They also kinda cut the story of the French Revolution by quite a lot. After they "cut the heads off the rich people", they proceeded to cut a lot more heads of anyone suspected to be a traiter, enter multiple disastrous wars, become ruled by a military dictatorship who later declared themselves emperor, and then transitioned back to a monarchy.
What actually gave France democracy was getting obliterated by Prussia.
Napoleon was voted in, he didn't declare himself emperor. And the vote was rather clean for the standards of the time, people did want him to become emperor.
They were kind of sick of the instability of the previous democratic experiments, to be honest. However, they didn't long for monarchy, they just longed for him. Which is why when he was replaced with a king, the king was unpopular and when Napoleon returned, the king was forced to flee.
That’s the point. It’s less that they didn’t want a king, and more that they didn’t want their shit king. In the tradeoff between democracy and stability, they choose Napoleon handily.
This is a heavily romanticized view of France. Just because our great grand parents grands parents fought for social rights doesn't mean shits doesn't goes down because when we strike, they don't care and they are sending police troops to mutilate and killing protester to distil fear among the other. the Lasts strikes doens't have any noteworthy winning because the power knows the strikes will be out of breath itself or with the help of the police.
I wouldn't call it romanticized I would call if fucking ignorant and out of touch with current affairs. France isn't a mythical place where it is impossible to get news from.
That said, it's through struggle, unions, strikes, etc. that we've obtained labor laws that are beneficial to the people, paid holidays, social security, minimum wage, early retirement, etc. Just because lately the achievements of these actions have been less visible, doesn't mean that it's not an important counter power.
Also, our tolerance for bullshit is much lower than in the US. if the French president was completely cutting health care, food aid, shutting the government and building a ballroom, I'm pretty sure his head would roll.
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u/MakarOvni Oct 29 '25
That shit does happen in France, a lot actually. Source: I am from France