Wrong. In France, this "culture of protest" means to go all-in, on strike, right from the beginning for any reason, be it serious or just a pettiness. And in France, taking it to the streets and making noise is more often than not some sort of a social happening, too often for economical reasons, like yellow wests initially did. Not for any "higher" reasons like democracy, justice, freedom etc. It's individual people and various interest groups competing (on a wider level) with each other in their subsidiary demands, united in their fear of loosing status and comparative influence of the social group they belong to. E.g. rail-road syndicates. In short: Citizens of a rich country worried about their pockets, demanding reforms, refusing change, regarding it be some a kind of a zero-sum game, thus preferring short-term egoistic strategies.

Compare it with Eastern Europe with seldom protests, maybe once in 20 years or so. And not against poverty but for justice (Slovakia), democracy (Ukraine, Serbia) or alike.

What's wrong with economic reasons?

What good is freedom and democracy if it doesn't give you enough to eat?

Economic trouble is was causes totalitarianism.

> What good is freedom and democracy if it doesn't give you enough to eat?

It's called escape from freedom.

My first question would be whether the culture of protesting and having constantly negative coverage of the government makes any difference in a country full of old money.

I'm not sure how much of a difference it makes, but given that France is on its fifth republic in 200 years, it certainly seems to be capable of changing how its governed.

France had literally lost control over it’s government about 6 times since 1815.

So of course it’s capable of changing how it’s governed - it was never a choice.

or, was, before the internet enabled fascism to the extent that it has.

We've yet to see that proven conclusively.

I feel like one the best examples of out-spoken minority rules might be the recent rabid defense of confederate statues. I agree that we have yet to see conclusive evidence - but we've got a whole bunch of strong indicators including my absolute least favorite: rampant nepotism.

What do you mean? Living in Germany I see plenty of protests.