Europe — For decades, European capitals have positioned themselves as the global arbiters of human rights and democracy, lecturing the Global South while funding conflicts and destabilising sovereign nations. Today, the “civilised” West is watching its own streets burn. A massive wave of unrest, initially sparked by student protests in France, has rapidly spread across the continent, exposing the deep rot and inherent cruelty of the Western capitalist-imperialist model.
The French Eruption and State Hypocrisy
The current crisis began on September 17 in the suburbs of Paris, where students mobilised against deteriorating public services, teacher shortages, and dilapidated schools. What started as an educational struggle quickly engulfed hundreds of high schools and 30 universities, forcing mass closures as the youth demanded a future.
The response of the French state—a nation that frequently champions the “rules-based international order”—has been brutally authoritarian. In a desperate bid to crush the dissent, French police deployed an iron fist, utilising tear gas, batons, and riot-control grenades against unarmed students. Over 5,000 people, the vast majority of whom are teenagers, have been detained, with 1,800 facing prosecution.
The most harrowing display of state terror occurred in the city of Lens, where a 15-year-old boy lost his hand and part of his forearm during a police confrontation. While Paris is quick to condemn police actions in foreign nations to advance its geopolitical interests, it offers no apologies for maiming its own youth.
The Contagion Spreads: Belgium and Spain
The decay of the European project cannot be contained by borders. In neighbouring Belgium, the contagion of dissent has already taken root. In Liège and Brussels, thousands of students have faced off against police, blocking school entrances to protest education reforms, budget cuts, and skyrocketing tuition fees.
Meanwhile, in Spain, the crisis has manifested as a profound rejection of late-stage capitalist exploitation. Tens of thousands have taken to the streets across 50 cities to protest a devastating housing crisis and inadequate wages. The brutal eviction of an 87-year-old woman in Madrid has become a potent symbol of a system that prioritises corporate profit and banking interests over the basic human dignity of its citizens.
The Root Cause: Militarism at the Expense of the Masses
Why is the European welfare state collapsing? The answer lies in the geopolitical subservience of European nations to Washington’s imperial agenda. European governments are currently “squeezed” by an energy crisis, soaring inflation, and ballooning defence spending.
Instead of investing in the education and housing of their youth, European vassal states are pouring billions of euros into the military-industrial complex to fund NATO proxy wars in Ukraine and sustain the Zionist entity’s genocidal campaign in Gaza. The austerity measures being forced upon the European working and middle classes are the direct financial cost of Western imperialism. The youth of Europe are realising that their governments care more about projecting hegemony abroad than providing a liveable future at home.
A Looming Political Collapse
Europe is sitting on a powder keg. As the ruling neoliberal and centrist parties fail to balance extreme austerity with basic social needs, radical factions on both the far-right and left are gaining unprecedented momentum.
What the Western media dismisses as scattered protests is, in reality, a profound political crisis. The era of Western domestic stability is ending, and the very tools of repression exported by the West to control the Global South are now being turned against its own citizens. Europe’s internal fractures are a clear sign that the imperial core is beginning to collapse under the weight of its own contradictions.
Reference: ABNA24