Where the Fire Started

The University of Nanterre was an unlikely birthplace for revolution. Built hastily in 1964 on the western outskirts of Paris, it was a monument to technocratic planning gone awry — a modernist campus of concrete and glass dropped into a wasteland of construction sites, factories, and bidonvilles (shanty towns) housing North African immigrant workers. If the architects had deliberately designed a space to alienate and radicalize middle-class students, they could hardly have done better.

Every morning, thousands of students made the dreary commute from Paris, traveling through some of the capital's poorest neighborhoods to reach what they sardonically called "Nanterre-la-Folie" (Nanterre the Madness). The contrast was jarring: privileged young people pursuing higher education while literally next door, immigrant families lived in shocking poverty. This daily confrontation with inequality would profoundly shape the political consciousness of Nanterre's students.

The Making of a Powder Keg

From its opening, Nanterre was a problem. The campus, designed for 12,000 students, was already overcrowded with 15,000 by 1968. Lecture halls overflowed. The library, built for 500, regularly held three times that number. Students sat on floors, stood in corridors, strained to hear professors over the din. The cafeteria ran out of food by 12:30. Lines for everything — food, books, administrative services — stretched endlessly.

But the physical discomforts were merely symptoms of deeper problems. Nanterre embodied all the contradictions of France's rapid modernization. Its students were supposedly the lucky ones, the future elite who would manage the new technocratic society. Yet their daily experience was one of anonymity, bureaucracy, and meaninglessness. They were numbers on computer cards, processed through an educational factory that seemed designed to crush creativity and independent thought.

The university's regulations were particularly galling. Male and female dormitories were strictly segregated, with severe penalties for unauthorized visits. Students needed permission to hold meetings, distribute leaflets, or invite speakers. Political activity was theoretically forbidden, though in practice this rule was selectively enforced against leftist groups. The administration, headed by Dean Pierre Grappin — a liberal who had fought in the Resistance — tried to maintain order through a combination of paternalism and petty authoritarianism that satisfied no one.

The Actors Assemble

Into this pressure cooker came a remarkable collection of young radicals who would soon become household names. Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the most famous, was a sociology student with flaming red hair, an impish grin, and a talent for theatrical provocation. Born in France to German Jewish refugees, raised in Germany, he embodied the internationalism of the new student movement. Neither French nor German, Jewish but secular, anarchist but pragmatic, "Danny the Red" was a living contradiction who delighted in confounding all categories.

But Cohn-Bendit was far from alone. The Nanterre campus hosted an extraordinary range of radical groups, from Trotskyists to Maoists to anarchists, united only by their opposition to the status quo. There was Jean-Pierre Duteuil, a brilliant philosophy student who provided much of the movement's intellectual framework. Henri Weber and Daniel Bensaïd, both from the Trotskyist Jeunesse Communiste Révolutionnaire (JCR), brought organizational skills and international connections. Numerous others, whose names history has forgotten, contributed passion, creativity, and courage.

The sociology department was the epicenter of radicalism. This was no accident. Sociology in 1960s France was a new discipline, attracting students interested in understanding and changing society. The professors included some of France's most innovative thinkers — Henri Lefebvre, whose writings on everyday life and urban space inspired a generation; Alain Touraine, who encouraged students to study social movements by participating in them; and Jean Baudrillard, then a young assistant beginning to develop his theories of consumer society.

These teachers didn't preach revolution, but their courses provided intellectual tools for critiquing existing society. Students read Marx, but also newer theorists like Herbert Marcuse, whose "One-Dimensional Man" seemed to perfectly describe the conformist pressures they felt. They studied the alienation of modern life, the manipulation of consciousness by mass media, the subtle forms of domination in democratic societies. Theory and experience reinforced each other in an explosive mix.

The Movement of March 22

The fuse was lit by a seemingly trivial incident. On January 8, 1968, François Missoffe, the Minister for Youth and Sports, came to Nanterre to inaugurate a new swimming pool. During the ceremony, Cohn-Bendit confronted him about a recent government report on youth that had ignored political and sexual issues. "Mr. Minister," he said with characteristic cheek, "you've written 600 pages about young people without once mentioning sexuality. It's like writing about the economy without mentioning money."

Missoffe, flustered, suggested that if Cohn-Bendit had sexual problems, he should jump in the pool to cool off. The exchange, filmed by television cameras, made Cohn-Bendit an instant celebrity and marked him as a troublemaker in official eyes. The administration began disciplinary proceedings, which only increased his popularity among students.

Tensions escalated through the winter. Police arrested six members of the National Vietnam Committee for attacking the American Express office in Paris. On March 22, a Friday evening, about 150 students occupied the administration building at Nanterre to protest these arrests and broader issues of political repression. The occupation was spontaneous, almost playful — students wandered through administrative offices, made coffee in the dean's kitchen, and held rambling debates about revolution, sexuality, and the meaning of life.

From this occupation emerged the "Movement of March 22," deliberately named to echo Fidel Castro's "Movement of July 26." But where Castro's group had been a disciplined vanguard, the March 22 Movement was deliberately anti-hierarchical. It had no president, no central committee, no membership cards. Decisions were made by general assembly, with anyone who showed up entitled to speak and vote. This radical democracy was both the movement's strength and its limitation.

Ideas in Ferment

The politics of the March 22 Movement defied easy categorization. Its manifesto, written collectively in all-night sessions fueled by coffee and cigarettes, was a bricolage of revolutionary traditions. From anarchism came the emphasis on direct action and suspicion of all authority. From Marxism came the analysis of capitalism and class struggle. From situationism came the critique of "the society of the spectacle" and the emphasis on transforming everyday life. From the American New Left came the concept of participatory democracy and the link between personal and political liberation.

But the movement's most radical innovation was its refusal to separate political, cultural, and personal revolution. Previous leftist movements had typically focused on seizing state power or transforming economic structures. The March 22 Movement insisted that revolution must transform every aspect of life — work and leisure, reason and desire, politics and pleasure. "We don't want to change governments," they declared. "We want to change life."

This totalizing vision appealed powerfully to students experiencing the contradictions of modern society. They were being trained for careers in a system they found meaningless. They were promised freedom but subjected to endless rules and regulations. They were told they were privileged but felt profoundly alienated. The movement offered not just political analysis but a way of living differently — collectively, creatively, authentically.

The Administration Strikes Back

The university administration, caught between its liberal principles and pressure from the government, responded with a mixture of concessions and repression that satisfied no one. Dean Grappin, genuinely sympathetic to some student demands, tried dialogue and reform. He relaxed dormitory regulations, allowed more political meetings, and promised curriculum changes. But these measures came too late and offered too little.

Meanwhile, hardliners in the government demanded a crackdown. Interior Minister Christian Fouchet, a Gaullist stalwart with no patience for student radicals, ordered increased police surveillance of campus activists. Intelligence services compiled dossiers on student leaders. Right-wing groups, some with shadowy connections to the security services, began attacking leftist students. On several occasions, fascist thugs from the movement Occident invaded Nanterre, leading to violent confrontations.

The administration's ultimate weapon was the threat of closure. In late April, after a series of increasingly disruptive incidents, they announced that the university would shut down indefinitely. This decision, meant to defuse tensions, had the opposite effect. Students who might have remained apathetic were suddenly faced with the loss of their academic year. The moderate majority was pushed toward the radicals. The fire at Nanterre was about to spread to all of Paris.

Beyond the Campus

What made Nanterre's revolt more than just another student protest was its ability to connect with broader social currents. The March 22 Movement consciously reached out beyond the university. They organized joint actions with young workers from nearby factories. They held teach-ins on the Vietnam War that drew participants from across the Paris region. They created links with high school students through the Comités d'Action Lycéens (High School Action Committees).

Most provocatively, they challenged the traditional left parties and unions. The Communist Party, France's largest leftist organization, initially dismissed the Nanterre radicals as "provocateurs" and "false revolutionaries." The CGT union leadership warned workers against "adventurist" students. This hostility from the established left actually increased the movement's appeal to young people tired of bureaucratic organizations and parliamentary politics.

The movement also pioneered new forms of communication and organization. They published newspapers and pamphlets using simple mimeograph machines, spreading their ideas despite lack of access to mainstream media. They created action committees that could mobilize hundreds of people within hours. They developed a visual language of graffiti and posters that would soon cover the walls of Paris. Most importantly, they demonstrated that small groups of determined individuals could challenge enormous institutions.

The Cultural Revolution Begins

Perhaps the most lasting impact of the Nanterre movement was cultural. In the occupied buildings and liberated spaces, students experimented with new ways of living and relating. Traditional hierarchies between professors and students broke down. Young women, though still underrepresented in leadership, began asserting their right to equal participation. The formal "vous" gave way to the informal "tu" as markers of status dissolved.

Creativity exploded. Every wall became a canvas for political art. Every gathering became a festival of ideas. Music — from American folk singers to French chanson to revolutionary songs from around the world — provided the soundtrack. Theater groups performed agitprop in courtyards. Film screenings showed banned movies about revolution and resistance. Poetry and politics merged in ways that would have seemed impossible months earlier.

This cultural ferment was not separate from the political struggle but integral to it. The Nanterre radicals understood intuitively what theorists would later elaborate: that revolution in advanced capitalist societies required not just economic change but transformation of consciousness, desire, and daily life. They were creating what they called "red bases" — liberated territories where the future society could be prefigured in the present.

The Eve of Explosion

By late April 1968, Nanterre had become ungovernable. Classes were disrupted daily. The administration building was repeatedly occupied. Right-wing attacks increased in violence. The police presence grew heavier. Everyone sensed that a breaking point was approaching.

On May 2, the administration announced that the university would close indefinitely and that eight student leaders, including Cohn-Bendit, would face disciplinary hearings. This was the final provocation. The March 22 Movement called for solidarity actions across Paris. Students from the Sorbonne, the École des Beaux-Arts, and other institutions prepared to join the struggle.

What had begun as a localized conflict at an isolated campus was about to explode into the heart of Paris. The Nanterre radicals had lit a fuse that would soon detonate with force none of them could have imagined. They had demonstrated that beneath the prosperous surface of Gaullist France lay profound discontent waiting for a spark. They had provided that spark.

As Cohn-Bendit later recalled: "We didn't plan a revolution. We just refused to accept the unacceptable. But sometimes, in history, that's enough to change everything." The students of Nanterre had indeed refused to accept the unacceptable. Now all of France would have to decide whether to join them or oppose them. The spark had been lit. The fire was about to spread.# The Explosion - From Universities to the Streets