, founder and chief investment officer of The Bahnsen Group, believes that “behind the unrest is a much deeper economic problem.” He pointed to France’s catastrophic financial situation, noting that “government spending accounts for more than half of France’s economic output, while the country’s national debt is approaching 120% of their gross domestic product.” The irony, the economist told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on “This Week on Capitol Hill,” is that despite shoveling billions of dollars into social programs, “many French citizens believe they’re getting less in return, and they don’t want government cuts.”

Unfortunately, that’s why socialist governments continue to be a failed experiment. They can’t afford what they promise to provide, and ultimately, the economy collapses under the weight of trying. France is an especially dramatic snapshot, Bahnsen notes, because the debts they’ve racked up can’t be paid, and the only solution — cutting back — is one the people won’t accept. 

“That’s a huge problem. And that’s what most people focus on.” But it also crowds out the private sector and future growth, he notes. “Every dollar spent covering government programs is a dollar that can’t go into the productive side of the economy. France made a conscious decision to have a very large social safety net, very large social programs. … But the politicians were doing what the people asked for. [They] said, ‘Give us earlier retirement. Give us pensions you can’t afford.’ And then they complain that the chickens come home to roost.”

Now, outraged by inflation and the cost of living, the French resent the government they’ve chosen. And ironically, this is where the schools did not fail the country’s extreme elements. They may be short-staffed and underfunded, but they’ve still managed to turn out far-left ideologues with “an ultra-progressive ideology of extreme egalitarianism, anti-capitalism, and cultural hostility to France and its historical institutions and identity. That might almost be a blend of European socialism and American woke-ism,” NRO’s John Sullivan observes.

“There are no justifications for this upsurge of violent rebellion, of course — merely angry grievances by groups of discontented people, mainly young, many from immigrant backgrounds (even if born in France),” Sullivan notes, “all persuaded that they are either oppressed or uniquely sensitive to the plight of the oppressed.” Which, many argue, is how it was so easily commandeered by Gaza sympathizers and Muslim opportunists. “[T]he Palestinian banner has become the equivalent of the North Vietnamese flag in the 1970s,” Rich Lowry points out, “a symbol of resistance to the West, and in this case, fierce opposition to Zionism and so-called settler-colonialism.”

As angry as Macron was at President Trump’s suggestion that France’s open-borders policy was ruining the country, the American leader isn’t wrong. “I told Macron, when I first came in, I met him early. I said, ‘You are destroying France. You’re letting people come in that hate your country.’”

Vice President J.D. Vance agreed. “Western liberals imported the third world into France and other countries in the name of diversity and compassion. They ignored fundamental questions of assimilation and compatibility,” he posted on X. “They were told it would lead to this and they didn’t listen. I pray that France, a beautiful country of amazing people, will stop this madness before more of its landmarks burn. And I hope Americans are paying attention. This is the future congressional Democrats seek for your country.”

Some French leaders are brave enough to stand against the tide threatening to drag the nation under. Mayor of Nice Éric Ciotti was blunt in his assessment that “Islamo-leftism threatens the Republic. The massive presence of Palestinian flags and community slogans is a terrible reality in these demonstrations, just like the presence of movements close to the Muslim Brotherhood.”

While the rest of the West watches, Americans have plenty of cause for self-reflection. The warning signs are here, as DSA candidates and radical Muslims unite to battle for a foothold in U.S. politics. And while there are similarities between France and America, Bahnsen was careful not to compare the two countries. “I don’t want to diminish the risk going on. And I also don’t want to overstate it. … [But] as a national reality, America has a long way to go until we actually embrace the socialist impulse. And that’s a good thing.” He paused before adding, “But the problem is it moves marginally. It moves incrementally. And that’s what I think we have to resist.”

As troubling as the spiritual markers have been in the U.S., Europe is decades ahead of us in secularism, the economist stresses. “It’s a perfect inverse correlation there: decline of faith has coincided with an embrace of more state. The government [becomes] a sort of Messiah. And of course, we see it here in the States as well — not quite to the same degree, but Europe has proven to be a long-term test case of how a society that abandons Christian principles embraces more statist principles. … It’s not good.”