Violent Unrest Tends to Benefit the Political Right: France's Riots as a Warning for America
Source: Ian Prasad Philbrick. "France riots: The protests are a warning to America about how civil unrest affects politics.." October 24, 2026. slate.com
The Gist
The author argues that when protests turn violent, voters often swing toward right-wing politicians who promise to restore order. He points to France today, where Marine Le Pen is trying to benefit from riots, and to many historical examples. His warning to Americans is that violent protest could end up helping Trump.
Conclusion
When protests escalate into violence, right-wing politicians tend to benefit electorally, so the current French riots may help Marine Le Pen win the presidency, and Americans should take this as a warning that violent protest can help Trump and the Republicans.
Premises
- Historical cases show that disorder and riots have repeatedly helped right-wing or authoritarian actors: Nixon in 1968, Mussolini in the 1920s, Modi in 2013, China in Hong Kong in 2020, and the Nazis after the 1933 Reichstag fire.
- Research, such as Omar Wasow's 2020 paper, finds that riots after Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination shifted white voters toward Nixon by enough to win him the presidency.
- Public disorder tends to help conservatives because their ideology casts them as custodians of the status quo and order, and a candidate promising to restore order after rioting follows a script with a long record of success.
- Le Pen is well placed to exploit the French unrest: she leads polls, sits in the parliamentary opposition and can criticize both rioters and the government without having to fix the problem, and has a record of deliberately publicizing riots for political gain.
- Current U.S. polling shows crime is the one issue on which voters trust Republicans over Democrats, suggesting that disorder-related concerns would favor Trump's party.
Assumptions
- Correlations between past riots and right-wing electoral gains reflect causal effects of the violence rather than other concurrent factors.
- Cases as different as 1968 America, 1920s Italy, 2013 India, Hong Kong and Nazi Germany are comparable enough to support one general pattern.
- Voters attribute riot-related disorder to the protesters' side or the incumbent's political allies rather than to the government or the police response.
- Violence in a protest movement is a controllable choice that participants can avoid, and it influences voters more than other political factors.
- Findings about white voters in 1968 America generalize to contemporary France and the U.S.
- The 'order vs. chaos' framing will be the dominant frame in upcoming elections, and the left cannot effectively counter it.