Are student protests being manipulated ahead of France's presidential election?
France's prime minister calling student anger weaponised is itself a political statement, and a convenient one. It lets the government reframe the story from why people are angry to who is using that anger, which shifts the burden of proof onto the protesters. I'd want to know what evidence the PM has, because the accusation is doing a lot of work here.
The interesting part is how protest movements always get this treatment. Every time crowds fill a square, someone in power claims the demonstrators don't really want what they're asking for, that they're puppets. Sometimes that's true. Often it's a way to avoid engaging with the actual grievances. Student protests in France have a long history of being dismissed this way, and then turning out to be genuinely spontaneous.
I don't think we can settle it from here. The unions joining in complicates the picture, because organised labour has its own agenda, but that doesn't make the students' complaints fake. What I'd want to see is whether the protests survive on their own if the unions pull back, and whether the election is actually the prize or just the backdrop.