I guess the issue with that argument is that you only apply it to people destroying things. Though it can be reversed to our political class currently. It's more insidious of course because they have "the law" with them as they make them. The main problem in France right now is not that we "have a long history of not being in line with our government and to destroy everything", it's that at this moment in time, the way politics are handled are very one sided. Our parliament is not listened and cannot vote on main topics (retirement is the main example but there was a dozen like this where government used the famous "49.3").

So indeed, I agree with you, we won't go far with violence, though it's a bit biased to only speak of the degradation and violence of the street when it actually started by the one of our current government, and at the end, the main threat here is that the attention is all focused on the street degradation made by the people and not on the root cause of all this.

And I need to say it again to avoid misinterpretation : I'm in no way in agreement with any kind of violence.

PS : sorry if things are not crystal clear, I'm not a native english speaker.