A massive 580 000 respondents in 35 different countries were asked: “Would you actively participate in large-scale uprising against the generation in power if it happened in the next days or months?” and more than half of 18- to 34-year-olds said that they would rise up.
The Quartz study revealed both “voter apathy” and being “sick of the status quo” as other reasons for why so many young adults are ready to engage in civil unrest.
Europe’s chronic rates of youth unemployment, now as high as over 50 percent in Greece and Spain, might have contributed to the outcome of the poll.
In Greece, Spain and Italy, over 60 percent said they would rise up against the elite, and in Belgium and prosperous Switzerland, the figure was higher than 40 percent.
Some 60 percent of French young adults blamed systemic corruption, high taxes and “too many rich people” for their discontent.
In Paris scores of hooded youths threw Molotov cocktails at security forces who fired back with tear gas on Monday during May Day marches. Five arrests of individuals were recorded for “carrying prohibited weapons”.
Six riot police officers were injured, two “very seriously”. One of the police officers was “seriously injured on the hands and face due to burns from Molotov cocktails,” said a police source. Another sustained injuries from a stinger grenade. Several shops and a bus shelter were vandalised and continous loud explosions were heard in the area.
Matthias Fekl, the French interior minister, denounced the “very serious violence by several hundred professional vandals come with only one goal: to attack security forces, to smash a policeman and wreak damage”. He added, that the protesters wanted “to injure and kill police officers”.
Video showed riot police surrounding around 150 protesters near the Place de la Bastille, who were lobbing firebombs at the officers, with some exploding into flames in the street. A banner from the far-left CGT union read: “Neither plague nor cholera”, suggesting that the marchers had rejected both candidates.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leftist leader of La France Insoumise (Unbowed France) who came fourth in the first presidential round, took part in one of the Paris marches.
Le Pen however tweeted: “I pay tribute to the two injured CRS (riot police). It’s this mess and this laxism that I don’t want to see anymore in our streets.”
Her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen denounced Macron as a “masked Socialist” backed by the highly unpopular Socialist President Francois Hollande.
“He wants to dynamize the economy, but he is among those who dynamited it,” the elderly Le Pen said, noting that France’s stagnant economy and unemployment rate never improved while Macron served as Hollande’s economy minister.
Macron this week paid homage Monday to a Moroccan man thrown to his death in the Seine River during a Front National march over two decades ago.