I’m very sorry if this comes off as rude but like…. “I don’t understand why people would use Les Mis as the symbolic centerpiece of an act of protest/rebellion against the government” is just a very strange thing to say, and I’m genuinely not quite sure how to begin to respond XD. Like….it’s literally Les Mis. It is Do You Hear the People Sing. The original novel was written to be a political rallying cry, it was written to bind together activists, and it has been used that way thousands of times since its publication in 1862. It’s Les Mis, I don’t know what else to tell you XD.

Also I know this next comparison isn’t perfect, but:

“I don’t understand why Les Amis interrupted Lamarque’s funeral.  Obviously I agree with Les Amis’s goals, but was this really the right way to protest? Obviously the government is doing something bad— but was this symbolic event really the right place to talk about it? Why even choose to interrupt this event, and the lives of the workers leading it and everyday people attending it? It wasn’t responsible for what was happening! 

Okay, yeah, I get the funeral is ‘symbolically significant.’  I get that Lamarque has become, in popular culture, a symbol of rebellion and resistance against a government’s unfair policies.  I get Lamarque’s funeral is a pretty big public event that has a lot of symbolic significance ties to ideas of rebellion against the state.

I get that Lamarque’s words are often seen as a rebellious call to action, so illegally interrupting his funeral could be a statement about resisting tyranny. It could be a call to action playing off the popularity and symbolic role that Lamarque has in the public consciousness.

 But at the same time— shouldn’t Les Amis have just gone to the palace and attacked the king directly? Why disrupt this symbolic event instead? They’re not really going after the people responsible! 

After all, there were so many people there who just wanted a normal day. They weren’t responsible for what the government was doing and had nothing to do with it.  They wanted to see the procession, to hear Lafayette’s speech and grieve a political figure they cared for. They wanted to hear people praise ‘resistance’ in the abstract, without actually doing it.

 Weren’t Les Amis disrupting that?  

Aren’t Les Amis bad activists? Isn’t disrupting people’s everyday lives for the sake of ‘activism’ always inherently a bad thing? I’m not against activism, but isn’t doing that kind of disruptive activism rude? Isn’t disrupting the lives of ordinary people just doing their jobs or going out for a special event evil— no matter why you’re doing it, or what your goals are, or whether the government actually is doing something vile that we should start to stage great events rallying against?

Even if this Lamarque’s funeral has special significance because of its symbolic pop cultural ties to rebellion against tyranny—shouldn’t they have just avoided rudely interrupting some regular people’s everyday lives? 

Protests shouldn’t disrupt things. they should be big parades that don’t make anyone uncomfortable, don’t interrupt anything, and don’t disrupt any aspects of ‘normal people’s daily life.’ No one should ever target symbolic events— like a funeral for a political figure or a musical about revolution—  to make a political statement. Protests should be little quiet festivals that cause absolutely no interruption in everyday life so that we can all just safely ignore them, until the climate catastrophe they’re warning us about arrives.”