In that sense, 1968 and today s protests are not as different as some observers claim. There is no political playbook, but there are events and also books that inspired outrage Frantz Fanon s Wretched of the Earth in the 1960 s and, nowadays, the unlikely bestseller Indignez Vous!, by the 93 year old former French Resistance fighter Stéphane Hessel.

In 1958, he told a crowd in Algiers made up mainly of pieds noirs Europeans Je vous ai compris ( I have understood you ). But, by 1960, euphoria had given way to rancor among those whom he had used to regain office but who now saw him as a traitor to be neutralized along with the regime he had brought into being.