Autumn in Europe is usually the season for trade union demands aimed at renewing labor contracts and securing wage improvements. However, this year that season has suffered the effects of a “climate change” concentrated in France and northern Italy. The characteristics of this anomalous protest movement are sticks used to smash everything, instead of empty pots and pans; teenagers as young as 12, instead of seasoned metalworkers; and surreal demands, instead of concrete claims.
The main trigger for the protests is, in appearance, the rising cost of living—an undeniable consequence of ongoing wars: Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, which has forced an increase in military spending while draining resources from the social budget; and, above all, the offensive by Israel and the US against Iran, which has cut or reduced the flow of oil, gas, and refined products from the Middle East, causing fuel prices to soar worldwide.
I said “in appearance” because a deeper reading reveals sociological causes of greater complexity. Indeed, the protesters are, in many cases, the children of migrants—second-generation citizens, as they are often called—minors experiencing profound discomfort in their neighborhoods and schools, with limited opportunities for social mobility. They lack traditional leadership; slogans and coordination reach them instantly via TikTok and other social media. They are driven by an unrestrained rage that compels them to break everything in their path, primarily the symbols of an unattainable lifestyle. As various psychologists have noted, Generation Z lives devoid of a past, bored with the present, and without prospects for the future.
This irrational anger has manifested in arson and severe damage to public buildings, the smashing of high-fashion store windows, and sparing neither more modest shops nor homes.
Violence was immediately followed by partisan manipulation: sectors of the leftist establishment resorting to familiar nuances (condemning “police violence” and “infiltrators,” yet justifying or understanding the protests), and conservative forces demanding a heavy hand, repressive measures, and prison sentences for minors. Nor could we lack the instrumentalization by the ineffable Donald Trump, cornered by the midterm electoral race, blaming excessive tolerance toward migrants for all evils: “Close your borders!”
For political analysts, what happened is a response to the degradation of people’s quality of life, amid suspicions of external interference (hybrid warfare).
For physics, the explanation lies in the complexity of systems that, under certain boundary conditions and with social media acting as catalysts, generate uncontrollable outbreaks and unleash collective chain reactions.
For a religious perspective, the causes run even deeper: we live immersed in the fictitious world of screens, which prevents many children, adolescents, and young people from «lifting their gaze»—in tune with recent reflections by Pope Leo XIV—from their devices to discover tangible reality: the sky, the sun, the clouds, and “the others,” veiled by the smoke of frustration.
Some go even further, seeing in these events the crisis of lives without God, without commitments, without a moral compass, and with a sense of life so fragile that it inevitably succumbs to hedonism, technological vertigo, and the absorbing empire of artificial intelligence.